Souvenirs of a lifestyle choice

We may not see the likes of them again on screen — Humphrey Bogart, Jean Paul Belmond and James Dean striking stances in erstwhile romance of machismo — a lighted cigarette dagling from their lips. Our screen heroes have turned into either man-beasts that can grow claws or metrosexual randy-dandies reciting poetry to their leading ladies.

What’s amiss with this latest quirk of evolution is that it runs counter to Sir Charles Darwin’s theory on the survival of the fittest. Add Sir Charles Barkley as postcolonial evidence. Indeed, the more advanced both imperialists and terrorists become with the tools of their trade, the wimpier the rest of humanity seems to turn, so that the only release left available to some of us is to watch the brutal combat of extreme fighting on television.

Nowhere is this made more evident than in the way matters of health and wellness are pounded into our heads, whether we’re supine on the mat or struggling to keep erect. One offshoot is that us puffers keep getting pushed to the edge of the flat world.

Smokers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but quirky faith in political correctness.

I still recall how that incipient ogre first reared its head with an in-my-face attack in the UCLA campus in the early 1990s. As a tourist I had wandered around Westwood in LA and found myself entering the university grounds. After lunch taken solo at a students’ cafeteria, I proceeded outside, sat on a bench in the California sunshine, and lit up. No sooner had I done so when a lady (not so young, rather looking like an anal-obsessive grad stude having probs with a thesis) came up, poked a finger near my mouth, and intoned with nary a hint of postmodernism in her tone of voice: “That’ll kill you.”

I could only smile back and riposte cheerfully, in jujitsu fashion: “Even all this sunshine might.” She huffed away, and I puffed on.

Today I still keep four sample packs, empty but otherwise intact, of cigarette brands I’ve coursed through for half-a-century. These are: Chesterfield Kings unfiltered; Philip Morris browns unfiltered; Pall Mall King-size unfiltered; and Camel unfiltered. They are kept on display inside a glass case, along with assorted knives and other devices of potential mayhem. The quartet of cigarette packs serves as token tribute to companionship and addiction. (How to tell one from the other?)

Each of these brands saw early deaths, at least as far as local consumption went. At the Melbourne airport a decade ago, I still managed to purchase a couple of packs of Pall Mall, but they turned out to be duds; that is, they were very old, well past their shelf life. And from a coffee counter at Johannesburg airport three years ago, I spotted a single pack of Camel unfiltered. It was still okay, but then I resolved that the tobacco’s aroma and flavor that enhanced my cappuccino wasn’t too far away from the brand I had gotten accustomed to at the time, which was our local Lucky Strike — after I snipped off the filter.

That’s become customary. Might as well be the last of the big spenders and be real macho about it. Besides, taking a drag through a filter is exactly that: a drag. My personal theory is that it could take me closer and faster to emphysema.

Again, Lucky Strike (both the imported unfiltered and local filtered) was phased out from the Manila market a few years ago. I had to revert to Winston reds, and still snip off the filters before lighting up. A couple of months ago, a friend urged me to try the new flip-top Fortune manufactured by Dr. Lucio Tan, who finally lent the name of his original company to a cigarette brand.

I found it okay, with the filter snipped off. In fact, it was better than okay, less bland than Winston, and sold for much less. Presently I pick up a ream or carton for only P165 at Pioneer Supermarket. I figure that my monthly savings could well go into a fund for addressing any future oncologist.

As you may have divined by now, I have no intention to ever give up the habit. So watch it, aggressive ladies who poke fingers toward male mouths: I could bite off the first phalange of that index digit, the way I do cigarette filters.

This resolve has been strengthened whenever I hark back to old black-and-white photos showing Chinese premiers in their 70s and 80s still swimming in the Yangtze, with lit fags above water.

Then again, my devoted caregiver Dr. Serafin “Boy” Hilvano — who’ll soon be off to Indian Wells near Palm Springs to collect an award from the American Surgical Association — has confided to our smokers’ group of sexagenarian Bedans that if we did give it up at this late stage, it would take a decade to clean up our act (or our chest cavities, as I presume). The stress upon giving up a loved one could prove worse, at no cost benefit.

