A Washington Post photo caption notes that “Libby Alexander, left, gives daughter Amanda money for food, sodas and cigarettes.” (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)
In the first paragraph of the Washington Post‘s harrowing account (7/23/16) of an opioid addict in recovery, reporter Eli Saslow writes:
It had now been 12 days since the last time Amanda Wendler used a drug of any kind, her longest stretch in years.
Yet the story goes on to mention 11 times that, in her strenuous efforts to stay sober, Amanda is regularly taking another kind of drug:
Amanda lit a cigarette and sat in a plastic chair wedged between the cat food and the recycling bins in the garage, the only place where she was allowed to smoke….
She had no job, no high school diploma, no car and no money beyond what her mother gave her for Mountain Dew and cigarettes….
One minute — she could make it one minute. She watched a video on her cellphone. She sorted her nail polish and lit another cigarette….
Nineteen hours now until her appointment. She lit a cigarette and sat down in the garage….
Amanda stomped out her cigarette and headed inside….
Amanda walked out to the garage to light a cigarette and Libby followed….
“How’s Amanda doing?” friends and relatives would ask, at every graduation, wedding and baby shower, and what was Libby supposed to tell them?… That she was giving Amanda an allowance for cigarettes and cleaning up her moldy cereal bowls?…
Amanda checked in at the main desk and then waited outside the front door, smoking a cigarette until a nurse came out to get her….
She would be outside in a few minutes smoking a cigarette, and she could catch a ride to Southwest Detroit and be high within an hour….
She lit a cigarette. She took a deep breath and wiggled her toes and squeezed her arms and rolled her neck and decided she felt . . . fine….
She dropped her cigarette and crawled into the back seat of the car.
It’s not mere pedantry to note that cigarettes are, obviously, a “drug of any kind.” They’re actually a drug that kills far more people in the US than opioid overdoses—480,000 per year, according to the CDC, vs. 28,647 for opioid ODs.
And it’s not just because more people smoke cigarettes: With approximately 2.3 million people addicted to opioid painkillers and to heroin, 28,647 ODs produces an annual death rate of 1.2 percent—the same death rate you get from dividing 480,000 smoking-related deaths among 40 million smokers.
Opioid addiction is certainly a serious problem. But in describing its heartbreaks, it’s irresponsible to present smoking, by contrast, as a mere bad habit—when that habit is responsible for 16 times as many of this country’s funerals every year.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
The drug war’s separate peace with tobacco
The other drug use not noted was that of her “smartphone.” Compared to cigarettes, her physical health is not likely to be unduly affected by such use. What this techno-opioid has done and will do to the mental and social health of the individual and society, as a whole, is largely ignored or, as is now frequently done, embraced and celebrated, by users, as a sign of some new-age community.
If you think things are bad now, wait until the TPP and TTIP are passed and real unemployment climbs to Great Depression levels and stays there. Get a carton of smokes, a case of Mountain Dew and start up the Pokemon! What could go wrong?
Nicotine and alcohol are the single most addictive substances currently available for human consumption, because they are both physically and psychologically addictive and the psychological addiction can cause a relapse twenty years after quitting either.
Nicotine has some limited mental health benefits, which is why addicts are not usually scolded for smoking, and it serves as a semieffective substitute for the drug of choice. For all its well-known long-term health detriments, short term health is not as badly affected. Nicotine is also MUCH harder to quit than other drugs. Its withdrawal, however, is not as health-impairing as opiates often are.
Jim Naureckas is right to point out the WP’s mischaracterization. But cigarette smokers in virtually all contexts are not called “addicts”, nor is their commitment to sobriety unconvincing. Many recovering addicts use medical cannabis, which is not addictive. Perhaps Jim Naureckas objects to calling them “sober”. But what of people on alprazolam or clonazepam, or other benzodiazapines? Those drugs are sometimes used to curb withdrawal. People on them are not “sober,” but under a doctor’s care are doing right for themselves. What about prozac or gabapentin or buspirone or abilify? None of their induced states are particularly intoxicated, but no one would argue they aren’t mind altering drugs. Are people recovering from addictions who use them not “sober” enough for Jim Naureckas?
mountain dew is a drug too
Misses one big point. Opioids and alcohol kill FAST. Opioid overdoses kill people in their 20s. Heavy drinkers often die in their 40s.
Tobacco kills SLOWLY. Heavy smokers lose about 5 years from what expected lifespan.
Actually, the age group dying from opioids at the highest rate is between 45-54. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6339a1.htm
That’s what I found repulsive and hypocritical in theme of the film Rachel Getting Married. Anne Hathaway’s character in the movie is struggling with addiction. She is lauded in her abstinence from alcohol and illegal drugs. The fact that she chain smokes cigarettes goes completely unnoticed as, or part of, a drug addiction.
In the repulsive and hypocritical theme of the film Rachel Getting Married Anne Hathaway’s character is lauded when she is abstinent from alcohol and illegal drugs. That she chain-smokes cigarettes goes unobserved by the producers as, or part of, a drug addiction. AnarchaCannabis says some solidly scientific things about the gamut of “drugs.” I take issue however with the benignity AC bestows on cigarettes. As a smoker for 41 years who quit in September I have first hand knowledge of the idea that there is none so zealous as the recently converted. There is no good reason to smoke cigarettes. And a whole variety never to start. Cost among the first. Cigarettes in Chicago cost something on the order of $12 a pack. If you’re going to spend that much money on something to smoke you might just as well smoke crack.
@potshot Congratulations on kicking the habit! Those who don’t smoke have no idea how difficult it really is to do so. I quit, after 16 years of nonstop, two-pack-a-day smoking, on 17 May 1981. At that time, it was still legal to smoke everywhere, including movies, restaurants, airplanes, and, worst of all, at my job. The most that I ever paid for a pack was 50 cents–in a bar, in a hotel, in NYC. The least I paid was nothing–the Army provided free packs of cigarettes in our daily field rations. The Army was always thinking of the troops.
Good luck and keep at it.
And, by the way, sugary beverages act as a drug too. Our sugar/HFCS addiction probably kills even more than tobacco.
So what is the answer? Do we start to ban those substances as well, or do we come to terms with the fact that adults choose to do unhealthy things, and just take care of each other when the inevitable consequences arise?
After looking at the statistics related to those people who smoke, it is unfathomable to me why some one would still engage in smoking cigarrets. I believe that it was Albert Einstein that once asserted the following: there are two constants, the universe and human stupidity. The first one, I am not sure if: But the second one, I am certain.
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