A rchive Date
[ 25-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Mandel_Michele/2005/06/12/1083332-sun.html
Smoking Family Feud
By MICHELE MANDEL, TORONTO SUN
Sun, June 12, 2005
WALDEMAR, Ont. - No food, no water, no medication.
Richard Kaczmarczyk is smoking mad and he can't take it anymore. And so the desperate husband has launched a hunger strike and called the media to try and convince his wife to finally give up her cigarettes.
"I've reached my wit's end," explains Kaczmarczyk, a 45-year-old truck driver. "I have to do something extreme to get my point across. Sometimes tough measures have to be taken."
Here in this pretty house in the country is the microcosm of the smoking debate - a husband and wife at each other's throats over what one sees as personal choice and the other views as a lethal addiction with second-hand dangers.
Kaczmarczyk sat on his sofa yesterday, wan and pale from not eating or drinking since Thursday night. He's a big man - 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds - who jokes that he can afford to lose the weight from this starvation ploy. More serious is that he is also refusing to take his medication for manic depression. "I just want my wife to get the point that this is serious and I'll do what I have to to get her over this."
His argument is measured, calm and passionate. He's worried about both his wife's health and that of their young son, Alex, the little boy napping in the other room who he worries may one day have to grow up without a mother.
It's been a contentious issue between them for years, he says, but the smoking gun was learning this week that one of their neighbours, an ex-smoker, is undergoing lung tests.
"Some people sign up and fight for freedom. I'm fighting for my wife's health and my son's future," Kaczmarczyk insists. "Some people may think it's silly but in these circumstances I don't have very much to work with. I have to resort to these means."
So he is determined to stop eating until she agrees to quit or he is carted away to a hospital. But while it may be borne of good intentions, this stop-smoking method doesn't seem destined for success.
Quietly smouldering in the opposite corner is Cathy, his 38-year-old wife of almost three years who has been smoking for more than half her life. If her husband thought this was the way to get her to butt out, he can watch those hopes evaporate in, well, a cloud of smoke.
'IT'S ABUSIVE'
"I'm not one for tough love," she says angrily. "I can quit smoking. I have quit smoking before. But he's on strike and he's not going to eat until I quit? That's coercion; it's abusive, it's cruel."
It's not that she doesn't want to give up tobacco, she explains. "Do I want to smoke, do I want to die? You've got to be out of your mind."
There is not a smoker out there who does not understand the dangers by now: More than 45,000 Canadians will die because of tobacco use. At least 1,000 of them will be non-smokers.
And every puffer knows only too well that no refuge remains. Bars, restaurants, workplaces - they are all smoke-free. Their last safe haven was their home, and now at least one spouse has declared this den of smoking off-limits as well.
Kaczmarczyk breaks one of his wife's cigarettes between his fingers. "This thing has 4,000 chemicals in it," he says with distaste. "This has to be dealt with. It only takes one cancer cell to get out of control."
This campaign may cost him his health, his job and even his marriage, but Kaczmarczyk insists it's the chance he must take. "She has to understand that someone loves her enough to put themselves through all of this. I'm trying to get her attention."
He has her attention, alright. Threats and hunger strikes, though, just aren't going to help her battle a long-standing addiction to nicotine. "This is not going to solve anything - guaranteed," she snaps. "What he's doing is making it worse."
But ironically, as much as she rebels at her husband's draconian efforts, she would actually welcome an even tougher approach by Big Brother. "The government should make it illegal - it kills," she says, before storming outside to light up. "But no, we can't do that to big business and we still want all those taxes, don't we?"
Alone on the sofa, Kaczmarczyk vows to continue this ill-fated protest, even as his marriage seems bound for the ash tray. "It has control over her," he says patiently, "and I'm going to do whatever I can to fight it."
At which time, we excuse ourselves and exit the tense standoff. If love is a battlefield, the fog of this war is cigarette smoke.
You can call Michele Mandel at (416) 947-2231 or e-mail at michele.mandel@tor.sunpub.com
Copyright © 2005, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved
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