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GIBBS: I’m holding the smoking gun . . . 

I’m just old enough to remember when people came in twos. There were two types of people; the cool, suave and sophisticated smoker, and the pale, bland and totally unattractive non-smoker. Back then tobacco companies ruled the world, and your entire life was diced up into whether or not you lit-up. Restaurants, cinemas, office space and even planes were divided into sections. In 1973 the first non-smoking sections were introduced on airlines, and the trend never stopped. My first glimpse of the anti-tobacco machine came as a teenager watching a debate on CNN. The battle cry back then was to ban smoking on domestic flights within the US. It would also be the first and last time I would see someone really trying to defend the rights of smokers. . . .

I laughed when I heard Attorney General John Jeremie talking about the powerful “tobacco complex,” working behind the scenes to stop the legislations they proposed. You see, every time I walk to the corner store to buy a pack of smokes I pay close to 60 per cent of the purchase price in taxes to the Government... for nothing. There is no health plan for smokers . . .

I am fully aware of the vocal backlash I, as a smoker, will get from my non-smoking Trinbagonians. However, I feel I must pick up the smoking gun and go on record, because my “pusher” seems to be hiding in the dark. The disdain of smokers seems to now live in Mt D’Or. It is just inconceivable to me, whose crime it is to buy your product, that was still legal up to press time, that I can be treated like a bastard child that not even the father/pusher seems to be willing to take care of.

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