Smoke Police Handcuff Obama

Three To Five Cigarettes A Day

The anti-smoking police are thrusting their will on President-elect Barack Obama to stop smoking. We assume they mean cigarettes. By all intents and purposes, Obama seems to be trying.

A medical report on Obama's health quotes his physician saying Obama smokes three to five cigarettes a day. He has quit and relapsed on numerous occasions. Three to five cigs a day? Some might call it an addiction. I call it an affliction.

There's probably a chromosome in our genes that nicotine titillates. It releases a fleeting moment of pleasure from stress that your brain makes you think you crave. The trick is telling your brain to shove it. I know that from smoking off and on the past 60 years.

We have heard all the arguments against smoking. Most of them are true. It's a dirty, filthy, smelly habit unhealthy in our public domain which in many parts bans it. It's also expensive.
The anti-smoking warriors have forced smokers outdoors in the snow, wind, rain or steamy heat. It parallels the social ostracism of gays and lesbians until they broke out of their closets in the past two generations.

In an article in Monday's New York Times, the authors ask if Obama will honor a New Year's resolution to quit smoking. They also wonder whether he will violate the White House's no smoking rules.

I'm with Michael Kinsley on this subject and he's the most gung-ho anti-smoking creature on planet Earth. Kinsley, writing an opinion column in the Washington Post, said with two wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an economy sinking far into recession, if Obama smokes an occasional cigarette to relieve the stress, than so be it. If the worst Obama does is smoke three to five cigarettes a day and saves us from future wars and enacts policies that improve the economy, hell, I will buy him a pack of smokes.

Obama is a picture of good health. That ill-gotten front page photo in the New York Daily News of a bare chested future president is proof.

He jogs and plays basketball daily. How many goody goody two-shoes politically correct commentators can boast that?

Three to five cigs a day? Get a life, smoking police.