smokerZchoice

Remember when smoking was everywhere? There were blue plumes of cigarette smoke curling up inside movie theaters and over lunch counters. Remember restaurants where your parents would no more leave without having coffee and a cigarette to quelch that momentary nicotine withdrawal than slip out without a tip?

Remember how it felt to hold a cigarette? How it fit between your fingers just right? This made me think of when my father would take us to the woods to shoot his gun, to show us the right way to handle firearms and make sure we respected what they could do. I remember the way the gun felt in my hands, Smoking was cool and hip intensely powerful, seductive with no thought given to the consequences of smoking.

Today it is terrifying when you factor in the danger of smoking and secondhand smoke.

Today it is easy to join the crowd and become one of those annoying anti-smokers. The world has become annoyingly anti-smoking, too demanding our participation as "Freedom From Smoking Fighters. Once quit smoking cravings permeated our brains and inhaling secondhand smoke was a pleasure that couldn't hurt you. Today maybe it is more about being forced to live with other peoples mandates and not all about personal choice.

New laws forced office smokers to huddle under overhangs in the rain and banished restaurant smokers to patios, not that we anti-smokers didn't sigh about them, too. You could see patients standing outside hospitals hooked to IVs, getting their nicotine fixes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while smoking rates have stayed steady in recent years — about 20 percent of us still puff away — states with smoke-free laws have the lowest rate of adult smokers. So maybe it's working. Me, I'm glad it's no longer a smoker's world and that we chide even the president for it, and not just because it leaves the rest of us with stinking clothes and hair.

Because here's the trick for the anti-smoker: How do you keep from sounding like you know what's best for the rest of the world? How do you explain that you might actually understand how tight the grip, how powerful the seduction, how personal the choice?

Do you want to quit for a moment? ...  or forever? If you haven't made up your mind give smokerzchoice a try. Right now you can get a sample for FREE. Go to www.smokerzchoice.com.