opinion

MacArthur: E-cigarette promising; don't vape on me

Years later, the scent still lingers.

Every time I open the closet containing my late folks' stuff, I am taken back to the house of smoke. It permeated every pore.

Cigarettes have long been part of the lives for those of a certain age. Ashtrays were omnipresent and there were seldom objections to lighting up as pleased. The just-concluded "Mad Men" TV series was exaggerated but not too far off the mark.

Airlines supposedly offered non-smoking sections at the rear of the cabin. What a joke! Did anyone really believe some invisible force stopped smoke from fully filling these big pressurized aluminum cans?

Dad smoked cigarettes until switching to pipes, which supposedly were less damaging if not at least more aromatic. I saved his last pouch of tobacco because the aroma reminds me of him. Good companion.

I'd buy pipes from the hardware store for Fathers' Day and used Green Stamps to get him a pipe caddy to set beside his chair.

I sometimes questioned feeding his passion for puffing. I feared the smoke he inhaled by choice, along with the nasty stuff sucked in during his career as a steelworker, would take him from me prematurely. But he made it to 90, although tethered constantly to oxygen at the end.

In contrast, my mother was a stealth smoker. The fact was confirmed only after I found cigarettes in her purse following her hospitalization for a stroke.

It shouldn't have come as any surprise. Now I'm convinced her best times were smokin', jokin' and playin' bingo with her Democratic cronies in the pipefitters' union hall and other smoke-filled rooms.

Our holiday trips to Kansas appeared to be small-scale smuggling operations. We trafficked cartons of smokes to my grandfather because they were much cheaper here.

Fortunately, I was inoculated to the siren call of cigarettes as a kid. I traveled in a pickup with dad and two colleagues to inspect a jobsite in Southern Colorado.

It was a long trip. They all were smoking and, by default, so was I. By the time we got there I was a deep shade of chartreuse and on the verge of paying tribute to the porcelain god.

A blue haze filled most newsrooms when I first started my newspaper career. The worse one was when I had to lean over an overflowing ashtray the size of a hubcap while my editor painfully eviscerated my stories.

I'm glad cigarettes increasingly are becoming less and less acceptable. I'm also pleased Fort Collins continues taking the lead in further limiting smoking in a series of steps through 2016. These restrictions also will include the electronic smoking devices, or vapers, which will be banned any place conventional cigarettes are.

The jury seems to still be out on e-cigarettes that emit vapor rather than smoke. But the American Vaping Association (didn't you just know there would be such a trade group) is dedicated to promoting the battery powered, smoke-free nicotine delivery systems as a healthier way to help kick the habit.

Meanwhile the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to issue broad new e-cig regulations. I am usually not a fan of uber-edicts coming down from the Feds, but in this case, I hope they persevere. I don't want anyone blowing smoke — or vapors — up my kilt.

Dan MacArthur is a Fort Collins writer who never smoked … cigarettes.