I Have a Dream - By: McVape

Upon the Dr. Martin Luther King Day celebration fast approaching, countless of us will take a moment to consider the man, and especially his fabled "I have a dream" speech. MLK spent his waking hours fighting for civil justice for those suffering social injustice, and yet many of this recent generation get offended when anyone compares a cause to his or cites the man for inspiration. Might this be a little absurd? Who would really think if Dr. Martin Luther King was alive today he would be offended by someone for claiming "I drew inspiration from your struggles, in an effort to get the to recognize the rights of the ?"

It is impossible to know for sure, but anyone who has spent any time trying to understand what the man stood for would probably agree that he'd appreciate that as part of his legacy. Because he didn't just fight against social in justice, he showed the way toward a new strategy to the fight- which lives on today. And often people who attribute their goal or commitment to a movement or cause will be criticized along the lines of "how can you compare YOUR struggle to the REAL struggle of slaves or people with civil rights being ignored?". I think when we do that we also dishonor what Dr. ML King stood for.

Yet again similar to a large portion of America, I was raised in a church going family. In attending church services two to three times a week over the course of my childhood, I heard a lot of sermons about "slavery". Some were about slavery in the strictly literal sense, as in the Israelite nation being in captivity in Egypt. Some others were more indirectly related to slavery, as in servitude to the flesh and its desires.

Once as a young man I asked about this, how could someone be a slave to our sinful desires. The leader explained to me that slavery existed in the world not only in a �real� sense - as in one human owning another human - but also in a conceptual sense, as in something that was in complete control of you and your decision-making process. Slaves could do basically nothing, or make any decisions without the permission of their master. People in servitude to desires, can do nothing or make any decisions without considering this master they have.

I know from experience how this can happen. Because I, like many others in the world like me, am an addict. It's an addiction to a drug that is deadly, and also costs the USA over $90 Billion yearly in higher medical costs. Even though nicotine will kill me I am too weak to stop. For many years I blamed the government (the ashtrays in the back of the class in my public school didn't exactly send the message that it was a bad thing to do did it?), but since then have tried to take responsibility or at least forgive myself for not being as well-informed as I had hoped.

However the rationale works out, the fact remains I am (actually WAS, as in past tense, but more on that later) in servitude to this little white nicotine delivery system. When I go to sleep, I make sure there is a lighter and cigarettes available so I can have that first nicotine fix in the morning. When I travel, I make sure that I have plenty of cigarettes to spare and have to take care of where and how I pack the lighters as to not offend the uniformed security agents at the airport. If I'm going on a road trip, I need to be sure and have enough cigarettes for the whole trip because who knows for sure if there will be a store that sells them.

Well there may be, but any smoker has probably ran out of cancer sticks based on the hope there would be a family store at the next exit off the freeway only to find they don't carry the brand or just ran out. Believe me, if you want to see slavery in full living color, watch what happens to a smoker you care about and know well when they run out of cigarettes and it doesn't look hopeful for them to get more in the next few hours or so. Also a good insight into the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I see you're nodding, so you understand.

What about when you eat? There was a time in the not too recent past that it meant you had to call and see if the restaurant had a smoking section or not. Almost anywhere you go now you have to think ahead and prepare for what ever restrictions you encounter. That by definition is discrimination. Now don't get me wrong - I'm not comparing people who smoke with the slaves of history as if they are the same- not at all. But to highlight the similarities is commonly acceptable in a comparing and contrasting endeavor.

I can tell you from personal experience that nicotine addicts often do feel like second class citizens (ask one, I dare you) - like when they have to leave the comfort of the heated indoors and a cozy fire to go outside in the driving snow to get their fix. And they do notice the stares and|or reactions from non-smokers when they realize they are in the company of smokers. Sometimes its the smell though right?

Let me, at this juncture reiterate here with all possible emphasis that my purpose is not to paint these people as innocent victims. There's as many reasons and rationalizations of their addiction as there are people. Rather I would like to point out... now these people have an alternative - and it is causing more contention, controversy, division, hate and ignorant bigotry than ever the original tobacco cigarettes ever did.

This is our struggle, all nicotine addicted people's in the world. We can now choose to get our nicotine in a more pure form - not to shoot into our veins like some illicit drug, but vaporized into steam like a humidifier. In a simple statement it emulates the smoking process in its entirety without delivering the toxic byproducts of combustion. You would think that this innovative alternative would be welcomed by anyone serving the public's interest- but you'd be wrong. In fact, I can draw similarities again to Dr. Martin Luther King's struggle and speech, simply by pointing out the fallacious and logically flawed arguments they put to the public for consumption.

Many world governments have come out in a strong-armed close-minded position of "well, we haven't studied the long-term effects of this new contraption, so it must be outlawed." So what they are saying is, we need more time to study this, to make sure it is safe for our population - then we can approve it. Actually to a reasonable, rational human being this makes perfect sense. It's what we want our government to do. But where this argument falls down is when people ask - so what about tobacco cigarettes? You studied them, found out that they caused cancer, and killed people slowly, mercilessly and cruelly - and they're approved. (In their defense, taxes are pretty tempting aren't they?) So are you saying that if our governments around the world find out that these electronic cigarettes are bad for our health, and cost our economy billions of dollars in medical costs, they'd get the governments stamp of approval? And if you outlaw them and tell us we need to go back to tobacco cigarettes, what possible rationalization could you sell to the masses that will compel them to re-acquaint themselves with impending death at the expense of a few more tax dollars?

This is just one example. Listing them all would be outside the scope of this article, but another one that is used a lot is: we have to protect our kids from these electronic cigarettes, because that might lead them to smoke real ones. For one thing, that kind of proves that electronic cigarettes are BETTER for your health than tobacco cigarettes, and secondly - even a 5 minute investigation by searching Google and visiting electronic cigarette sites would show that each and every vendor|retailer|wholesaler of these products require you to be legal smoking age in your state or country to purchase...with proof.

I could list more but they only get sillier, more circular reasoning centric, and bordering on ludicrous. I wonder how many people saw it was silly to think that blacks should sit at the back of the bus or use different water fountains because they must be a threat to public health? I mean who knows what diseases they carried and could pass on to the lily white population of the time. They used a segregation argument to prop up their position when there was ALREADY segregation at the time in the south. As much as I'd like to expand on this, it deserves an article of its own in the future.

At the end of the day, this article is one of sincere gratitude. To Dr. Martin Luther King for blazing a trail in correcting and redressing social injustice, and to the organizations that fight with little funds and resources but ample passion to keep our smokeless nicotine alternatives available. Thank you so much, you have the gratitude of millions and will end up saving or extending millions of lives. A more noble pursuit you'll never find. May God bless you.

About the Author

Mick is an avid blogger, entrepreneur, and Vaperific vaper (electronic cigarette enthusiast). To see what all the buzz about electronic cigarettes visit his site here or to get software and ebooks on ANY subject visit his mall here.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/McVape/212644

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