Mateo Reyna

November 8, 2015
English 1010 3B
Response to Florence Kings Essay.
It used to be you couldnt walk down the street without seeing a cigarette, but times have
changed. Youd be surprised to find a cigarette anywhere on the street now a days. They have
little designated containers for them now or they must leave their remnants back at their own
place where there arent affecting anyone, but themselves. Why has smoking changed from being
cool and popular trend to a demoralizing, and dirty thing that is shunned upon?
Florence King has answered this question from the perspective of an avid smoker in her
Essay Id Rather Smoke than Kiss. She says that that the reason why smoking is such a bad
thing in modern times is because people are just finding ways to hate her, misanthropes she
calls them. The Health Nazis, democratic puritans (also misanthropes) who wish to see the
America squeaky-clean, are more concerned with their own healthy world then to bat an eye at
her own. Immigrants, she says, are being transformed into a soldier against smokers. She
remarks that smokist dont hate the sin they hate the sinner,. Florence King concludes that
people, specifically democratic puritans, will further distance themselves from smokers leaving
them all in the dark. Although, I can see where Florence King is heading and admire her sheer
bruteness she does not present a good case for smokers because she brings up fallible
information that only helps her.
Florence King makes strong points that I have been affected by and have observed in
other peoples lives. My mother smokes and I at one time wanted to because I thought it made
me cool. My favorite cartoon characters (not the best cartoon characters) smoked. People will

view things based on a majority rather than by their own reasoning and understanding of the
subject or person. The bigger crowd will win over the smaller one. It is the law of nature. She
says, Life should be savored not lengthened, in response to her smoking habit. I agree with
this, life should be enjoyed and not spent thinking over trivial things. A person, as long as they
are completely informed, should be able to do anything they want to their own body.
King tries to make us see why people are out to get her by describing all the ways she has
been treated because of her smoking, like with the column papers, or her friend that wanted King
to stop smoking for a couple of hours because she does not allow smoking at her house. Yes,
smokers do get treated with some disdain because of the dirty images they are being represented
as in the media. I understand this, but she uses her smoking title to try to win us over to her side,
but her monster personality hinders her arguments. This monster is her thirst-to-kill attitude
that hits you like a steam train. Instead of inditing smokers with an unwarranted hatred, King
thinks, they should just leave her and all other smokers alone. However, this approach seems
completely one-sided like the people who she claims are only bettering themselves.
In describing her childhood experience with smoking -- how it was a common thing in
her household, and how her mother smoked and she came out a healthy -- she is trying to
convince us that smoking is not as bad as people say it is. This again is misinformation and
arrogant because she is assuming that all other people will follow in her shadow which is not the
case. There are some people who will not be as lucky as she was, and if they take inspiration
from King can end up in a major graver state than king boasts she was never in. It is these selfcentered insights about her own experience being the same as anyone elses experience is what
crumbles her argument.

Besides ignorance. Florence King is conflicted with her points of interest. In her essay
she brings up the Health Policy Center spokesperson, Gio Gori, remark about the expanding life
expectancy of quitter smokers, We will have to pay for those who survive. Here King is
against this proclamation claiming it immoral, keeping the smokers hurts economically, but then
she bashes the people trying to get rid of them. She seems to think that everyone is out to get her
rather than to look more in depth in the subject and ask why.
King states that old-people who once smoked will be hated by a younger generation.
While there will be some dissonance, people arent just going to hate older people because they
smoke. Why would we all be so selfish to assume that an old smoker is a bad person without
even getting to know them. Yes, ignorance and prejudice, the spawn of ignorance, will always
play hand in hand on how some people will view others; however, not all people will simply
discard older smokers because they were born in a time when smoking was popular, and it is
much harder for them to quit smoking now after all these years. They didnt have the knowledge
we have today, and certainly not the anti-smoking manifesto followed by the people of America.
In contrast from Kings views. I believe that smokers do have a bad rap, but it is because
times change. Back in the 1500s it was the new craze sweeping Europe and the Americas and,
ironically, was marketing as a cancer healing agent. Sammuel Green, a doctor and researcher on
the effects of tobacco, was the first to present the case that tobacco causes tumors by rubbing the
tar on the backs of mice. In todays time it does not make sense to smoke given all the horrors we
know it will bring. King says all because she was not affected by those horrors that they are not
relevant. This is not the case, many people die from diseases that stem back to the use of
cigarettes and tobacco. Even people who do not smoke are affected by smokers by second-hand
smoke! It is unfair to simplify your case by leaving out the complexities of cigarette usage.

Smoking should be eradicated, not because smokers are bad people and should be stopped, as
King would suggest, but because if smoking is allowed to remain popular and people are left
uninformed it will influence other people to partake.
Smokers should be advocating for anti-smoking more than anyone else because they
know first hand the effects of smoking and this will help future generations linger far from the
grasp of smoking. King would rather sit back and watch the world burn behind a veil of smoke.
This is selfish. Instead of being against the world why not change? It is any persons right to
partake in things that they wish even if some one else does not agree with it. I do not like alcohol
and would never delve into that realm of popular customs mandated for me at the age of 21;
however, there is nothing I can do about stopping it because that would mean denying that right
to choice. That is tyranny. What makes my ideals better than yours? The reason why cigarettes
are heating up (no pun intended) around the country is because of the popularity of the subject. If
more people were for cigarettes than cigarettes would be ok for them. This is not the case today
because the majority says no and with good reason. Past generations that smoked when it was
cool should not be shunned, they will simply pass being a milestone in social development. We
must respect those people because they will show us change. Today a person takes for grandite
that amount of information readily available to them because they have not experienced what it
was like to go the library for books, or get your news from the newspaper. In order for change to
remain concrete there must be a marker to show what changed; old-smokers are that marker.
In conclusion. King brings up some valid points, but dont pack the punch she desired
because she assumes that people will follow her smoking path as she did, and makes it seem that
everyone hates smokers because, like smoking at one point, it is cool. That is simply not the
case; I dont smoke because I want to live a healthy, substance (of any kind) free life, not

because I hate smokers or the sinner. I have respect for those who have been affected by
smoking and are trying to quit; however, we must not forget that the times are changing.
Smoking has to go, and the title, smoker, along with it.