If you are, and if you are a smoker, you´re in for the high jump and it´s probably better not to go to Munich for this year´s big event. Bavaria has become a non-smoking state where smoking is banned in all public houses, restaurants and even in the above mentioned beer tents.
Being German and having lived in my old Heimat for quite a while I know what this is coming to eventually: Smoking, once considered cool and hip (until not long ago) will be the new society´s scapegoat. Meaning you will be an outsider if you smoke. An outcast. A declassified, extruded piece of human flesh whose only crime is to have a cigarette.
Take my mum for example: In the 70s she used to smoke like a chimney. Smoking was cool, groovy, everyone was seen everywhere with a cigarette. It was almost obligatory and considered weird to actually not having a Glimmstengel between your lips. Then my mum became pregnant with me (thank you) and gave it up. Just like that. Which is not a bad thing. What is bad though is that she turned from heavy chainsmoker to devoted smoker-hater which basically means she has zero tolerance for smokers. And I mean ZERO. Null, Nada, Niente, Niets, Ingenting! Even if someone is waiting at the pedestrian traffic light enjoying a fag under the blue sky she will shake her hands vigorously, trying to push the smoke away and pretending to suffocate from it, accompanying the whole scenario by loud, fake coughing noises.
I used to smoke when I was a teenager (don´t pretend you are shocked, you knew it, mum!) but I have never really been a heavy smoker. I could go without fags for months and I usually just smoked when I drank alcohol. They call it "social smoker" I just started to smoke more regularily last winter and yes, I do enjoy my cigarette(s) on weekends or even during the week when I feel like it.
Even during my smoke-free years I supported smokers. Why? Because - let´s be honest - at the end of the day it´s not really about smoking. It´s not really about your health or about pollution - it is about FREEDOM and how it is being taken away from us, little by little, bit by bit. It is about your freedom to have a cigarette - whenever you want, wherever you want, how many you want.
"But I want to have my freedom to enjoy fresh air when I want and not let it be tainted by smokers." I hear you crying.
Well, you don´t have to put up with it. Most places are smoke-free anyway. And if you happen to stand next to a smoker at the traffic light, under the blue sky, step aside for fuck´s sake. It´s easy. You would do it if someone sat opposite of you, caughing. And you wouldn´t complain about them bloody caughers, would you!
How about banning alcohol for a change? Or sweets? Smoking kills? Well, I pledge for labelling sugar-containing products Eating sugar causes tooth decay. And by law anything that contains even a tiny percentage of alcohol should be marked with Alcohol destroys brain cells.
"Yeah but that´s not the same." You complain.
It IS exactly the same, you just don´t see it. It is about choice. Your choice to have a cigarette/sweet/alcohol and not having someone decide it for you. You believe the decision was taken by the Volk? That might be true, but the mind of the Volk is of course manipulated.
Decide for yourself.
And wake up.
And have a fag :p
