I hope to tell this story in a way that will finally make most people understand that many unwittingly participate in a dangerous paradigm that needs to end! My story takes place just days after the release of the Surgeon General’s report on tobacco, where she admits that one cigarette could cause a fatal heart attack of the smoker or someone else nearby. While she points out that most people associate smoking deaths with lung cancer, which may take years to strike, the first puff on a single cigarette, releasing more than 7,000 chemicals, can immediately block arteries and cause a heart attack. Just as the secondhand smoke from that one cigarette can kill a bystander by blocking arteries, it can also trigger a dangerous life threatening asthma attack. The most dangerous trigger exposure for an asthmatic is during sleep, because the most effective remedy for asthmatics is to get away from the trigger as quickly as possible!

A few weeks ago, after dodging another serious bout of chronic bronchitis by taking a round of antibiotics, my lungs began to clear, the wheezing finally stopped, the ear infection subsided, the shortness of breath lessened as I prepared for a “healing” one week getaway to the Marriott Beach Club on Kauai, Hawaii. I always choose the Marriott because they were one of the first hotel chains to go smokefree. They also offer “Green Rooms” for people with respiratory disease. A green room is supplied with fragrance free soaps and shampoos, bedding washed in fragrance free detergents and the room is not cleaned with scented cleaning products or sprayed with toxic substances like Febreze.

I slept 15 hours on the day of my arrival in Hawaii. The five hour flight from California had taken its own toll on my still tender and vulnerable respiratory system. On day two, the warm sunshine and moist clean tropical air had truly begun to accelerate the healing process. When a local asked me why I chose to visit Kauai, I told him I came to heal my lungs. He became very animated as he told of the many tourists he had seen coming to Kauai with portable oxygen tanks and leaving the island healed, breathing on their own. Even though it rained on day three, I took a long walk through the Marriott compound between downpours, pulling the fresh clean tropical air deep inside my lungs.

By the end of day three I actually felt exhilarated! As I posted on my Facebook status, I enjoyed a dinner of Macadamia Nut-Crusted Ono with Mango-Lime Butter, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Vegetables in an open air restaurant with a backdrop of lightning, thunder, torrential rain and high winds. By bedtime I actually felt rejuvenated. I fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.

Somewhere around 5:00 AM, I was awakened by the faint sound of the telephone ringing in the adjoining room. I was able to go back to sleep soon after that. In a dream I saw a person standing beside my bed smoking a cigarette, then flicking ashes onto my sheets. Then I was awakened by the inability to breathe, my burning lungs gasping for air. The dream had been my mind’s way of warning me to get away from the trigger. My “Green Room” was now filled with cigarette smoke. I quickly rolled out of bed in desperation. Kneeling in front of the side table I reached for the phone and dialed O. I was unable to speak at first. My mind was unable to comprehend how this could have happened in a totally smokefree hotel in a “Green Room!” When the front desk answered, I simply blurted out: “my room is filled with cigarette smoke!” I made my way into the hallway, wheezing, my lungs and ears burning. The security guard appeared immediately. I was sweating a cold sweat, my body shaking as I kept gasping for air, my albuterol inhaler in hand. The guard offered to call an ambulance. I said no, there was nothing they could do that I couldn’t do with my inhaler, I just needed to get away from the smoke. He walked me to the elevator, then took me outside for fresh air.

Then I heard those familiar words that are always the first words one hears after being assaulted by the actions of a nicotine addict. “You have to understand that its raining and they don’t want to go out in the rain to smoke!” The same man who moments before, offered to send me to the hospital because of the seriousness of what he saw happening to me, was now offering a defense of those who were clearly responsible for assaulting me. My response was swift and very direct. “Look, I don’t want to go to the hospital, I want the people who did this to me to go to jail!” “This is a smokefree facility and nowhere does it say except when it’s raining!”

In the hours that followed I was offered one subtle, unwitting insult after another. “We can’t watch them 24 hours a day, (giggle).” After realizing the smoke had entered through the door to the adjoining room, they offered to move me to a smaller room in the hotel complex, with no kitchenette. For me it felt like every resolution was another personal sacrifice while the perpetrators had absolutely no consequence for their criminal action! I refused! Every person I dealt with had that air of disbelief, like it wasn’t really as bad as I was making it out to be. I brought a note to the front desk, signed by my doctor a little more than a month before, outlining the seriousness of my health situation. Then I began to make demands!  

