"Everything gives you cancer." –Joe Jackson, 1982.

   At the outset, I state: I smoke cigars. I smoked my first stogie when I was a delegate to Hoosier Boys State, held during the summer of 1972 at ISU in Terre Haute. I think I had a couple of blueberry tiparillos. I smoked cigarettes from second semester senior year of high school (Salem 100s) through second semester Sophomore year at DePauw (Vantage menthols). I quit smoking cigarettes because they were contraindicated with other drugs. (I never understood how Hunter S. Thompson could stand smoking cigarettes.) There were other things I might have smoked between 1975 and 1988, but Professor Bill Levin has written and posted extensively about the lack of harm from incurred when one smokes other substances. Those substances also can be consumed in brownies. During that time, I smoked the occasional cigar as well as the very occasional cigarette. Cigarettes smokers who were friends occasionally expressed irritation over my seeming resistance of to addiction. In April, 1987 (near end of first semester of first year of law school), I learned I had landed a job as a law clerk. That evening I celebrated my new employment. I walked downtown from the dorm where I lived first year at I.U.P.U.I. I dined on steak someplace (not St. Elmo’s as I hadn’t the money for that much of an extravagance; only enough money for simple extravagance) and stopped at Hardwicke’s for a cigar. I had no idea what I was buying and cannot tell you what I bought, but I smoked it as I insouciantly strolled through the spring evening back to1226 West Michigan Street.

   When I sat for the bar exam in 1988, I resumed smoking cigarettes. All of the people with whom I studied and, more crucially, hung out before bar review, smoked cigs. I was hooked on cigarettes once more (Carlton menthol 100s from which I would rip the filters; there were no really light menthols on the market, and the Carltons with the filters were too light). After a couple of years I wanted to quit, but that is not easy. I tried cold turkey—that had worked in 1975, but it did not work in 1990. I tried hypnotism—worked for my fear of flying (I still have the self-hypnosis tape), but no more than 24 hours after a session I would fire up a cig.

   In 1994 I was diagnosed with MS. I asked my first neuro, who was not completely clueless about MS—ignorant of its causes, had gleaned knowledge about treatment from Big Pharma sales reps, but knew the profits an MS patient meant—whether I should stop smoking cigarettes. He said everyone should stop smoking, but there was nothing specific to MS for which I should quit. After I fired him—for reasons previously described in this blog—I asked my second neuro the same question. He said nicotine, particularly from cigarettes, causes inflammation to a person’s system and therefore is bad for a person with MS. Over the course of a couple of months, I pushed back to later in the day the time at which I would light up the first time. When I got to 5 p.m., I even was able to skip a day here and there. I did not quit completely until my quasi/pseudo annual sinus infection in September, 1995. The sinus infection rendered even the thought of inhalation of a Carlton sickening. After four days, the nicotine was flushed from my system and the desire to do something with my hands had vanished.

   In 1996 I smoked my first premium cigar. The brand was one of which I had not head—Cohiba. I knew I just had encountered a habit that would last the rest of my (I know; anti-smokers would interject here "now-shortened") life.

   Someone asked me years back how I could smoke cigars, from which one receives no "buzz" and to which one has no chemical addiction. I told him the taste is acquired.

   This Saturday’s Show: guests Indianapolis blogger and media personality Abdul-Hakim Shabazz ( a cigar smoker) and Lindsay Grace, spokesperson of Smoke Free Indy will join Paul Ogden and I to discuss Indy’s new smoking ban. 11 a.m. Saturday we stream "live."