five_alarm
01-13-2006, 07:13 AM
NATIONAL - I knew something was up when I couldn't see the cigarette burning under the sofa. It was last September, a little after 5 a.m. and I hadn't been awake for more than 10 minutes.
My first coffee of the day sat on the lamp table by the sofa, right next to the ashtray that had contained my first cigarette of the day. The lights were off, the living room illuminated by the flickering of the news channel, and I was on all fours, squinting into the gloom for the reassuring sight of a glowing red coal.
You know how these things happen - one second they're there, smouldering away between hauls that inject that dose of nicotine into your bloodstream; the next they're not, rolling out of the ashtray on their own, sometimes becoming the first in a sequence of unfortunate events that lead to a news story that begins "Careless smoking is being blamed for a fire that ..."
Source: canada.com (http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/montreal/story.html?id=5178ed86-5ab0-4812-860c-33100c635a75&k=96643)
Canadian Cancer Society (http://cancer.ca/ccs/internet/standard/0,3182,3172_15064_10177543_langId-en,00.html)
tobaccofacts.org (http://www.tobaccofacts.org/teacher/nnsw.html)
Canadian Council for Tobacco Control (http://www.ncth.ca/)
My first coffee of the day sat on the lamp table by the sofa, right next to the ashtray that had contained my first cigarette of the day. The lights were off, the living room illuminated by the flickering of the news channel, and I was on all fours, squinting into the gloom for the reassuring sight of a glowing red coal.
You know how these things happen - one second they're there, smouldering away between hauls that inject that dose of nicotine into your bloodstream; the next they're not, rolling out of the ashtray on their own, sometimes becoming the first in a sequence of unfortunate events that lead to a news story that begins "Careless smoking is being blamed for a fire that ..."
Source: canada.com (http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/montreal/story.html?id=5178ed86-5ab0-4812-860c-33100c635a75&k=96643)
Canadian Cancer Society (http://cancer.ca/ccs/internet/standard/0,3182,3172_15064_10177543_langId-en,00.html)
tobaccofacts.org (http://www.tobaccofacts.org/teacher/nnsw.html)
Canadian Council for Tobacco Control (http://www.ncth.ca/)