Chronic smoker grateful for support of Alternative Health Community

ATLANTA- Local resident Hank Womack has been smoking for the past 29 years. At first, he was suffocated by a judgmental community of “health experts” and anti-health family members who constantly tried to shove their own views on air quality and lung function down his throat. “They could see how much I got a kick out of smoking, but still they wanted to take it away from me. Probably because they are scared and don’t really understand cigarettes or lung function,” Hank confided in me. “I mean, at first I tried to quit. But it was mighty hard to impossible. If quitting is that hard, then continuing has to be good for me… This is who I am- Hank the Smoker.”

 

Hank continued to explain that he grew up in a family that was brainwashed by Western medicine, and were completely closed minded to alternative views on smoking. His family, in the name of health, would subject him to odious lectures on cigarette toxicity, even going so far as to suggest he end friendships with other habitual smokers. So when Hank was about 32 years old, he cut family ties and found an alternative health community that recognized inhaling tar in your lungs as a legitimate form of breathing. “They welcomed me with open arms.. made me feel comfortable,” Hank wheezed.

This small but dedicated alternative health community reanalyzed and reinterpreted decades of research on smoking, and a panel of chronic smokers concluded that the findings of these studies were being inappropriately applied to smokers. One of their major conclusions is that most studies were done on the harmful effects of smoking Salem cigarettes in night clubs, whereas most smokers now enjoy Marlboros in parks with their families. “This is a radically different context than the context of these landmark studies. Therefore, we reject the general consensus of the medical community that cigarettes are harmful for health,” they issued in an official statement.

Hank added his own logic, “I feel so good when I smoke.. how can anything that makes me feel this good not be good for me?” He paused for a brief fit of coughing, which ended with him hacking blood into a napkin. “Nothing would be more anti-health than taking these away from me,” he finally rasped. This is in line with his alternative health community’s tag line “Healthy is What Makes You Happy.”

Hank plans to dedicate the rest of life freeing other smokers from the dogma of the mainstream medical community.