You probably don't care about this but I am really pissed and want to tell you about it anyways.  I got fired from my job because I lit up a cigarette.

For almost a year I have worked at our town's community center.  I taught swimming lessons and was a lifeguard and basically a babysitter for a lot of kids who hang out there to stay out of trouble.  It was a great job that really meant a lot to me, and I thought I was making a positive difference.  I could have made more money working at Burger King but this seemed more worthwhile.

Anyways, after a session of lessons I showered off and was heading home when I saw this 8 year old kid who was in a class two hours earlier crying outside the building because his mom never came to pick him up.  Of course I told him I would take him home, I was not going to just leave him there.  So he gets in my truck and I drive him home.  On the way I light up a cigarette because I am smoker and its been three hours since I had a cigarette.  The kid does not really care one way or another. Then I walk him to the door with the cigarette in my hand and his mom seems cool when she meets us outside and her kid runs in.  But the next day I get a call from my boss who fires me. The kid's mom called him and he told me it was inappropriate and unhealthy for me to be smoking in front of her child and my boss agreed that I was putting the kid's health at risk. That completely blew me away!  I was only trying to help the kid out.

This was like double discrimination for me because I got kicked off the school swimming team last year because I was a smoker.   I am 16 and a sophomore and the school declared me ineligible because I was a smoker.  I accepted that and used my abilities to make a difference at the community center which ended up firing me.

I just don't understand why smoking cigarettes is such a big deal to so many people.  In my family, everybody is a smoker by the time you reach my age.  So what?  Am I living on the wrong planet or what?  Why can't I smoke cigarettes at age 16 and still be a worthwhile member of society? 

In my family, smoking cigarettes really is sort of a rite of passage, something you do once you reach puberty.  Maybe we are totally fu*&ed up and backward, but I see a lot of families that are not as close or valuable to the world.  I really like being a smoker and am not going to surrender.

I smoked my first cigarette with my dad when I was 14, because I asked him if I could try it.  He showed me how to smoke and at first it wasn't something I really liked, but at the same time I did like it.  It is hard to explain exactly, but I really love smoking now and am going to keep smoking no matter what consequences it brings. 

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is light up a cigarette and its great.   It calms my cough and really gets me going.  Its my lifestyle and it doesn't hurt anybody.  I smoke a carton a week and that helps fund the government.  I should be praised.  Anyways thanks for listening.

Jake

Dear Jake,

We sure care – and yes, you should be praised. Not in connection with whether you smoke or not, but for helping people see the injustice that is going on around them.

You are very young. That means that we are supposed (in order to be called “responsible” by those who believe that young people must be brainwashed) to give you a lecture because you smoke -- to warn you about the presumed dangers of smoking, to tell you that “smoking kills,” and so on. It will not happen here. Instead we tell you that, for a smoker, no good deed goes unpunished.

Please understand that according to today's ethic (and we do not mean to patronise you): you are a smoker, and you are going to be regarded as a despicable, sick person as long as you light up cigs. Even if you are a person of great qualities who has much to give others.

Even if you quit one day, never forget to recite how much better you feel, how wrong you were when you smoked (and how much you have repented), and to be angry – very angry – at the tobacco industry which, through misleading advertisement, made you smoke, and feel that smoking was cool while, instead, it was "very bad-bad-bad." But not anymore -- as you spend your money on nicotine patches, and antidepressants too. Only in that way you may be able to reintegrate in "society". That's how you fit in.

Short of that, no matter what you die of one day, it’s going to be chalked up to smoking. Your help to your community will be irrelevant, for smoking in front of a kid today is almost tantamount to exposing yourself. Thank the fallacious propaganda on passive smoke! You see, it is OK for the kids you take care of to watch bullet-ridden corpses on TV, to be intoxicated with antidepressants, to think that Sing-Sing is in China, and to be taught lots of “political correctness” – as long as they don’t smoke and they are not fat.

It is going to be expected of every “decent” mother to report you to the “authorities” and to stab you in the back without even facing you directly. Live in fear and circumspection, Jake – or “straighten up” to the “health” standards of the New Order. Already, toll-free lines are available to report smokers anonymously; squealing on thy neighbour is no longer an act that deserves contempt, but the duty of a good citizen for the protection of the collective. Before you were born, that was called Soviet Union – controlling society at the capillary level through fear and squealing, citizen against citizen – to the point that no one could be trusted. But at least that was for political ideology: this is for cigarette smoke.

Today, the subliminal equation imposed to your generation is that freedom is health, thus health is freedom. Smoke-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free, salt-free, fat-free, alcohol-free… to that end, no liberty is too sacred, no fraud too disgusting, no lie too outrageous, no oath too holy -- you shall live by prescription. Just don’t fall for that.

A world ridden with disinformation, hysteria, frauds and corruption, junk science and medieval superstitions -- endlessly pumped by corrupt “public health”, its media mouthpieces and pharmaceutical multinationals is what our generation delivers to yours. And it sees to it, of course, that as many of the youth as possible are conditioned in its pitiful image. For that, this generation -- the older generation -- should be truly sorry. It is going to be up to those of you who escape conditioning to break the back of this, and to restore sanity and real freedom.

Finally, considering the “progress” made by Big Pharma in the chemical lobotomy of people, we think that your generation truly has the last shot at the restoration of liberty before empty drug contentment, human genetic engineering, health “consciousness” and the siren song of “safety & long life” eliminate it forever -- and even call freedom “savage!”

Take care – and watch your back when you smoke.