Yesterday I was with Drew's mom. We went to Starbucks, and as I was getting out of the car I saw a Parliament box on the ground. I bent down and flipped open the lid to see if there was anything inside. There wasn't. I picked it up and threw it away, pretending that my intentions were honorable all along.

This isn't a new thing. I've been having cigarette cravings for a few months. It's been years since I've smoked and I honestly thought I was over it. Especially now with all the running and exercise I've been doing. But lately I'll be running and I'll go past someone smoking a cigarette and think it actually smells awfully fucking delicious.

When Drew and I were in Philadelphia last month I saw a girl get into a car smoking a cigarette. She was probably twenty years old. I envied her for her youthful idiocy. It seems impossible that I actually used to smoke cigarettes in my car.

I'm a little uncomfortable with some of the anti-smoking proposals out there these days. I wouldn't vote for a huge increase on cigarettes taxes, for instance. It's a little too paternalistic for me to control behavior through taxation. I think that's creepy.

And I also thinks it's disgusting that there's basically no funding for lung cancer research in this country. According to the American Lung Association's 2006 data, lung cancer is the number one deadly cancer for both men and women (accounting for 29% of all cancer-related deaths). Yet the research funding still lags far behind that for breast cancer and prostate cancer. And if you think that people who smoke deserve what they get, then what about all the people (including my mom's best friend) who die of mesothelioma every year who never smoked one cigarette in their life?

While I was looking up those statistics, I saw that the ALA says that former smokers remain a high-risk group regardless of how long it's been since they've stopped smoking. God, I must have smoked for ten years. 16-26? Something like that. That's craziness. Shit I'm old.