Let’s get the awful, no-good, disgusting part of this confession out of the way up top.
I love cigarettes.
If they weren’t so expensive, and if they weren’t literally cancer-inducing poison that made you smell like a mouldy ashtray, I would probably smoke a pack a day.
But in my defence, I only love cigarettes because I am brainwashed; a process that began at the tender age of 13, when my developing little pumpkin brain was still guided by a single, overriding instinct: to rebel.
So rebel I did, by ignoring all the best advice of my parents and elders and becoming a fully-fledged smoker before I had even hit the awful, embarrassing flourishes of puberty.
I smoked enthusiastically for 10 years or so, then spent much of the next 10 years trying to quit.
Today, I am fortunate to say I am no longer a smoker, but I know my nicotine addiction will follow me to my (hopefully not early) grave.
Let’s be clear: cigarettes are objectively terrible. There is not a single positive to being a smoker, and the negatives are too many to count.
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could ever consider it an enjoyable hobby (especially if you’ve never felt the pull of nicotine addiction for yourself, which some studies place on par with cocaine and heroin).
But then, cigarettes are quite literally brainwashing—a terrifying form of corporate mind control that alters the chemical balances of your brain and convinces you that slowly killing yourself is not only enjoyable, but a privilege worth thousands upon thousands of dollars annually.
It is one of modern capitalism’s greatest, most evil scams.
Luckily, we’ve been working to move beyond it for decades now, and we’re still making progress.
According to the federal government’s most recent Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey, about 10 per cent of Canadians were smokers in 2021 (on par with 2020, but down from 12 per cent in 2019). The prevalence of smoking in those aged 15 to 19 was about 3.3 per cent, down from five per cent in 2019.
According to the University of Waterloo, approximately half (!) of Canadians smoked in 1965, compared to just one in 10 in 2020.
As for electronic cigarettes, about five per cent of Canadians reported vaping in the past 30 days (which has mostly held steady since at least 2019). Of those, 12.7 per cent were aged 15 to 19, and 17.2 per cent were aged 20 to 24. Among both of those age groups, the prevalence of vaping increased slightly from 2020.
As someone with ample experience in both smoking and vaping, don’t kid yourself, kids: vaping is hardly any better for your lungs, and it still comes with significant long-term unknowns attached. The only really healthy bet is to go straight-edge with that fresh mountain air.
The latest front in the war against Canada’s cigarette makers is branding each individual cigarette—which seems like overkill, and something about it is oddly amusing.
Each cigarette you smoke will soon be marked with phrases like “poison in every puff,” and “cigarettes damage your organs.”
Cigarette packages in Canada have graphically illustrated the gruesome consequences of smoking since 2001 (I remember it well, as it was my first year as a smoker. A pack of darts cost me $7, if I could find someone old enough to buy them for me, and we were all furious when the price went up to $7.10; the price of a pack of cigarettes has more than doubled since then). If you’re still smoking in 2023, is the extra warning going to deter you? Probably not. But the idea is that young people who may be borrowing a cigarette for the first time will not be able to avoid the messaging, or that it may help encourage discussions about quitting among long-term smokers.
As a former smoker of nearly two decades, I will never begrudge someone their simple pleasure.
But if you’re the type of smoker to throw your butts on the ground, please, for the love of all that is sacred—stop.
I am far from innocent in this regard. In my early days as a teenaged smoker, I never thought twice about throwing my cigarette butts on the street or in the dirt, stamping them out and leaving them in my tread.
In the back half of my extended tenure, I at least had the courtesy to dispose of them properly (I’ll never forget an encounter in Whistler Village, in which a self-righteous man stopped to peer down from his high horse as I butted out and disposed of a cigarette into a trashcan on the Stroll. “Thank you,” he said, with a smug little smirk and an air of utmost superiority. You are so welcome, sir).
According to Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate, a plastic with poor biodegradability. Butts thrown on the ground pose serious threats to wildlife and the environment, often finding their way into storm sewers and the water system, where they can kill fish, injure freshwater invertebrates, harm birds and plant life, and remain toxic for very long periods.
There are currently no estimates for how many butts are discarded into the environment in Canada, but about half of U.S. smokers surveyed said they threw cigarette butts on the ground or in a storm drain in the past month. And in 2019, legal manufacturers reported sales of 24 billion cigarettes in Canada.
That’s just the toxic impacts. There’s also the small matter of the fire risk, which, as our summers grow longer, hotter and drier each year, is only getting worse.
Even if you think it’s out, it might not be—as evidenced by a video from North Vancouver late last month, which showed a worker disposing of a cigarette butt in a backyard hedge, only for it to erupt into flames nearly seven full hours later.
The only safe bet, for the forests and for the environment, is to not leave them behind.
So, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and burn one in my honour if you’ve got ‘em to spare.
But please do us all a favour and pick up your butts.
