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Most people I know who smoke wish they didn't. I smoked for more than twenty years and like most people I know who smoke, I was always talking about how I really wished I could quit. There are some people, however, who seem to be able to get away with occasional smoking without ever getting to the point where they can't leave them alone. These people appear to be in the minority. Most frequent smokers develop an addiction/dependancy/habit, whatever you want to call it, and it gets to the point that they can't quit without a good deal of difficulty.

I'm just floored to hear that there are still people out there who don't consider cigarettes to be addictive. Haven't you known anyone who has tried and tried to quit smoking but constantly failed? Haven't you known people you felt were credible who told you about their struggles with quitting smoking?

People who smoke like you do are in the minority. Most who smoke a pack every few days either quit or end up smoking more and more and more until they find themselves hooked. These aren't my emotions talking, this is my nearly forty years on this planet's worth of experience talking.

Again, you may be built such that you are not particularly susceptible to nicotine addiction, but most of the rest of out there do not possess your superior genetics. Most of us who smoke with regularity for an extended period of time turn into nicotine fiends. I can't tell you how many times I tried to quit and how much money I spent on nicotine patches, gum and other smoking cessation treatment. If I hadn't have been addicted. I would have just put 'em down and walked away like I did with some other bad habits I had through my college years.

And as for the comment about how the "biggest lie of all" is that tobacco has anything to do with the death rate in this country, all I can say is that there are still those out there who believe the world is flat, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The notion that there is some vast conspiracy to fool everyone into thinking cigarettes are unhealthy when in fact they are not is laughable. Why on earth would this be so? No doubt there is a good deal of pure exaggerated propaganda out there by government and anti-smoking concerns. The same thing goes on in the war on drugs, but there is just way too much smoke for there not to be any fire. There is just too much evidence from too many sources who have found that cigarettes are unhealthy and many of these sources have absolutely nothing to gain from saying cigarettes are bad.

Okay, I've blown way too much time today. I need to get a few things filed and walk across the street to the jail and talk to a few people hopelessly "habituated" to methamphetamine.

Who funded the studies that linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer? People who have an agenda against cigarettes, that's who. Why were the links between lung cancer and radon not reported AT THE SAME TIME? Why aren't links between cigarette smoking and beta brain waves discussed more frequently? Why aren't the desensitizing effects of tobacco on reactive airways noted as beneficial? Why are the long-term results of a huge study of second hand smoke NOT reported? Why are smokenazis out to scrub the atmosphere of private businesses free of every molecule of cigarette smoke?

Why is the hereditary link to COPD ignored, and nearly all COPD blamed on smoking? Why is there no money from the tobacco settlements for new treatments for lung cancer and COPD? After all, that's the argument...why is the Framingham horizontal study of heart disease and high cholesterol not getting more attention (and BTW, high cholesterol is hereditary too...)? Why INSTEAD, are heart disease, lung cancer and COPD blamed on smoking? My father had COPD from his work in the Navy during the second world war, and exposure to toxins there--at the age of 21! He continued to smoke until his early 50s, and was no worse off then than when he left the service.

Who was the president's wife who banned smoking in the White House? Hillary Clinton. Who was the dictator who predated your prejudice against cigarette smoke by 50 years? Hitler.

You don't like the smell of smoke. I do. You don't like yourself smoking. I do. You don't want to consider any but your point of view--the point of view of Hillary Clinton and Adolf Hitler. I do. You ignore any "research" that doesn't support your position. I don't.