WA Praised For Oppressing Smokers

The American Lung Association recently released their "State of Tobacco Control" report cards and Washington did a lot of work buffing up our transcript. "A"s in Smoke Free Air and Cigarette Tax, a "B" in Tobacco Prevention and Control Spending and an unfortunate "C" in Youth Access. All in all it's not a report card we'll have to hide from mom until we can forge the "F"s into "B"s like we had to in grade school. As an aside, why can't "F"s be easily forged into maybe "C"s? "B"s? C'mon, it strains credulity that a note we failed to intercept at the mailbox mid-semester indicated a low failing grade in English, but, miraculously, we were able to elevate ourselves to a "B" by the time grades are given. A "B" is praiseworthy in some instances. Do you know what it does to a child to get praised for a "B" that was actually an "F"? It isn't pretty. Twenty years and thousands of hours in group have failed to break our praise/guilt association.

We just did a James Frey on you in that last paragraph, by the way. We never changed our "F"s to "B"s. Need we continue with a long drawn-out story about how when our preschool teacher asked us to get out of the jungle gym we told her, "You want us out? Get us out," and then went full into a slapping and screaming tantrum the likes of which the Childrens Learning and Resource Center had never seen before? Yeah, and then went on a Milk Binge that landed us in rehab. Again. Where was Oprah then?

What is on display here is a classic example of avoidance, though, because Seattlest smokes, uh, occasionally, and we just can't get ourselves that excited about an "A" in Making Smokers Stand Out in the Rain. Whatever, it's cool. We know you're all happy about the "A" in Getting Future Cancer Patients The Hell Away From Me.

Finally, it's our time honored tradition to find states/cities/siblings that did worse than us on a given measure and call them out. Alabama: All "F"s.