(first chorus)
smokers are scum
smokers are scum
they know they're addicted
they know smoking's dumb
they know that exposure
is deadly to us
but they're hoping we're stupid
and won't make a fuss

smokers are addicts
they know smoking kills
they're too frigging lazy
to smoke somewhere else
what's the big problem
with walking away
I wish their smoking
would kill them today

(second chorus)
smokers are fools
smokers are fools
they shill for tobacco
like industry tools
making us share
their addiction's a farce
take your tobacco
and shove it up your

don't light up near me
because if you do
I got a squirtgun
and my aim is true
folks think they're helpless
but I say they're not
pick up some bug spray
give smokers a shot

(third chorus)
smokers are stupid
and ugly and dumb
smokers expose you
cause they think it's fun
they won't smoke elsewhere
because it's too tough
smoking will kill them
but not fast enough

(bridge)
it gets in your clothing
it gets in your hair
cause asthma cause cancer
but smokers don't care
the deep inconvenience
of walking away
it too hard for smokers and
that's why I say

pick up some bug spray
some air freshener too
don't let a smoker
light up next to you
their rights have ended
where your lungs begin
pick up your squirtgun
and baby you win

(last chorus)
they'll poison your street gig
they'll poison your lungs
they won't put on patches
or just chew some gum
they're screwed-up and stupid
and ugly and dumb
they'll poison their mothers
cause smokers are scum

(coda)
be glad it's just bug spray
instead of a gun (…hold…)
they'll poison their mothers
cause smokers are scum

Note for the ironically impaired:

Forum Response 12/29/2009 A friend at a performance last night let me know that people in the MudCat forum were not only
not getting the joke of “Smokers Are Scum”, they were missing the point entirely, so I'll weigh in,
despite becoming personally targeted. The song is not about smokers, it is about exposure, specifically
in a street fair where my station is fixed (I cannot move) and the whole fair is supposed to be smokefree.

Despite the laws to protect participants, vendors, and customers, during my hours of performance at
the fair I was surrounded by enough smoke that I'm still coughing. I had smokers whom I asked to move
away deliberately hold their cigarettes as close to my fiddle as possible, and came home and wrote the song
not really knowing what else to do. I told the smokers that I was a cancer survivor with a lung condition, and
was told "I don't care" to my face. I've used the song in two performances since then to stomping, screaming
approval from audiences who've obviously met the same kind of smokers and have no patience left with them,
either. They certainly thought it was funny. I gave one guy who literally fell off his chair an autographed copy.
I posted it because I once saw a request for smokefree lyrics which I couldn't find at the time, but I have found since.

I think the music, if you could hear it, explains a lot. It is very fast, very rhythmic, and gives the whole thing a
stomping silliness that perhaps doesn't come across on paper.

Smoking around others at a Christmas fair populated by children, people with pulmonary diseases, etc., is
unspeakable depravity. Children, because of their rapid cell division, are seriously impacted and so likely to
develop asthma, cancer, SIDS, etc., that policies to protect them are sweeping the globe, although not fast
enough. Secondhand smoke is 6-12 times more deadly than that which is directly inhaled by a smoker. The
incidence of heart attacks drops 17% in an area after only one year of smoking restrictions, and by 37% in the
next three years in replicated studies. California lags way behind the stronger laws in other states, for those of
you misinformed about California policies. Smokefree laws are being enacted in Ireland (the old country), England,
Turkey, France--the science is clear, the policy follows, but before the cultural shift come moments like my street
fair moment, where this two-time cancer survivor was out of options unless I buy a paintball gun or something.

Smokers do not have rights, another tobacco industry canard trotted out in this discussion. Smokers are not
a protected class, and it is perfectly legal to discriminate against them in housing, in employment, in restaurants,
in any setting you please in the United States - go look it up. State and local laws may (and do) vary, but since
smokers are not, technically and legally speaking, a protected class, localities can pass all manner of restrictions
as counties, parishes, states, or cities, because people have the obvious right to a safe workplace, school, etc.
Smokers cost a company money, their health costs burden the entire community, and don't count on them to run
for help in an emergency because their vascular damage is often so great they can't run at all. But that's not what
makes them scum, that just makes them pathetic pawns in the tobacco industry's lucrative game.

When smokers smoke around others there is no question they know they're endangering others' health. That's what
makes them scum. I literally saw people poisoning not just me, but their mothers, their children, other people's children,
and my efforts to request some compliance with the laws protecting public health were derided, I was personally attacked,
all the usual things people do when they want to avoid acknowledging that they're doing something wrong.

I think refusing to play for smokers is a great idea. It goes without saying that in the setting the song describes, those
who insist on smoking because they want to hear the music despite the fact that they're killing the musicians, are scum.

Cheerily,

Carol Denney (510) 548-1512