Kempe Quarterly 6

My good friend Bob Kempe has submitted his latest Quarterly. Please feel free to comment!


HAIL TO SMOKERS!

Most non smokers do not appreciate the contributions and the value that smokers bring to our economy.
Many of them do not even know about it.

Maybe we should have either a National Smoker’s Week or a Smoker’s Appreciation Day.

Smokers bring a least three values to our economy, an economy which is now struggling.

1.They pay taxes, a big chunk of the cost of a pack or carton goes to taxes a lot of which go to the Federal government. This means that either non smokers do not have to pay as much in income taxes and/or the Federal Government does not need to borrow as much from friends like China and Saudi Arabia.

2.Then comes Social Security. Smokers do not get as many Social Security checks as non smokers. They say the Social Security trust fund is in trouble and smokers cause it to be less trouble than if they quit.

3.Now comes Medicare. Lung cancer is pretty rough and costly, However it does not last forever, and the trend is the longer living non smokers do have ailments and some are expensive. But whatever the condition of the Medicare fund is, it is a little better because of each smoker.

I heard someplace that on average smoking one cigarette cuts the life of a smoker by 7 minutes. With a little arithmetic that shows that a carton of 200 cigarettes just about equals one day of life. Next time you go into the store and see all those cartons on the shelves you can know for each of those cartons there is one less day of Social Security payment.

I quit smoking on my 43rd birthday, and those who know me know that was a long, long time ago. I had two objectives; I wanted to feel better and I wanted to set an example for my kids.

As they say, you can’t win them all, or one out of two ain’t bad.


I did meet one of those. I do feel better. When I smoked I had a lot of colds. Since quitting I rarely have a cold, and whatever my health is I know it is better since I kicked nicotine. On the other hand, my kids smoke. They must figure the seven minutes of pleasure from a cigarette is worth the seven minutes they trade for it.

It has been said that an ex-smoker is like a reformed whore at a Sunday school picnic, intolerant and intolerable. Ok, that’s me.

When I quit, I read a book on it. That book was sold with a money back guarantee. if you bought the book and read it and did not quit smoking, send it in to the publisher and the publisher would send your money back. The name of the book was “How to Stop Smoking”, by Herbert Breen. It is unfortunately is long since out of print.

Some of the things I remember about it was the price of the book then was approximately the cost of a carton of cigarettes, if you quit for a week, you broke even.

I did religiously practice some of the thoughts and disciplines in the book. Two of them I remember were;

1.For anyone who even bought that book, do not consider smoking as a habit, treat it as an addiction. On quitting, never ever have one, not one, puff from a cigarette, cigar or pipe, never ever one, not one.

2.Another one I remember is after quitting, tell everybody you quit and exactly when you quit, or how many day or weeks or hours it has been. Just tell them, just tell everybody.

My hope, my objective from writing this: at least one reader one will be inspired to quit smoking.


Sincerely,


Robert A. Kempe