The Rant, No. 1

Nicotine Gum

For millions of Americans, nicotine is the one addiction they will never be able to completely kick. Some of the addicted millions smoke 50 cigarettes a day; others haven’t smoked in decades. But we’re all addicted, and will be until that last tobacco-free breath is taken, save for the few lucky ones who will have the pleasure of dying while exhaling a smooth, refreshing plume of cancer-causing goodness.

But many nicotine-addicted Americans have kicked the habit, at least in the eyes of the outside world. These individuals might not actively ingest nicotine, but, somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds, they still crave that indefinable rush. Of these strong, brave Americans, many have done this by supplanting their tobacco fixation with a few weeks or months of reliance on stop-smoking aids, such as the patch, the gum or the heroin. OK, maybe the last one doesn’t work so well.

For those of us who have used nicotine patches or nicotine gum to wean ourselves off sweet, sweet tobacco, one question continues to burrow into the rational areas of our minds:

If the surgeon general and the healthcare industry and our parents and friends and significant others and strangers who hurl angry looks at us when we’re smoking 25 feet away in the rain all want us to quit, then why the fuck are these stop-smoking aids so expensive?

A box of 100 pieces of candy-coated, 4-milligram (the hard stuff) Nicorette costs around $50. If you’re a heavy smoker (25 or more smokes a day), Nicorette recommends chewing a piece every one to two hours. So let’s say, on average, you’re chewing 12 pieces a day for the first month, before you drop the dosage down. That means you’ll be buying your second box of 100 delicious nicotine-infused pieces of gum eight days later, your third eight days after that, your fourth eight days after that. If you do the math, that’s $250 for the first month (OK, OK, 32 days, but whatever).

But you’re not done, you pathetic son of a bitch. In between cravings, I hope you have time for a second job, because you rely on this goddamn gum and this goddamn gum is goddamn expensive, and you have two more months of chew-chew-chewing before you’ve completely weaned yourself off nicotine. Take a swim, bitch.

If you follow the Nicorette instructions — which you spineless pussies probably will — you’ll be chewing for two more months, and you’re in for another $300, at least. That means it costs you at least $550 to quit smoking, given you actually have the willpower not to lift rut to mouth after six beers.

To state the obvious: If this depressing, fucked-up country really gave a shit about those of us helplessly and forever addicted to this state-sponsored drug, they’d be giving stop-smoking aids to every inhaling scumbag on the street. Hipsters too lame for their own good would be inundated with nicotine gum every time they lit up in front of too-hip coffee shops. Hapless noontime drunks would get a free mini-pack of Nicorette with their third white Russian of the morning. Denis Leary, Colin Farrell, Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke and John Wayne's corpse would be locked in igloos made of the new cinnamon flavor.

Let’s come together and demand stop-smoking aids drop to the reasonable, commonsensical price of free. Chew on this, you fucking government cocksuckers.