For those of you who don't care and others who may be too illiterate to know, we are in the midst of a mass extinction. Yes, much like the asteroid that gave the dinosaurs what some might call a 'bad day,' humans are presently giving the rest of the world an equally 'bad day.' And while it is certainly too late to save many species we must rally ourselves and try to save those that we can, especially the most beleaguered of our cherished fauna; the common smoker.Yes, the once glorious animal that roamed and puffed through the great metropolises of the world, cancerous tobbaccus will perhaps become no more. In its heyday this magnificent beast coughed through packs upon packs of the choicest death chemicals. Yet now, after decades of neo-liberal nazis hunting down its members and forcing it from its natural habitats, the common smoker faces a threat even greater than lung cancer, extinction. You may say that you see smokers everywhere, lurking in alleys, waiting at bus stops, huddled outside bars, and you may wonder what on earth I could be talking about. To which I must enlist the figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1965, the percentage of adults who smoke has declined from 42.4 percent to the staggeringly low number of 16.8 percent and could reach 10 percent by 2020. In other words, the end of the smoker may be nigh. Here at NYU Shanghai we have a great opportunity. We have a wonderful and semi-healthy population of tobbaccus. We must help them before the tide of PSA's and well-meaning health alerts wipe them out.For a start while we know they don't belong in the areas outside the school that are supposedly not for smoking, please don't try and make them leave. If you do, you could be putting yourself in danger but more importantly by making them leave you will be removing an endangered species from its natural habitat. Next, offer them lighters and cigarettes, these are their natural food sources and have become very expensive and scarce. To make sure that they don't run out it is key to helping them in any way we can. Do not expect your lighter back. When passing a group of smokers make loud coughing noises. This is the smoker's call, and it lets them know that you are not a threat. It is most authentic if you double over and roll on the ground while coughing. If you cough up a lung, you are doing it right. Also, there have been reports of an invasive species mingling with smoker herds. This species, vaporous douchicus, otherwise known as vapers or losers, leads smokers away from their natural ways and tricks them into using vape pens, thus becoming losers as well. The scientific community believes that the douchicus becomes stronger the more smokers it can trick into this obscene behavior. If you see a member of this species in a smoker herd you should point and laugh loudly. Or better yet, make jokes about how healthy and clean their behavior is. Most importantly try and enact change in your local government. NYUSH has a dirty rumor circulating about an attempt to ban the common smoker from its premises. Those for the ban cite an excess of discarded cigarette butts by the entrances and an unhealthy odor clinging to smokers that enter the building. As well, they feel that the packs of smokers that linger in the entrance ways may give the school a bad reputation. These immoral do-gooders like to prophesize about that dirty myth called 'second-hand smoke' and say that anyone who walks into the building is being subjected to cancer. Of course, such tomfoolery should be poo-pooed and disregarded as utter codswallop. This distasteful concept has led to the slander and victimization of many innocent smokers. If anything, such claims should cause us to reach out and hug our native smoker population. Try and disregard their nicotine stained exterior and see the sweet and amiable tar stained interior that is just aching to fill our useless healthy lungs with all of their cancerous poisoned love. While all the other species in the world may be slated for the chopping block, we can, at least, make the attempt to preserve our local population of smokers. And we need to act fast before they either succumb to lung cancer or heed the neo-liberal nazi losers and quit the death sticks for good. This article was written by John Rhoades. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Creative Commons