Kicking Cancer's Butt

Feeling shaky but good after a hard, productive week. Hubs vibes are anxious about what will the future look like in a month, or six, or a year. Thank you, Lord, for this day and the gifts you have given us.

'Tis the season for piles of work. The calendar boxes are full of projects. One thing at a time, and it works that way too, and the piles do shrink. More pile up behind but at least there's progress.

Mine is an invisibly important role, if you do well, I should add, for nothing becomes more visible than leaving people in the lurch. More changes at work - a new supervisor, for example, and two co-worker spots open. I'm puttying the gaps.

In California, Prop 29 is on the ballot. It is a .96 tax levied on packs of cigarettes with the proceeds going entirely to cancer research and finding a cure. I pray every day this passes.

We're a split house on this measure, with the hubs an avid smoker and me in recovery now 34 years clean.  We have debated long and hard about what it means to be addicted, as if years indicate anything other than a longstanding habit. This is a passionate topic we tiptoe around until something like Prop 29 bursts on the scene.

The fact is, growing up, everyone we know smoked, and everyone quit one by one. Even the old guard entrenched in the habit for 50+ years quit. Not everyone died of cancer, but most of them did, at least in my world.

I do not believe sin taxes are unfair in the least, and if additional levies make them too expensive for some, all the better. I do not believe we have a constitutional right to smoke. To go out of our way to cause ourselves cancer. And then expect the rest of us to partially foot the medical bill for their care through higher premiums. And then turn around and sue the tobacco industry for their poor choices.

That's hard to wrap my head around. If someone aggressively drives in the fast lane and wears no seatbelt, they are upping their risk. There's no guarantee they will die, but we recognize that as reckless behavior. We even have laws requiring seat belts because it kills more people who do not wear them. But when someone smokes around others, it's like they are being reckless with me in the car, and the kids, and their friends. Is their right to smoke more important than my right to protect my health, even with irrefutable statistical evidence that smoking causes cancer?

I endorse Prop 29 all the way around, and not just because of my job. If Prop 29 passes, it will generate up to $800 million a year in CA for cancer research. No more endless hunts for new and promising researchers; no more poorly equipped labs with low paid assistants. It feels something like a cosmic rebalance of the bad to good thing.

There's not much more worthwhile than finding a cure. Real National Academy of Sciences stuff. I want to be around to buy a celebratory tshirt and wear it to rallies, emblazened with the words: During My Lifetime We Kicked Cancer's Butt.