Day 967, Vaping and Other Problems
Six teens have died from vaping; and that’s causing great alarm.
Just nicotine in water vapor: what could be the harm?
They’ve added flavors, making it more pleasant to get hooked.
So, could inhaling flavors help assure your goose is cooked?
Or could it be the oils they’ve added? Droplets in the lungs
Might lead to inflammation; for some, funeral bells are rung.
If they don’t die, the “vapers” will get hooked on nicotine.
Then, moving on to cigarettes would seem almost routine.
Four hundred eighty thousand deaths per year from cigarettes:
That is the problem hooking kids on nicotine begets.
Six deaths, then half a million, the tobacco industry
Knows damn well what they’re doing; hooking kids is treachery.
And then, of course, we’ve forty thousand deaths a year from guns,
From suicides, mass shootings, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons.
Republicans, paid by the NRA, obstruct reforms.
And Donald Trump says lots of things, then basically conforms.
Since opioids and global warming take more lives each year
Than those six due to vaping, larger problems are quite clear.
We must attack them all, of course, and yet prioritize,
For all of these affect our health, as science clarifies.
What should we do with cigarettes? Well, tax them a lot more
And put that money in health care; (how Norway funds that war.)
The Constitution says that we may regulate our arms
We might need to eliminate assault-style firearms.
And global warming? It’s quite clear. Let’s get off coal and oil.
For, if we don’t, the seas will rise and hurricanes will roil.
And opioids? What can we do to manage chronic pain
Without fear of addiction, which may dominate the brain?
All of these problems have solutions; science shows the way
And not the lies of Donald Trump that we hear every day.
We must gird up our loins together; there is work to do.
We know that Trump won’t pay these bills but they are coming due.