Redux
Every journey circles home
They’ve done it again. Brussels, with its pink lungs and technocratic wisdom (if such a thing exists), has decided that what Europe really needs right now is not cheaper food or relief from working remotely 24/7, or better public transport (applies only to Cyprus), but a 139 percent tax hike on cigarettes. For our own good, of course.
And so we, the last romantic smokers of the continent, are staring at a future where a pack costs more than a meal, soon we 'll only afford one meal. The same pack that keeps us company in traffic, heartbreak, and power cuts will soon rise to €7.50. As for us who roll our own make that €13. This isn’t public health. It’s fiscal suffocation.
Yes, we know smoking kills. So do rent, coffee, NPLs and unpaid bills. At least the cigarette gave us the illusion of control. Now even that small democratic right, to die in peace, puff by puff is under threat.
As always, salvation comes from the motherland, Greece, the stubborn matriarch of every Cypriot habit and half-finished project. If anyone can rise in Ecofin and rasp a heroic “NO,” it’s a Greek minister with a lighter in one hand and history in the other.
With luck, this new smoke signal from Brussels will meet the same fate as the Greek indoor smoking ban: the most gloriously ignored law in the history of the Hellenic Republic.
As for us, the stubborn villagers of this small Mediterranean Gaul, we don’t just smoke. We smoke through crises, through family dinners, through power cuts and political chaos. And we’ll smoke through Brussels’ good intentions too.
Let the Swedes keep their clean air. We, the smoky souls of the Mediterranean, will hold on to our last cigarette, not out of rebellion, but out of principle. Until the end, we defend the right to die ahead of schedule.