Why is Utah senator calling for tripling tax on smokes?
Both Susan and I started smoking in college. I was an undergrad at the University of Utah when I decided a cigarette conveyed Steve McQueen cool, Jack Kerouac rebellion, on the cheap. A pack of Marlboros cost 35 cents. In seminars in Orson Spencer Hall, we sat in a circle, debated matters of import and smoked cigarettes. Between classes, amid a detritus of coffee cups and ashtrays, bridge players filled the Huddle Room in the Union with a perpetual haze through which the juke box blared The Doors perpetually. At night, we frequented the city’s college bars—La Hacienda, Grogan’s, Crow’s Nest—to drink Olympia beer and smoke cigarettes. My halcyon days! Utah wasn’t exactly Marlboro Country, but the life of a college student was pretty damned good in the late 1960s if for no other reason than a student deferment held the Vietnam draft at bay. Alas, a degree brought the unwelcome end of my deferment and the beginning of my stint in the Army. As a conscript on a TWA flight to Fort Dix in New
