Life and Soul

Ecuador -Part 3

So I find myself on yet another plane journey, this time thankfully of my own choice not a flight out to work but one to relax. First I have 17 hours on one of the most trying airlines there is, Continental. Overfed air-conditioning, gross pre-packaged, pre cooked food attempts & over happy, over sized, non-helpful hostesses.

Finally after 17 hours flying we arrive in Quito the capital of Ecuador, South America.

First let me tell you of our change of planes in Houston, Texas.

We had a few hours wait before the flight to Quito boarded so in true transfer style we headed straight for the bar, time for a nice long cool beer & a cigarette.

We find the bar & order two long beers, after 10 straight hours of trying to forget my nicotine addiction I reach for my rolling tobacco & skins. I’m rolled & ready for my nicotine hit.

“Excuse me, do you have a light” I ask the barman.
“There’s no smoking anywhere in the airport” he says in his happy Texan accent. “What! Not anywhere” I feel myself snarling.
“No you have to go outside the airport, back through security”.

Well nothing is too difficult to a man suffering from nicotine withdrawal.

It does grate on my ass that one of the major countries who run the nicotine drug pushing business now wont let their addicts suppress there screaming addiction, even at Heathrow you will find a nasty glass box four meters square containing a bank of extractor fans & ashtrays; oh & those nasty smoker people. This is possibly not the time to go into the issue of legal drugs, although I cannot hold back my frustration on this subject.

Anglo-American companies creating & pushing a highly addictive & toxic product. Over 500 chemicals are added on average to enhance the effectiveness of various qualities the drug. The users are left craving for more at the end of each cigarette an effect designed into the characteristics of the cigarette, the smoker themselves are being more & more ostracised, they are becoming among the outcasts of humanity. Huddling round in small groups, outside in all weather getting there fix.

Our governments make half-hearted gestures & push for change, but they still think the solution is in scare tactics; big anti messages on packets & so to come nasty pictures of diseased body parts. When they come to see the problem as the cigarettes themselves & decide to allow smoking because of the revenue raised or ban its sale without regard for the revenue.

In Britain & America we are slowly trying to stand up against the tobacco giants, although this task is not so easy, in fact especially hard, when in Britain, the government reaps an £8billion bumper payoff each and every year.
The governments around the world are enjoying large tax deposits because of the smoker, there is a half hearted movement to discourage people to smoke.

All this serve’s to alienate the smoker do is make them feel even worse about themselves and their habit, once more the consumer suffers in the name of profit.

Still we have tobacco sponsorship of sports & events, TV & billboard advertising round the world all pushing the sale of nicotine. We have fairly tight controls in Britain which gives the government the excused it needs to tax at over 800%, as you venture outside the UK you see a different picture, cigarette & alcohol advertising is everywhere. More noticeable is the blatant push in the poorer so called “Developing” countries. The cost of a packet is rock bottom; alcohol is similar, when people are board the drink & smoke, this is our new way.
Nowadays you can equal the ads you see promoting smoking with the number of no smoking signs stuck almost everywhere you go in public, what to do?

We seem content to make millions, billions of pounds/dollars through endorsing, taxing tobacco. Highly addictive, we even enhance that effect so the spread of the drug is quick and easy, far & wide, the hit not quite enough to satisfy the need, the urge, left wanting, needing another one.

A drop of pure nicotine the size of a pinhead, if dropped on your skin would kill you instantly, if you were to eat a packet of cigarettes, you would die. All this with no noticeable enjoyable effect, just the relief that such a powerful narcotic can give to its addict.

The contradiction comes so, in the same breath we would condemn & outlaw the use of less harmful, less addictive drugs take marijuana, naturally dried and smoked, found in various varieties all over the world.
No noticeable addiction apart from the joy of a relaxing connection between man & nature. You could probably eat a pound of weed; you would giggle for hours the fall into a deep sleep. No side effects, not toxic.
Nicotine pushed by the governments of the world, addicting the masses in the name of money & greed. The second suppressed & propagandised by the same governments as devils weed.

Why?

Marijuana relaxes you, takes you away from the pressure of every day grind that is life today. Once out, you take time to realise; time to understand more about life & your place within. In short you start to wake from your brainwashing and remember you have a life.

This state of mind is worrying for the authorities, for a start they don’t understand it & they think that caring about nature, its spirit & our environment is a waste of valuable time, time which could be better spent working & immersing oneself in our consumer system. Work, spend, work, spend, don’t think, work spend, money, money, money.

One that smokes marijuana tends not to entertain certain jobs or endorse certain products, and then starts to form opinions in all manner of topics. Money becomes far less important & is not seem as the sole motivation for effort.