Think About What You’re Doing, People

As I contemplated writing yet another column about the annoying, smelly and pretentious ‘90s fad of cigar-smoking, I had to ask myself this question: Do I really want to be known as the region’s leading cigar scold?

Sure. Why not? Somebody has to do it.

Some of my best friends are cigar smokers, which is all the more reason I am proud to be Cigar Enemy No. 1. I’d rather nag my friends relentlessly than have to visit them in the hospital and make small talk while they nod and smile and clutch helplessly at the tubes coming out their throats.

I used to think that there was nothing wrong with cigars except that they are stinky, ridiculous pacifiers that make even the most svelte of ‘90s swingers look like Red Auerbach. Other than that, I thought they were harmless.

Now I realize I was wrong. The worst thing about cigars is that they appear to contain tobacco, a substance which has been known to cause cancer in laboratory humans.

Yes, right, I know. I can hear the chorus of cigar smokers now: But we don’t inhale! We don’t inhale! Wheeze don’t inhale!

Oh, fine. You cigar smokers can live in your little fantasy world, in which you never even sneak a little toke just for the rush. I’m willing to accept that. The fact remains: Your head is engulfed in smoke.

What do you think goes into your lungs when you take a breath? Look at the logistics here: You have a stogie inches from your nose. A purple cloud is curling up from it. You can’t hold your breath forever.

Common sense dictates that some of that blue-grey fog is going to end up in your lungs. This would normally be called secondhand smoke, but we might as well call it first-hand smoke because you can’t even blame someone else for it.

It’s only secondhand smoke to the people who have the misfortune to be within a 30-yard radius of you, such as all of your loved ones.

It turns out that secondhand cigar smoke is every bit as dangerous as secondhand cigarette smoke, and it’s usually thicker, too. A cigarette is this slim little tube with a tiny wisp of smoke wafting up from it. A cigar is this massive battleship of rolled-up leaves, sending up plumes of smoke like the USS Missouri steaming for Okinawa.

Thank goodness all of my cigar smoking friends don’t deliberately inhale that stuff. But as someone from the American Cancer Society said to me recently, “Chew users don’t inhale either.”

And chew users suffer notoriously from all kinds of little difficulties which require tubes and special voice-synthesizing devices and … well, I don’t want to get too graphic. Suffice to say, it’s not easy to put a pinch between your cheek and gum when you no longer have a cheek.

However, it’s not fair to compare cigar smokers with chew users, since chew users at least have the sense not to set fire to the stuff.

Instead, let’s compare cigar smokers to cigarette smokers. My friend at the American Cancer Society tells me that cigars are actually more likely than cigarettes to cause annoying little setbacks to your health like lip cancer, mouth cancer, tongue cancer and larynx cancer.

That’s because most cigarette smokers, at least, use filter tips to keep the tobacco an inch or so away from their lips. Cigar smokers jam that big old wad of weeds right into their mouths.

Right in their mouths! Didn’t their mothers tell them never to put anything gross in there? Anyway, they chomp on this big old torpedo, roll it up against their tongue and lips, causing the end of the cigar to get all soggy and disgusting, and the brown juice runs out of it and mingles with their saliva and pools up against their gums and causes the genetic code to begin to mutate…

I’m sorry. That goes beyond nagging. That gets in the realm of scare tactics. My job is simply to scold, not to frighten.

The surgeon general will do a good enough job of that when the next report on cigars and cancer comes out.

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review