Self-Control

Lynette Dufton
2 min readSep 24, 2024

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Donald Trump exhibited more self-control than I ever did in one respect. Donnie supposedly never smoked while I puffed away for fifty years. Of course, Donnie never shivered in a tent in the middle of a Korean winter night with his only solace a 25 cent pack of ciggies. A fresh pack of ciggies would last a while since three free cigarettes were included with each C-ration meal. That C-ration had been packed in 1944, but the three un-filtered Lucky Strikes were still smokable. The C-ration also included four squares of the worst toilet paper ever. The stuff had wood chips. Our WW II forefathers had a lot to put up with.

The PX stocked many cigarette brands. Which to choose? White guys generally chose Marlboros. Cowboys smoked Marlboro Reds on the TV commercials and every White kid who grew up in the ’50s secretly wanted to be a cowboy. Coughing and hacking harsh straight tobacco taste was macho. Black guys smoked smooth menthol Salems or Kools. White guys like me who wanted to be cool followed their lead.

Imagine my shock when the Trump administration advocated banning menthol cigarettes along with vaping products in 2019. When Big Tobacco got wind of this, they spent $100 K in negative advertising against Trump. “Young White males vape. That’s your core constituency, Donnie. The 2020 election only a year away. Don’t do this.”

Donnie signed a watered-down bill raising the age to 21 for sales of e-cigarettes sales and other tobacco products. Giving credit where credit is due, only 6% of American teens “vaped” last year compared to 18% before Donnie’s bill. Salems and Kools remained on the shelves as did “Daddy Vape” and adult e-ciggies, so Big Tobacco was happy. “We thank President Trump for taking bold and decisive action in 2019, saving flavored vapes for adults and protecting youth by raising the age to 21!”

Big Tobacco became concerned again this year when those freedom-hating Dems began talking about a more extensive ban on vaping and menthol. Last week, the head of the Vapor Technology Association had a “wide-ranging conversation” with Donnie himself. Donnie subsequently wrote on Truth Social, “I saved flavored vaping in 2019 and I will save vaping again!”

Donnie failed to mention that the largest donor to a pro-Trump SuperPAC was Reynolds American, the second largest American tobacco company.

The Biden administration is not blameless. It abandoned its vaping and menthol bans as the election approached. Maybe Reynolds American hedged their bets by slipping the Dems some cash as well.

Come to think of it, Donnie really doesn’t have all that much self-control when SuperPAC cash is involved.

By Ed Dufton

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Lynette Dufton

These posts are written by my father, Ed Dufton, who has an incredible knack of condensing the day’s news into a witty and insightful commentary on society.