You, Me, and a Smelly Cigar

There I was: arm-in-arm with my wife and making my way across a busy intersection in the center of Rome. Suddenly out of nowhere -- almost as if someone grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and yanked my head back-- I was overcome by one the most nauseating smells I've ever come across: cigar smoke. I don't know why -- maybe it's because I don't smoke or maybe because I don't smoke I have a heightened sense of smell - but whatever the reason, I feel like I can smell a cigar a block a way. I slowed my gait and let cigar-man pass me by -- lingering curls of smoke hanging in the air as he proceeded to get lost in the ensuing crowds of the Eternal City.

If someone wants to put what is basically a burning tube in their mouth and suck on it all day that's their choice. But as a non-smoker I really don't want to put up with it. The bigger question is, can't the cigar smoker tell that the smell of a cigar isn't too much different from - heck I don't know -- the bare ass of a pit bull (for lack of a better example)?

Regardless of whether or not you smoke cigars, you may or may not know that (according to www.thescooponsmoking.com), cigar smoking can cause cancer of the mouth, throat, lung and esophagus - pretty much in the same way that cigarettes do. In fact, smoking three or four cigars daily can increase an individual's risk of oral (mouth) cancers to more than eight times the risk of a nonsmoker and increase the smoker's chance of getting esophageal cancer to four times that of a nonsmoker.

Geez that's enough damage to make me quit cold turkey. But I guess a cigar smoker doesn't see it that way.