HM Govt Warning - Smoking is bad for your health by Martin Edwards

Before purchasing this product, you are advised to read the latest guidance below, issued by the Surgeon General of the Dept of Ill-Health and Not-Very-Well-Being:

Of the four classical elements, water, earth, air, and fire, it is the first three that seed, nurture and sustain life. Fire stands alone, all powerful. It is both the destroyer and the creator, for without heat and light, there is no life.

For those who harness fire, they too are all powerful. Or at least, they like to think they are. And so the earliest humans, upon the discovery of this nefarious element, took control over the planet - and some would also say, its decline and inevitable destruction. Because fire is like that. It tempts you; it hypnotises you; it takes you in and takes you over. Fire is the ultimate power. It seeks out weakness and becomes an uncontrollable force that razes all and everything to the ground - so that life can begin once more. But well, it knows the inherent weakness of man - that thirst for supremacy and exploitation. 

Since time immemorial, fire has fascinated us. Our species has utilised it in rituals, in agriculture for clearing land, for cooking, generating warmth and light, for signalling, propulsion, the smelting and forging of iron, incineration of waste, cremating the dead, and most potently as a weapon of war.

Each time it is harnessed and manipulated, the energy of the universe is released. And so too is the by-product of fire – smoke, the intangible cloud that rises and swirls in ethereal strands from the coolest part of the scorching flame… the ever-flickering tip.

‘A visible suspension of uncombusted carbon and other particles in air, typically one emitted from a burning substance’. So says the dictionary definition. But smoke is more profound than mere words can describe. 

It is an unusual phenomenon, in that you can see it, you can smell it, you may even attempt to touch it, but you cannot feel it - even though you can surely feel its spiritus effect. Long before our basic understanding of science, it was this very intangibility that held the attention of the deeply ritualistic mind of man.. 

At its addictive best, its snaking sereneness will calm the besieged by conveying relaxing chemicals through the recipient’s bloodstream to dull the most jangled of neurotransmitters. At its raging worst, it will force your last breath on this earth in toxic suffocation. Once expired, the worthy may well raise upon smoke’s wispy, wafting wings to an angelic afterlife in heaven. The unforgiven are supposedly sucked into a spiralling downward draft, banished in eternal punishment to the soul-splitting smoky sulphide of hell. (For further information on this, please consult your nearest religious advisor).

On a greater scale, smoke blankets and smothers, sometimes thick and heavy, the result of thirsted forests and parched land burnt and reduced to ashes. It envelopes the horizon and blocks out the rays of the greatest fire and life-giving force of all - the one at the centre of our solar system - our glorious sun. 

Smoke can also be feathery and invisible, lifting forth choking carbon to the highest levels of the stratosphere, steadily insulating the earthly home from where that carbon had lain in its previous form for thousands of years. It is the undeniable umbrella of slow death for all that lies beneath it.

There’s an old saying; ‘where there’s smoke, there is fire’. But true too, where there is smoke, there is also the clawing hand of the Grim Reaper. Beguiling, creeping, unseen, undetected, unravelling and disturbing the enduring balance of the four original elements. 

Unchecked, it will overcome and overwhelm until the air is depleted of oxygen, all water is contaminated, and the earth is shrouded in a cloak of strangulated horror. With nothing left to incinerate, fire will be reduced to smouldering in its own dying embers.

So remember; with each cigarette lit from this packet, each day dawns a little greyer, the clouded sky sinks a little lower, each breath for all creatures becomes a little more gasping. Eventually, the dark will reign, the sun will fade, and so too, all life with it - including yours.