I wanted to know who the people in the next room were. Throughout the entire ordeal it was very apparent to me that protecting the perpetrators was seen by all as more important than protecting me, my health or my life! They finally told me the offenders had already checked out. The phone call I heard was their wake-up call. I demanded that they ask the next guests in the adjoining room whether they are smokers before giving them the room. It is absolutely absurd that I have to request this in a totally smokefree hotel.

It was impossible for me to go back into my room for quite a while. Finally I was able to get in and open the door to the balcony to let fresh air into the room. When the air in the room was cleared, I closed the door and turned on the air-conditioner. I could hear doors opening next door. Then my “Green” room filled with the scent of so called “air-freshener.” I can assume it was something like Febrese. This is what unconscious people do to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke in “smokefree rooms!” I called the front desk again to request they bring an industrial strength ionizer to my room to clear the artificial toxic scents from my “Green” room. More than five hours later I returned to my room. It finally smelled fresh and free of scents or smoke.

I swear I am not making this next incident up. I swear! I was in my room less than five minutes when I heard a knock on the door. I opened the door and there before me stood an exterminator, tank of insecticide and wand in hand! He smiled, totally unaware that my room was a “Green” room, then asked if he could spray my room! I screamed NO! As he walked away puzzled, I told him he had better not spray the room next door either!

It is now fifteen hours after the smoke attack. I have spent the entire day in bed recovering. This is the part the nicotine enablers never see or never want to see. Once again I have shortness of breath. My head has ached the entire day. When I tried to take a walk, I had to sit down in the lobby before I even got out of the hotel, because my energy has been totally depleted again.  

Before I say what I need to say next, I need to make this point: I am neither suicidal nor am I a violent person. But I do understand why people become violent in self-defense and I understand why people kill themselves! I know other people who suffer as I do. Most of them very seldom leave their homes for fear of the next assault or because they are already too sick to fight anymore. The challenge of hopelessness can often become even more debilitating than physical challenges.  What many people do not understand about this health predicament is that many of us are unable to take the drugs that are available to the general public to mask the symptoms, allowing denial that the problem is created by unregulated commerce that is toxic and life threatening. On people like myself, most of the drugs have similar or worse effects than the triggers. Our bodies are simply unable to process toxins, and most allopathic medicines are extremely toxic.

So in this environment of anti-bullying, “it gets better” crusades, I want to offer another aspect. It’s time to confront the tobacco bullies who are responsible for more premature deaths in the world than any other cause. Every enabler of nicotine addiction is a smoker who doesn’t want to admit they harm other people, an ex-smoker who doesn’t want to admit they have harmed people in the past, a relative or friend of a smoker who is a codependent enabler, or an investor in the tobacco industry who doesn’t want to give up the incredible profit made by selling death and illness!

The latest Surgeon General’s report on tobacco spells it out very clearly. But information has never stopped the tobacco genocide before. More than half a century of tobacco propaganda always trumps facts. Even close friends and family of people like me often find it difficult to completely hide their disbelief that it’s really as bad as I say it is! That’s exactly why people in my situation give up and eventually become prisoners in their own homes. The obsessive unregulated use of tobacco and other toxic respiratory triggers makes the victims look obsessive because their only effective recourse is to speak up to stop the obsessive number of assaults! The insensitive general attitude that supports death and illness for profit is: “if it’s not happening to me, if I don’t feel and experience it personally, it doesn’t exist!”  

Now it’s finally time for real action. It’s time for smokers to pay some kind of consequences for criminal assault when they harm other people, especially when they do it wantonly and the action is capable of ending the victim’s life. It is no different than the nice guy who runs down an innocent child while driving drunk. It is no different than the teen driver who plows through pedestrians in a crosswalk while texting and driving. Like the enablers of nicotine addicts, the enablers of these other lethally irresponsible people will most likely place the victim second in line for compassion, after the perpetrator. Nicotine does not have to be delivered through smoke! Smoking is a personal conscious choice of the addict. Addiction is never and should never be an excuse for criminally assaulting other people!