By Brian Fojtik @PositiveEnerG on Twitter
For the last decade, my family has participated in an old family Christmas game. The kids (and the adults eventually) have fun playing it. We all stand in a circle and hold a paper lunch bag that includes a prize. In the family setting, the prizes included various candies, maybe a free cheeseburger coupon from McDonald’s, a one-dollar bill or a five-dollar bill. I've modified the game for your Vapor Christmas enjoyment. Welcome to The Merry E-Cigarette Vaping Christmas Game, a fun, educational game for ADULT smokers and people who love them!
Here’s How it Works
One bag, with unknown prize, is held by each participant in the circle. Every time the word “right” is heard, the bags move once to the right. Every time the word “left” is heard, the bags move once to the left. It’s sort of like musical chairs. At the end, each wins the prize in his or her bag.
For the The Merry E-Cigarette Vaping Christmas Game, the leader can set up the game and read the following narrative:
For many years, the tobacco control world and public health community have encouraged people to live the right way. They believed that the right thing to do was to educate people and pursue government policies to avoid people being left to a life of disease and death attributable to smoking tobacco cigarettes. They believed people needed to be nudged (or hammered) into doing the right thing.
Over the years, the effort raised a lot of questions from both the right and the left side of the political spectrum. From the left, we heard that the right thing to do was to force people to do the right thing, so their health and wellness wasn’t left to chance (or their own ignorance). From the right, we heard that the left had left out an important part of the equation. They asked what right the left had to tell a free person what to do. The left and the right continued to fight about what was the right course of action. After all, left to their own devices, people might not do the right thing.
Today, more than fifty years later, the battle between the left and right continues and there are still 44 million Americans left smoking toxic tobacco cigarettes. And, if the Centers for Disease Control is right, more than 400,000 of those smokers will be left to face an unfortunate, premature death due to combustible tobacco. Right about this time, the E-Cigarette appeared on the scene.
It turns out that nicotine, like caffeine is addictive. But don’t worry. It’s alright. Nicotine is not the cause of the most serious disease and death from smoking. No, most disease and death is caused by the products of tobacco combustion being breathed repeatedly into the left and right lungs of a smoker for many years that causes almost all the death and disease. So, proponents of e-cigarettes, including a few responsible public health leaders, determined that the right thing to do was to ensure these products are available and affordable so that smokers would be left with better choices than using deadly tobacco cigarettes to get the nicotine they enjoy.
Almost 70% of the 44 million smokers want to do the right thing for their health and quit and most had tried unsuccessfully in the past. Since nicotine gum and nicotine patches aren’t the right answer for 93% of people who try them, smokers were excited to try these e-cigarettes and determine if tobacco cigarettes and the death they cause might be left in their past. Many have already begun using e-cigarettes and vapor products and left tobacco cigarettes behind. Many have tried a variety of e-cigarette brands, types, styles and flavors in an effort to find the right one for them.
This didn’t seem right to some of the zealots within the tobacco control, nanny-state movement of the extreme left. The left didn’t believe people should be left to make up their own minds. After all, if left to their own devices, people might continue to use addictive nicotine! If people were left to decide for themselves, people would be left to make the wrong choices. We’d be left with a situation where it’s possible some people, many of whom still smoke and have smoked for decades, might be left vulnerable to a return to smoking cigarettes.
In their minds, this just wasn’t right. It wasn’t right that anyone should smoke tobacco cigarettes. They should stop. Now! It wasn’t right that they might use nicotine even though it wasn’t particularly harmful and is comparable to the affects of caffeine. They asked themselves, “what right did these filthy, disgusting vermin who smoked cigarettes have to choose something that the left hadn’t approved for them?” In the minds of the left, those despicable addicts had no rights. They had no right to make choices and no right to leave combustible tobacco unless it was exactly on the left’s terms. The decided that that they would rather the grimy smokers be left to die, rather than given the right to choose better alternatives consistent with what might be right for them.
In my mind, that just isn’t right.
Enjoy your prize! Happy Vaping and Merry Christmas!!
Copyright © Brian Fojtik
The views and opinions reflected in the above piece are the PERSONAL views of the author and in no way are connected to any association with any companies, organizations or associations.