Boy, do I have news for you today. It turns out you’re going to die someday. You, Dave, me, everybody.

With this fact in mind, Americans got great news last weekend. It turns out that smoking might not be bad for you at all. Well, at least compared to the alternatives, especially if you consider living in the smog of Los Angeles.

Now, before my life is just eliminated by the militant non-smokers in Ames, I should make a few things clear.

One, tobacco companies are bad.

Two, people are mortal.

Three, $28 billion is a lot of money. Hell, 28 billion pesos is still a lot of money, so $28 billion is a load of money, that comes out roughly equivalent to the gross domestic products of Yugoslavia and Kuwait.

Therefore, we should conclude that people smoke because tobacco companies are bad, and therefore tobacco companies should pay the equivalent of Yugoslavia’s gross national product because they were bad little boys and girls. At least that’s the conclusion of a Los Angeles jury who ruled in the case of Betty Bullock, a 64-year-old woman who was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. Phillip Morris was ordered to pay $28 billion in punitive damages to her because she got cancer from their cigarettes. Maybe the lovely L.A. smog rots brains, too?

Think about it. $28 billion — enough to buy roughly 1.76 billion cases of beer or 123,000 Aston-Martin Vanquish cars. Even if one of these things is something you would want, I desperately hope the appeal wanes after about 1,000.

You’d think we were trying to pass on a message to these companies. And of course, since they’re punitive damages, we are. We’re passing on the message: Hey … the jury system is a joke, because only the 11 dumbest people in a county and the one person who just wants to perform their civic duty will ever be on them. However, the message of “Smoking bad, money good” is kind of lost on them, as it will be reduced on appeal to a number resembling zero.

Smoking is bad, but I want to just eliminate a few lies by spreading a few truths.

Let’s be honest here. We’re all going to get cancer someday. Whether you choose to smoke cigarettes, marijuana, crack, or balls of Scotch tape, you will get cancer, heart disease, or any of the similar array of illnesses that kill people. If you choose not to smoke any of the things on that list, you WILL get cancer, heart disease, or any of the array of illnesses that kill people. Why? Well, your pollution doesn’t hurt. Whether or not global warming is legit, it’s still not such a good idea to spew pollution into the air just because you want to drive a car originally designed for export to the Soviet Union where its toxic refuse would poison all Commies. It’s also not a good idea to just frivolously waste energy and force more coal to be mined so that your light can be on while you’re gone to class.

Plus, that whole mortality thing. You’re going to get cancer because odds are people would always have gotten cancer once they got old enough. It’s just that in the 1870s people didn’t make it that long, so they never got to find out what cancer was, since the whole dysentery thing got to them first.

Betty Bullock is the lucky one. She chose to smoke at some point in her life, got hooked, maybe even by pumped-up nicotine levels, and now she’s got cancer. She’s dying, and that’s something that didn’t need to be because of cigarette smoking.

But who do I sue? If I remember my biology correctly, I, like all organic creatures, will die. But I don’t smoke. So where the hell is my money? Where’s my millions? I’m just a poor sap whose terminal disease is life, not cancer from smoking three cartons a day. Can I sue Phillip Morris for not making cigarettes and cancer alluring enough? Hell, I don’t even need $28 billion. I’d settle for a measly $500 check a week, and I would never have to graduate from this joint until I graduated to the big lecture hall in the sky.

Death gets us all, smoker and non-smoker alike. Smoking just makes the process a little faster. It’s like really slow suicide, for those who figure that in 40 or 50 years, they’ll really want to die. If you’re going to anyway, light up, America. But only smoke foreign-made cigarettes, please. If we could win some of these awards against foreign manufacturers, we might just make it out of our recession yet.

Tim Kearns

is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.