and More on Smoking Cigarettes!

This is a true statement: the worst thing about smoking cigarettes is that very probably sometime you will have to quit, and that process is gawdawful. On the other hand, failing and failing again, is a excellent lesson in humility which is a Good Thing, no?

The trouble with the anti smoking jihad is that it is no longer "medical." To be a smoker is to be bad, immoral and/or evil. Those are religious words. And all that stuff about second hand smoke is very very questionable.

I think it is very interesting that so many people for so long have loved tobacco. Pipe smoking was well established throughout Europe by the early 1600s. Big corporations and advertising did not exist back in the 1500s, when huge numbers of Europeans took up smoking tobacco. My theory is that ALL of our ancestors spent many hours around smoky hearths, and those hearths connoted home and food and warmth... and of course, in all those aeons, our bodies have loved that feeling of smoke being sucked into our lungs.

I am not crazy enough to say that smoking tobacco is healthy. However. My own ideal would be this: spend your youth smoking and drinking and hanging out in dark places, discussing the Great Ideas of your times. Between ages 30 and 35 quit smoking (it will take that long, but will be necessary because you will begin to feel the effects of all that tobacco.) Then, lead your life, building a family, a reputation, whatever life offers. And THEN, when you hit 65 or 70 years old, TAKE UP SMOKING AGAIN!!!

Another hint, from a wise old guy of my acquaintance: avoid tailor made cigarettes and learn how to roll your own. To up the 'cool' factor, learn how to roll that cigarette with one hand!