Woman Slaps Police Officer to Quit Smoking
In a desperate attempt to quit smoking, a woman from Sacramento, California, slapped a police officer in order to get sent to jail where she would have no access to cigarettes.
It’s one of the craziest news I’ve heard in a while, and even though it’s not directly related to electronic cigarettes, I thought this story best describes how hard it actually is for some people to quit smoking. A lot of times you’ll hear people who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives talk about how it’s so easy to kick the habit and that all you need is willpower, but the case of Etta Mae Lopez, a smoker from California, proves things are not always that simple. Last Tuesday, 5-foot 1-inch Lopez went up to Sacramento County sheriff’s Deputy Matt Campoy outside the main jail and slapped him in the face, apparently for no reason. He grabbed the woman and took her inside the jail, where she again slapped his arm as soon as he turned her loose. Confused, Campos handcuffed her again, and that’s when the woman told him she had picked him because he was in uniform and she knew getting arrested was the only way for her to quit smoking, as tobacco is forbidden in prison.
“She knew that the only way to quit smoking was to go to jail because they don’t allow tobacco in the jail,” Deputy Matt Campos told the Sacramento Bee. “She waited all day for a deputy to come out because she knew if she assaulted a deputy she would go to jail and be inside long enough to quit her smoking habit.” Etta Mae Lopez pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery on a peace office, and was convicted to 63 days in jail, and additional five days for violating her probation from a 2010 conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol. Astonished by the woman’s reasons, Campos now jokes with his colleagues saying he has a new Irish name, Nick O’Derm.
Lopez’s actions may have been extreme, as there are less violent ways to quit smoking, but it definitely says a lot about to what some people will resort to in order to stay away from cigarettes. It’s not yet clear if she even tried nicotine replacement therapies like gum or patches, but considering statistic say they ultimately fail in over 90% of the cases, they probably wouldn’t have done much good. E-cigarettes, on the other hand, appear to be much more effective, at least according to recent studies and surveys. An online survey conducted by the Ashtray Blog shows 98% of respondents smoke less or have quit cigarettes completely after they started vaping, while an Italian e-cigarette study registered a 50% reduction in cigarettes smoked per day in half of the participants. So the next time you’re thinking of doing something extreme in order to quit smoking, you might want to give e-cigs a try.
