Cigarettes are very expensive in Australia. A pack of 30 cigarettes costs from $34 and above. Smokers are outraged, but the government has said: Go on, people are ugly, smokers are shameless. They smoke, and then run to doctors with their syphilis and emphysema, treat them at the expense of the state. So take care of your tobacco pain in advance. And we’re going to raise, don’t even doubt. And the tobacco magnates pretend they are not at all.



For understanding: for $ 34 you can buy foods of all tastes, meat, butter, cheese, milk, vegetables-fruit, yogurt-kefir and more on the cake money will remain. Buying another pack of cigarettes and remembering Zoy, I feel like a family budget destroyer and a universal evil. But I smoke.



Smoking cigarettes is not acceptable, but of course it happens. A man approaches you, first stretches a dollar and asks you to sell a cigarette. Sometimes, a person approaches and polently asks, but without a dollar. I have no principle of never giving a cigarette or giving only for money: I act according to the mood. Most often the mood is not to give: I smoke less to save and smoke less. To refuse to give-sell a cigarette, the reaction is always calm: no, no. But once I had a completely different story.



I go and smoke. I will meet two gentlemen, a Negroid race. I ask for a cigarette, or two. They seem very young, and I thought they were minors. Of course, I refuse and go on. I scream in the street, I hear the scream, I know what they call me. I turned around and one of the above-mentioned gentlemen ran to me.



Sorry if I scared you, but please give me a cigarette. The gentleman says.

No sir, I will not. I think you are a minor! I answer him.

No, I am an adult! I am a student from the USA. I can show you my identity card.

Are you adult? Then find a job and make money on cigarettes, sir! I say, I turn and leave.

And then I hear a naturally hysterical scream: “You’re racist, mom! It is racist! It is racist!”



I wanted to go back and give him a cigarette. Such a widespread racist gesture: let smoke, and more. But greed defeated racism and I didn’t smoke. Probably I am a racist. Those are things.