Smoke em if you gottem

After returning to Israel for only one week, I have reeducated myself to the great love foreigners, or more importantly non-Americans, have for the art of smoking. In the United States, as you know, you can’t smoke anywhere. New city, state-wide, and eventually national laws have outlawed smoking in most public places. What’s the new ordinance now? You can smoke in your basement with the lights out from 12:45-3:30 am and only if your neighbor doesn’t complain and narc you out to law enforcement.

I applaud anti-smoking measures; second hand smoke has been proven to kill, and reeking of smoke has been proven to kill my chances of scoring. I distinctly remember accompanying a friend to the hospital in France only to see the attending doctor light up a tasty Lucky right in the middle of the emergency room. This was only 5 years ago, and I think even French doctors received the memo on the nasty side effects of smoking. However, my short time in Israel has conjured up post traumatic images of smoggy, seedy bars where every Jacques, Pierre, or now Aviv and Shmuel, ask, “Do you have a light?” I’m convinced fetuses smoke in Israel; they come out of the womb with a pack of Misty Slims needing matches. The problem has become so important that the Knesset (Israeli parliament) recently outlawed smoking in public places, but just like every other law in this country, enforcement is lacking. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s, the U.S. legislature aggressively went after the tobacco companies and their ridiculous powerful lobbies by brain-washing an entire generation, me being one of them, to the health risks of smoking. Growing up, I can remember aunts, uncles, cousins, even my mother for many years smoked, and then slowly but surely they all quit for health, financial, or common sense reasons. I wonder when will Israelis realize this? If an Iranian nuke doesn’t finish us off, the good old two packs a day habit will.