That got your attention, huh?
As evidence I submit my venture to Sundown in the City on Thursday. Sundown in the City is a series of outdoor concerts put on each summer in Market Square. There’s no charge for admission, and they draw insane crowds. I haven’t been to Sundown in the City in a couple of years, but I went on Thursday to see Robert Earl Keen. Huge crowd, and an unbelievable amount of smokers.
Before I go any further…I don’t care if you smoke. You have every right to do so, and I think the ban on smoking inside is a bunch of crap. It’s your body-trash it if you want to. If I don’t want to be around it, I can (and do) choose not to be around it. That problem is easily solved.
But I didn’t realize that so many people still smoke. What is this, 1978? Maybe they were smoking so much because they aren’t allowed to do it inside anymore? Maybe they are all nervous about the fact that gas and food prices are so high? Maybe they spent the money they would have spent on fuel for this years family vacation on cigarettes since they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere this year?
I don’t know. But I started thinking that, while gases prices are high, they aren’t so high that people can’t afford the luxury of cooking themselves from the inside. I mean, this is literally just burning money, and a lot of it. To be fair, I didn’t hear anyone complaining about gas prices in between puffs, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that some of them had complained in the last 24 hours, probably the last time they filled up and bought a pack of smokes.
So as high as prices are, I think we’ll survive–at least long enough to demand in our old age that someone give us free health care to take care of all those problems caused by smoking.
