Smoke on the Water

This is primarily in response to the lack of energy in this blog about the cigarette ban proposition.

Unlike alcohol, whose effects clearly show even after fifteen minutes of consumption, and are clearly inhibitive and dangerous, tobacco is hardly at the same level of danger.

As doctors become better at diagnosing problems in the lung, we can find more subtle onsets of cancer, emphysema, etc. And within reason, these have been attributed to cigarette smoking. What then, about the folk who do not show negative signs of smoking? They are not necessarily uncommon, and there is likely a similarity between them.

My guess is that they keep their lungs healthy; eg: they use them. The appendix is now a nuisance because people stopped using it centuries ago, and can in fact be deadly to you. With the health of the nation in question, it's no wonder that cigarette smoke pools in the bottom of people's lungs. People also eat until their stomachs either stretch or burst, never bathe, drink themselves into stupors, eat horrible things, etc. etc. etc.

People also let themselves get addicted to things. That's their own fault, not everyone else's.

The idea of cigarette smoke killing you is the same as the statistical fallacies of radiation poisoning. It can and has killed people, though numbers from the Chernobyl incident are skewed if you look at the numbers. Those numbers, too, were suggested by scientists. So were the ridiculous graphs Al Gore hired scientists to skew.

The government is making money off this, and it's the only reason they want to "tax it out of existence". Big brother gives people the impression that nicotine is intensely difficult to break off from. What? That's an argument that targets right at the psychosomatics.

With a little bit of exercise, cigarette smoke should do relatively little, or no, damage on the lungs.

As an aside, smoking is a nice way to break down stress before an exam.