Some college kids flirt with danger or experiment with sexcapades. Me? I’m dating Nicotine. The relationship is high-maintenance, and it’s killing me. The jerk calls way too often, at inconvenient times, knowing the siren song is something I’m too weak to battle. People say we see too much of each other. While friends excuse themselves to take a heated phone call from a lover, I step away from the table to hold hands with Nicotine outside.

In Ames, the debate on smoking has burned on for many months now. Business owners have fought the city ordinance that regulates when and where smoking is allowed. It’s this ordinance that makes me an outlaw if I’m caught smoking within 15 feet of some restaurant’s main entrance. On Friday, eight Ames restaurant owners will have their day in court when the Iowa Supreme Court hears their complaints against the ordinance, which they say is reducing business.

I used to ride the fence here. Coming from a family of smokers, I was all for smoking becoming a social taboo and regulations that made it difficult to continue the habit. But deep down, I knew I was a former smoker, and now that I’ve fallen back into it, I hate that my nicotine fix is such a bother to others.

I’m not old enough to remember when smoking was glamorous, but I do recall when it wasn’t such a shameful habit. I grew up when secondhand smoke began enraging nonsmokers, and I was always the one who’d complain if my parents lit up after a meal or in the car.

But now it’s come to this. I’m one of those sad smokers, fighting shivers just long enough to light another cigarette, knowing that only a year ago I considered this to be the most pathetic sight: Smokers standing in the snow, hands shivering, teeth chattering, huddling against the wind, cursing at lighters and matches that aren’t strong enough or quick enough to get us the fix we need.

I should have known better. I should have remembered my obsessive compulsions, my weakness to addictions, all these factors that should have set off warning signs that chemical dependency wasn’t the smartest gamble.

Iowa is smoker-friendly in terms of the cost of the addiction, but there’s talk of hiking up taxes as much as a dollar in Iowa, forcing me to shell over a few extra quarters each time I find myself in the express lane at the grocery store, buying this mix of tofu, soy and veggie burgers. Then I ask for my pack of cigarettes, knowing the irony of it all isn’t going to ward off cancer. Or sore throats, or bronchitis, which I already get two or three times each year.

When talk of the tax increase comes up, everyone assumes I will defend my habit, argue that it’s ridiculous I should pay any more of my hard-earned cash to get more nicotine. I do not. I want cigarettes to cost more. I want to find another way to squander money, but they just don’t give me that fix that gets me through the morning. And afternoon. And evening. And night. That fix is worth more than an extra dollar at the grocery store.

Ames, alternatively, is not a smoker-friendly joint. But I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit to the logic of the overriding argument of public health over my right to light up.

That argument is what’s led Ames to do away with smoking in almost all establishments, what’s led to the creation of “smoking vans” on the streets of Tokyo, and what’s led me to hide in corners with other smokers in hopes of escaping glares from the Clean Breathers.

I cheat sometimes. If I’m dating a nonsmoker, I masquerade as one too, if that’s what’s required of me. But that never works, and dating never lasts long, and I’ve never come home to get a message from Marlboro saying someone’s better come along, and, as of yet, nothing better than Marlboro’s come along for me either.

My body’s got to be confused. During meals, it’s fed a vegetarian diet. Between them, I give it a full serving of Surgeon General’s Warning. And I’m confused, too. I don’t know why I do it, why my morning cup of coffee and newspaper has now been greeted by a morning cigarette.

I know I’m being stupid, that making the stress flutter away with just a few puffs doesn’t outweigh the risks, that the cost of the habit is going to cost a lot more than an increase in tobacco taxes, that there’s solid reasoning in the forces that are trying to outlaw this romance Nicotine has with millions across the world.

Cavan Reagan is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Bellevue, Neb. He is the editor in chief of the Daily.