Speaking of which, on a recent foray to a Makati bar — one of only two I know where Mayor Jojo allows us smokers to carry on — I listened in on rather alarming news. This was at my fave haunt, Kipling’s cigar and single malt whisky bar (besides which is Martinis, at the same anti-regressive Mandarin Hotel; guess why Martinis is always packed). An informant in a single malt bar can only be credible, let alone very well informed.

In any case, he warned everyone that we could be paying so much more (what else is new?) for our Puff Daddy habits should the government proceed to “collude” with a Switzerland-based company that has offered to set up a system to provide “fool-proof” tax stamps on cigarettes and alcohol. The unsolicited proposal has already raised eyebrows, even among Department of Finance officials and members of Congress.

As the tale goes, it appears that the idea for the proposal arose during that Davos meeting of world leaders where our President was in attendance. DOF sources have reportedly hinted that “a ranking Philippine official” had assured the Swiss company that it would be awarded the project.

Thus has it come to pass: Sicpa Holding SA, the busybody proponent, submitted a plan for strip stamps to be affixed on each pack of cigarettes or cigars of local manufacture, to ascertain that the correct taxes have been paid. Government would have to spend an initial P2 billion for the undertaking that would involve a tracking and inventory system, and only hope to recoup the investment and net some gains eventually. The P10 billion project is supposed to be borne by tobacco and liquor manufacturers for a period of seven years.

OMG! So guess who’s gonna get hit by this additional excise exercise? LOL! Who else but us — the perennial philanthropists who keep paying ever-increasing “sin taxes” so that roads and bridges are built and children receive free public education.

Thankfully, the whistle was blown on the prospective deal soon after the DOF recommended it to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Finance Undersecretary Crispin Beltran was reportedly taken to task when he suggested a “Swiss challenge” system whereby the original proposal is presented to other companies. Under the BOT law, before any unsolicited proposal is accepted, it should be opened to other interested bidders. If another party comes up with a better bid, the original proponent will be allowed to match the offer. This is the so-called Swiss challenge. Serves that Swiss company right, right? Right.

Other questions have been raised, by those who smell another possible ZTE-type scandal in the offing. For one, the BIR committee endorsed the proposal despite noting that SICPA may not be able to sustain the financing, since its project equity is only P56 million as against the initial P2 billion investment cost. It took NEDA to remind the BIR about the BOT rule on a 75:25 debt-to-equity ratio to avoid over-leverage.   

The Philippine Tobacco Industry, the umbrella organization of local cigarette manufacturers, was never invited to participate in any discussions on the matter. “Confidentiality” was the brush-off word when PTI requested for an official copy of the SICPA proposal. As a result, Antique Rep. Exequiel Javier, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has filed a resolution calling for a probe.

As for us, the intended recipients of this sort of trickle-down economics — why, we can only howl in protest over the very idea of “sin taxes.” If they’re such sinful, unhealthy habits, why not ban them entirely? So we all see how we get into a US Prohibition-type scenario, where government doesn’t get any revenue from tobacco and liquor at all.

Why keep punishing faithful adherents by raising taxes, and using those taxes to promote wellness and heath? It’s like saying, all right, it’s your business to take shabu, but you can’t buy it without paying government a tax so we can keep our public schools free.

You want to raise more revenues? Raise the taxes on purchases of Louis Vuitton bags. Surely the fashionistas who can afford to sport such ritzy items, indistinguishable from the Greenhills-type fakes anyway, will only be too happy to pay more of a premium, since that’s what name brands are for. Tax Havaianas users for their foolishness in buying expensive tsinelas. Tax Willy Revillame double on his two yachts that spent Holy Week off Boracay’s White Beach. Tax Jaguar and Porsche owners triple!

Cigarettes and alcohol are enjoyed by a broad spectrum of lifestyle adherents who don’t believe getting a suntan leads directly to the Big C.

Allow us our lifestyle choices, and let’s all live and let live.