My issue is with the CDC and their blatant lying.
I also take no issue with your comments on the despicable cigarette company advertising.
Moderation is doable for most people.
Some folks have addictive personalities and can’t handle much of anything.
That is no reason to go full fascist and propagandist on everybody else.
Moderation isn't tenable to the corporations who push this stuff. If people drank beer, liquor, or took prescription drugs in moderation, there wouldn't be any cigarette, alcohol, or pharma industries. The "Drink Responsibly" campaign by the booze racket is only the latest phony PSA messaging to come out of corporate death merchants. In reality, they want you hooked.
Maybe I'm not literate enough in British humor, but I can't really tell if the Guardian author is serious or not. Maybe she's making a joke, but my only objection to this whole thread has been the cheering of the comeback of smoking cigarettes, an addictive product packaged and sold to young people by corrupt corporations who don't care if proper use of their product kills you, and who are nothing but an earlier generation of Purdue Pharma and Pfizer.
Self-government requires a healthy population in mind, body, and spirit, and participating in the ubiquity of vice doesn't ensure anything but sick, lazy, addicted people who see slowly poisoning themselves as a virtue in and of itself.
Getting whiskey drunk and smoking cigarettes doesn't stick it to the Man; it enables him.
Maybe so for some things, but when it comes to something that is literally physically addictive the chances of that happening are far less.
Cigarettes are addictive and destroy your nhealth. PEople have known that for years and it's not propaganda to recognize it. The propaganda is the cigarette companies telling us it's not.
I cannot fathom *celebrating* someone starting an expensive, addictive habit that will destroy their health in the long term
If they want to do it, it is on them, but pretending that it is harmless is disingenuous.