A Gift Plus Bonus Coupons

I have heard there are still many who argue that the linkage between cigarettes and lung disease is more coincidental rather than causal. I guess everyone has a right to their opinions but the evidence is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore or misinterpret. My belief is that cigarettes cause hateful diseases and have been the direct cause of terrible sorrows in my family.

I remember my Dad collected coupons from packages of Raleigh cigarettes that had a cash value of 3/4 of one cent each. You would receive one coupon with every pack of cigarettes and four bonus coupons with every carton purchased. 10 and 1/2 cents worth of real cash value for smoking a carton of cigarettes. My dad collected these for a good portion of his adult life. He kept these coupons in a shoe box on the floor of his closet. Carefully stacked in groups of one hundred and each stack bound with a doubled, green rubber band.

3/4 of one cent never seemed to be much money to me and I never regarded the box of coupons as a treasure chest of any sort. I was simply surprised by how many coupons there were. The coupons were small and the box was nearly full. A decade or two of smoking perhaps?

I honestly do not have any recollection of any actual coupons for gift exchange taking place. I think there was a catalog of gifts published by Raleigh but I never saw it. Maybe my Dad's eight transistor radio was the result of such an exchange, or maybe the set of open-end wrenches. I just don't know.

I do know that the shoebox of coupons was always there on the closet floor, smelling of tobacco, and almost full. I know my dad smoked Raleigh cigarettes, collected Raleigh coupons, sorted them in stacks of one hundred, doubled a green rubber band around each stack and placed them in a shoebox on his closet floor.

I suspect that the Raleigh cigarettes my dad smoked gifted him with emphysema. I am sure this disease never appeared in the catalog and there is probably no information on the number of coupons required for such a purchase. Emphysema was a bonus like the four extra coupons included with each carton. I know my dad never thought the many years of smoking would reward him with such a horrendous disease, but they did. At least they are suspected of gifting him so. Coincidental as opposed to causal say the skeptics.

I think you can sense emphysema without a physician’s license. The combination of cigarettes and that singular, liquid, quality of cough is both a reliable indicator and an ugly predictor of a sad future. A sad future most likely unavoidable when signals are noted. A stop sign placed after the intersection.

I’m unsure of the quality of Raleigh cigarettes, and am not sure why a smoker would choose Raleigh over other brands. Raleigh seems somewhat of a bit player in the wonderful world of tobacco. Why Raleigh and not Luckies or Winston? I suspect the coupons were a significant part of the attraction. Certainly something tipped the scale in Raleigh’s favor. You know, something for free.

My Dad must have really wanted something in that catalog to smoke that brand, collect those coupons and keep them in that smelly shoebox on his closet floor. 3/4 of a cent cash value per coupon — what could it have been? I know it wasn't emphysema.

I remember when my dad told me over the phone that he couldn't walk around a block anymore. I laughed because I thought he was joking. I remember when my dad told me that he couldn't walk across the room because he couldn't breathe and I didn't laugh for I knew him to be serious. I remember my brother Sam telling me it was time to come home.

And finally, I remember going back to Chicago and listening to my father say he couldn't get out of bed and hearing him break down in a halted whimper because he didn't have the air to cry. He no longer had the air to live.

He died during that visit lying in his bed while surrounded by all of our family. An early death for a wonderful man. A very sad Sunday in early July of 1997.

No amount of coupons can bring him back.

Almost 19 years later, and I still miss him terribly.

(Heavily edited from earlier version in response to California raising the legal age for cigarette purchases. Cigarette smoking is not simply an individual choice that only harms those that smoke. Emphysema requires hospital care and consumes and reduces availability of medical resources. Smoking adds unnecessary sadness to our world.)