The doctor, knowing he was about to utter a very scary word, was compassionate and yet told me I had a cancerous growth with the weary casualness of someone who had delievered a similar diagnosis thousands of times during his career.
"This won't hurt... oh, who am I kidding?"
The worrisome area was numbed and scraped, the removed flesh sent for a biopsy. And although the doctor assured me that the chances were good that what he’d removed was a small, non-invasive cancer which would not prove problematic, it didn’t matter, because like the proverbial bell that can’t be unrung, all I could hear was the word “cancer” echoing in my head.
Later that afternoon, I was more aware than ever of the number of people smoking all around me. I wanted to go up to each and every one of them, point to the bandaged spot on my forehead and say, “I just had a cancerous lump removed” as if that would somehow result in them tossing their cigarettes aside and pull me into a hug for having shown them the error of their ways.
The biggest flaw in that logic? I’ve been a smoker on and off for over two decades. I’ve had loved ones diagnosed with “real” cancer — not the probably-pretty-harmless-bump I’d had removed, but the wither-away-and-die kind. I’ve known the risks and seen them up close and personal and still, for over two decades, I smoked.
Still, on occasion, I smoke. You know… the “it’s okay because I’m drunk” smoking that so many of us do.
And then tonight, while watching a news story about Mayor Bloomberg’s determination to take spearhead a national fight for more gun control, I got angry. Incredibly angry.
According to CDC statistics, approximately 10,100 people were killed in gun-related homicides in 2005.
That same year, over 400,000 died as a result of smoking.
Look at those numbers again… and then ask yourself why the government continues to allow an industry to kill its citizenry, even encouraging the tobacco industry by providing millions in subsidies to farmers who grow the poisonous crop.
The government knows that smoking is addictive, dangerous and downright deadly and yet takes a hands-off attitude (at least when not raking in millions by taxing the very people that it is helping to kill). Worse, we let it.
Perhaps people should be throwing not tea but tobacco into the rivers, encouraging politicians to stop allowing the all-powerful tobacco lobby to cower our elected representatives into ignoring their culpability in thousands upon thousands of deaths each year.
Hey, maybe you government officials would like a little blood with your money?
The government has many responsibilities where the citizens it represents are concerned. Shouldn’t one of those be not helping companies to make money off of their deaths?
