January 5, 2008
Reasons to Smoke
I am going to post a sporadic series, as I feel like it, on the good things about smoking.
1. Not smoking tends to make people stupid.
Alright. I admit it: I still have an AOL account. It is not because I like it, but because I have it, and it is now free, and I subscribe to some lists that use that account. So, once or twice a day I log on to AOL and see the various teasers for stories. There are always little tidbits that promise good health advice, which generally ranges from the commonsensical (get off your butt once in awhile) to the dubious (drink X glasses of water every day - oh, wait, they are backing down from that one these days) to the downright harmful (follow the current official dietary guidlines). Now, since "Heath" is a religion, and it is a puritan faith, it has something like sacraments, but they are more anti-sacraments: strict guidelines of what to avoid, realizing that the more you can avoid something, the more Healthific Grace you get. Since the Puritan Faiths are those of binary oppositions, moderation is really not taken into account. Something is bad or it is Healthy, and if it is bad, the slightest whiff will make you die at thirty. Naturally the King of the Puritan Anti-Sacraments is Smoking.
So, at some point in any of these idiotic pieces, you get the obligatory attack at smoking, along with the tsk tsking of "can you believe that people still smoke?"
In the most recent of these, they tsked tsked the person who bums the odd smoke when out with friends (you know, a cigarette once in awhile is the same as four packs a day) and gave the stern admonishment that smoking kills 438,000 people a day! That works out to some 159,870,000 per year!
Perhaps these folks should find someone with some mind-stimulating tobacco smoke in them to help them with the figures.
Of course it is not necessarily "not smoking" that makes people stupid, but anti-smoking activism. And it tends to be the same sort of thing with the anti-fat crowd, the anti-sugar gastapo (I shouldn't link the Gastapo with such fanatics, though. Unfair), the MADD/Seventh Day Adventist folks, etc.
Posted by erik at January 5, 2008 3:13 PMokay, i'll admit that the smock no longer smokes, but! i've been smoke free for four years all the while maintaining that i will NEVER become one of the self-righteous ex-smokers i used to absolutely disdain for sniffing down their pinched noses at my delicious drags. i loved smoking. loved it, loved it. and no one who has never known addiction will ever ever ever get it, so they can kiss my happy butt.
i agree with you about the "anti" campaigners. the whole anti-crowd makes my skin crawl. i have found that most of them are impotent in some major area of their lives and so they must degrade others in order to function. bless their little pea-pickin hearts, they prolly all just need a stiff one.