Virgie Bell's View: Just a Smokin'!

A bill has passed by NM legislature to make medical marijuana legal in our state and I say good for them. Bill Richardson says he will sign it into law. They also have passed a law to ban smoking statewide in all public places. So far, the traffic around my house is going strong. We breathe more fumes from exhaust pipes than we ever could as smokers. Oh well, sin tax it is and sin tax it will always be. My Dad smoked four or five packs a day and he would have been better off if he could have been a little worse off with heart or lungs. It would have been easier than liver failure or the long slow death of other diseases.


Shepard Smith got to me the other evening when he was announcing this big anti-smokers program. I wonder how many DWIs are on the highway. I guarantee you won’t have many smokers. We will stop by some quick stop and buy a case and just stay home and watch the ballgame or work in the yard. A few years ago I was in the courthouse here, a non-smoking place, and decided to go outside and smoke. Well, it turns out the restroom is just right there close. One of the clerks got mixed up where I was going and nearly passed out telling me I couldn't smoke in there. Before I could stop myself I told her I wouldn’t take a smoker’s break around them anyway.


I’ve drawn the death watch with my loved ones many times, mostly because I was good at it. I stayed with my Mom the last ten days in a nursing home. As you know by now, I am a person that gets into what makes the world go round. At every hour on the hour the smokers would line up at the nurses station to get a cigarette and then set in a row and enjoy that thing that was going to kill them, but then they outlived all but a few of their most hateful family members. Here they sat doing themselves in peacefully while the non smokers just sat and stared and sat and stared and sat and stared, if you get my meaning. I asked the nurse on duty which group was the happiest in the rest home. The smoker by a landslide. Sometimes the smallest thing can make a difference, especially if all you have left to look forward to is simply every hour on the hour.

I quit one time for three months and I detested every moment of it. I think Lisa may be mistaking our reservations about going with her somewhere. In her new car she has no ashtray, which is her choice of course, but it ends chumming around. Let people know how you feel and that is fine. Now De'on stays home more. And I will too. I gave up one ride that I enjoyed to get a coke with or so on. I asked Roy one time if I could smoke in his house and he said, “Hell, yes,” like it was a dumb question. Now that is a non-smoker I can be around.

As for new car smells, I found out on Gunz Up that mohair is no longer used on the interior of an automobile, and it was the mohair we smelled. I know one thing, you will never have to worry about me being drunk while driving, and you will never have to worry that I won't SUPPORT THE TROOPS!