130. Problems and Prospects of D30 2016: Playing Cat and Mouse with the Smokers

The story goes that Duterte once pressed his gun against the crotch of a defiant smoker who challenged a restaurant owner to ask the Mayor to stop the smoker from getting his post dinner nicotine fix. Duterte gave the smoker two choices, to eat the stick of cigarette or have the smoker's balls blown off. To the anti-smokers among us, myself included, this sounds like a great prospect for 2016 -- finally a dead serious campaign against the smoking tyranny in the entire country. But I doubt it if this hardballing style against the smokers can be replicated in the entire country. I don't think there would even be enough bullets for all those balls. Besides, playing Russian Roulette with smokers' balls is sadistic and illegal. Instead, I see the future of smoking as the new form of protest under a Duterte Presidency, similar to Noynoying -- activists converging in Mendiola each with a stick of cigarette, their balls showing, and the protesters chanting in unison, "Kalayaan para sa yosi at betlog!"