Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

The new outsiders

Posted on January 7, 2010January 7, 2010 by Staff

The change in this state’s attitude toward tobacco has been an interesting transition to witness. Twenty-five years ago, you were some kind of puritan if you didn’t light up after a swell meal.

I smoked my last cigarette sometime in the first week of January 2003, when we shifted to an outside-only rule at the house. One cool morning, the air just tasted so much better, and I was done.

My consumption had dwindled a good bit and I’d quit a few times for a lot of reasons – even once out of anger when the telephone rang and I caught myself reaching for a cigarette before I reached for the phone.

You start to notice things when you quit. Not just the usual things, like flavors and less windedness, but also the herd-like instincts among people with a shared addiction.

This is not meant to be derisive to smokers (you know, some of my best friends . . .), and there is nothing wrong with the social ritual of stepping out for a chat and a smoke, except for what it does – sooner or later – to the human body.

I started up as a social smoker, realizing that the short breaks at the restaurant I worked at were more meaningful and congenial among those taking a smoke break.

That was back when you could light up just about anywhere and anytime. Now that pool of places is drying up, and this state, naturally, is one of the last to sign on to the end of the era. Drive almost anywhere else and you’ll see billboards, funded by tobacco trust money, noting some powerful statistic of death and disease. We don’t seem to have as many here. I don’t wonder why.

Tobacco, the grand commodity, is still revered here, even as its end products are reviled. Here, the two tides clash mightily. And last year with the passage of the Go Smoke Outdoors Act of 2009, the anti side prevailed. (Unless, of course, you happen to be a member of a country club; but what else is new.)

Perhaps you’ve noticed that it is cold outside, and, maybe, in the mad dash from auto to the door you’ve caught glimpses of the new outsiders, the huddled groups of humanity driven from bistros, bars and even the swankiest joints onto the sidewalks and patios.

The times have indeed changed. Stay warm everybody.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme