Passion Power

In April of 1994 on the front page of the New York Times there’s an infamous picture of 9 tobacco executives standing in court declaring under oath that Cigarettes Aren’t Addictive. In November of 2017, after successfully delaying for 11 years, the tobacco companies began a court-ordered advertisement campaign admitting the variety of ways they manipulated the public, including that they designed cigarettes to be more addictive and lied about it. Experts found that Big Tobacco companies genetically engineered their tobacco crops to contain two times the amount of nicotine and adjusted their cigarette design so that the nicotine delivered to smokers increased by 14.5 percent. The result of these “innovations” in cigarette design is devastating. The surgeon general found that “today’s cigarette smokers — both men and women — have a much higher risk for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than smokers in 1964, despite smoking fewer cigarettes. Even though the...

I had no words to describe my obsession back then. I was 12 years old and I didn't know what was happening. I would phone my friend across the street and abruptly ask her without apology, "how many did you get?" I wasn't even that fond of her but her mother chain smoked cigarettes and didn’t keep track of them. That's how we smoked. Often there were a couple burning in the ashtray at the same time. We got butts off the ground, but mostly we liked them fresh out of the pack. I felt so sick after we smoked. I would stagger across the street, dizzy, barely making my way to the couch and flopping in front of the TV until the nausea and spinning wore off. It was normal to feel awful. I felt like I had the flu every day. I’m not sure what came first, the tobacco or the addict; the addict or the tobacco. I was a preteen and tobacco had grabbed a hold of me and said "come on kid, you're one of us now." I couldn't turn it around no matter how hard I tr...