‘Those days of puffing and smoking are finally catching up to us Boomers’

I wrote a poem not so long ago:

Once we were all a’smoking,
COPD we were all a’stoking!

Yes, sad but true. As teens we went to the movies or drive-ins where we gazed at the Marlboro man riding across the silver screen. If we were not smoking by then, we had lived or went to work in smoke-filled environments, where people were allowed to smoke indoors.

When we were little kids, our kitchen had a one-fire stove, while the lounge room was heated by a briquette heater, both of which needed cleaning on a morning basis by our mother. This added to our carbon-rich surroundings. People burnt piles of autumn leaves, no green waste bins then. This added to the smoke billowing from the chimneys of our houses. The bushland around us was chopped down and turned into giant bonfires. This created suburbia. We travelled in trains with smoking carriages and could smoke in restaurants and everywhere else.

Yes, COPD we were all a’stoking. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is now afflicting us as our Baby Boomer lungs gradually deteriorate, due to bronchoconstriction of our ageing airways. In our youth we accepted a carcinogenic world as normal. Now 17 per cent of people between the ages of 60 and 79 have COPD, far more than any younger age group.

Finally, the Marlboro man passed away from a smoking-related illness – as all the Malnoro men did. The old cowboys in those classic Western movies we were viewing, read scripts, which called for the actors to light up smokes. One by one, the old cowboys like John Wayne galloped away to acquire lung cancer, emphysema, and other such consequences of smoking. We got the message and eventually gave up smoking. Yah, gave up the gaspers! Those days, and our smoke- and carbon-filled world, are catching up with us. One inhaler or two? Not much the medicos can do. Early interventions include spirometry tests, inhalers, and nebulizers. The downhill spiral, like some of our parents, mainlining oxygen. We can look at our parents’ health conditions, like gazing at a mirror, and predict our future medical issues.

But we are rich in other ways, such as silver in our hair, as a current joke would say. We may have gold in our teeth, sugar in our blood, crystals in our kidneys, and natural gas in our nether regions. Still, poor us, we have ageing lungs.

If a Baby Boomer has not yet abandoned smoking, now is the time. There is nothing worse than a reformed smoker giving the world advice. Somehow, along life’s track here, we ended up smoking or passive smoking, from the polluted environment in which we dwelled.

Now Tobacco Free Kids is running a campaign to raise the smoking age to 21 years old, so kids don’t get hooked. Sound idea that, but I wonder if any nicotine addict ever does listen. To give up smoking is a change that has to come from within.