Quote:
Originally Posted by Morthoron
I think that smoking for most long-term users is no longer a habit or a 'pleasurable indulgence' (that would include myself and my pack-a-day jones). I cannot merely smoke a single cigarette in a day without significant discomfort; whereas, I can drink several porters in a single sitting and go for weeks without another (which would be disconcerting and unnecessary perhaps, but quite doable).
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But I can. I smoke the odd cheap cigar as & when but can go for days, even weeks, without - & I was the when I smoked a pipe. Many people, unlike you, cannot go for weeks (even hours) without a drink. But this is not the point - the point is the one Chesterton made - smoking is being treated as a 'sin' not simply a potentially 'dangerous' activity. I've seen people in cars waiting at traffic lights with their engines running wafting away cigarette smoke from passing smokers - all the while churning out poison from their exhaust pipes, & mother's pushing their children along the street at rush hour with their faces at the same height as those exhaust pipes getting angry because someone fifty feet away is smoking a cig. Banning smoking from movies, or forcing movie goers to watch anti-smoking adverts because some smokers die from their habit (& most of them die in their 70's, 80's & 90's when they were going to die of something anyway) is as irrational as banning cars or inflicting dangerous driving adverts showing bodies scattered over the highway because cars kill people.
I'm not advocating smoking at all. Its none of my business whether or not people indulge. Yes, its an indulgence that may well kill you before something else does - but that's all one can say for it - 'cos something is going to kill you.