ThinkingThoughts

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/state-has-epidemic-of-pregnant-smokers/20071023091809990001

This article and the associated “comments”  resonated with me intensely, because I live in West Virginia and I have seen this “epidemic” firsthand.

Of the 36 employees at my firm, 28 of them are women.  Of those women, five have been pregnant at some point during my tenure here.  Of those five, three of them smoke – and smoked throughout their pregnancies.

When asked why, they said, “I just can’t quit” and “It makes the baby smaller, so it’s easier to deliver.”

These are not stupid, backwoods, uneducated rednecks.  These are otherwise intelligent, responsible people.  Evidently somewhat selfish and misinformed, but otherwise not bad people.  It is hard for me to believe that they could make such a bad decision, but they did.

Walk down any West Virginia street, any day of the year, and you will see about two of every five people brandishing a lit cigarette.  It’s not just pregnant women, folks – smoking in general is epidemic in this state.  These are people who started smoking in middle school, if not even earlier, and who are very likely never going to kick the habit, not even for their unborn children.  You can teach them all you want, in middle school and high school, about the dangers of tobacco use – which some of the asshole commentators on the above article seem to think are bogus! – but you will never break them of a habit that is not only endorsed but shared by their friends, family members, and role models. 

It is sad and scary, because it is becoming worse, not better.  And those who will ultimately pay the price are the children, who will suffer from various health problems, and the taxpayers, who will inevitably pay for the medical care these children will need in the majority of cases.  And those same children will enter the same social environment that promoted smoking in their parents – and will probably take up the habit themselves at a young age.

It is all too easy for people to sit at home feeling comfortably intelligent, educated, cultured and superior, and sneer at the “stupid rednecks” who would do something like this.  That is behavior typical of the majority of those who like to think of themselves as being of the “upper classes”, but it isn’t solving any problems.  Meanwhile, the epidemic is growing to the point that smoking in movies and television shows – once, at the height of the anti-smoking frenzy, unthinkable – is once again common and unremarkable. 

So…those of you who are sneering at the “stupid rednecks” – please remember that epidemics spread.  Today, it is Martha Jean from Williamson, West Virginia, who is getting hooked at the ripe old age of ten.  But as smoking once again becomes not only non-vilified but “cool”, it may well, in the future, be your child or grandchild.  I hope to God it’s not mine, and instead of passing judgment and feeling safely “above all that”, I intend to do everything I can to make sure that the children in my daughter’s elementary school are learning why it’s not safe, and how they can avoid the temptation.

This should be a wake-up call, though sadly, it probably won’t be – because it’s West Virginia, and most people feel safe in condemning it as a state full of ignorant rednecks, though those passing such judgment have never been here and know only what they have heard or read.  So it will be easily dismissed and ignored, and by the time it’s this prevalent in other states, it will no longer be uncommon enough to draw comment.

Sad, but true.