In Defense of Smoking

...These young chain-smokers clearly have lungs that could carry them across the Atlantic...

...Can we ask less of the non-smoker...

...Their frustrations are therefore turned on the smoker...

...I know one former heavy smoker whose tactic is to burst into a fit of furious coughing whenever anyone lights up in her presence...

...There are reports of people who actually commit violence on the offending object, extinguishing it in one's very mouth...

...it has been run into the ground by the lawyers and polemicists and is scarcely fit any longer for anything but parody...

...One may respond, so what...some communities are better off coming unstuck-witness Sodom and Gomorrah...

...For 20 years, I have participated in a monthly poker game that has never known a serious dispute...

...That sort of behavior is not designed to promote civility...

...however, the ads evoke a different image: the lone smoker, driven from civilization into the free outdoors where, Thoreau-like, he or she can inhale until the chest bursts with pleasure or something else...

...What would I do if my companion went into a coughing fit at my first puff...

...But nobody knows better than Secretary Califano, who used to require three packs a day to help him assist certain trade groups enhance their interests in Washington, that a ban is not feasible given economic and political realities...

...But within, for those who never need a cigarette more than in a doctor's waiting room, are con-veniently-placed ashtrays...

...that is beyond them and ought to remain there...

...There is a streak of Fundamentalism here...

...Instead, it has called forth a declaration of war...

...On the other hand, maybe the non-smoker just doesn't like the person who is smoking, in which case the smoker may wish to puff up a storm...

...In the interests of such a community, a Smoke Ender dropout I know, who coughs as heavily as she smokes, has trained herself to sit soundless at the theater, saving her explosions for intermission...

...The habit adopted by many in adolescence as an aid to enduring the pains of socialization has become anti-social, a bar to friendly intercourse...

...So the need for sinners is being satisfied at the expense of smokers-and not just cigarette smokers who are courting catastrophe, but pipe smokers who are known for their erudition and cigar smokers who are known for their good humor and longevity...

...Now, if you don't mind, I am going to have a cigar...

...Enlightenment has struck-but morality does not love a vacuum...

...In the case of ex-smokers, the attack may be a form of self-defense...

...no ripping of the social fabric...

...Such choices are commonplace, made daily at modest cost and...

...Until the Surgeon General rules that smoking is dangerous to the health of the person sitting next to you, let us treat that figment of the anti-smoker's nightmares with the scorn it deserves...

...No-smoking signs in elevators and in assigned sections of restaurants and airplanes are reasonable restraints...

...If you mind, I'll have one anyway...

...All the fuming of the virtuous cannot get Congress to raise the tax on cigarettes by a mill or eliminate federal loan programs that make the lives of tobacco growers more comfortable...

...In fact, sin is not popular...

...Everyone understands that cigarette advertisers put their wholesome-looking models in the vicinity of sky and sea in order to suggest that, no matter what unpleasant things the Surgeon General has to say, smoking and a robust constitution go together like Marlboros and a horse...

...I no longer ask the woman next to me at a dinner party if she minds my cigar for fear that she will tell me she does...

...I can be pretty sure that somebody will take the trouble to stop by for the purpose of telling me the place stinks...

...A large number of saints, notoriously careless of their bodies, would today be hellbound...

...It is not that she is offended by the smoke, but rather that, like those Victorian gentlefolk who used to hound prostitutes, she is so attracted by it that it threatens her own virtue...

...Lately, a couple of the players' wives have made remarks about the disgusting pall we leave behind in their living rooms-and windows have been opened...

...At a time when sin is in such short supply and the pure-in-lung are jogging four miles a morning, flossing, avoiding eggs, and drinking Perrier with lime, the sinner is he who refuses to abide by the commandments of the health-obsessed...

...Cigarette smokers are killing themselves...

...Well, I might suggest she change seats...

...The attack, long repressed, is obviously against the instinct for male-bonding, and I fear for the future...

...In theaters, airplanes, and restau rants, the smoker is already at bay, and the pursuit has lately moved into office and home;as well...

...someone makes ah adverse comment...

...Maybe the non-smoker is a pregnant asthmatic, in which case the smoker must bow or at least retreat to a far corner...

...Smokers already occupy the rear of the airplane, and who knows what lies ahead before the Office of Civil Rights comes to the defense of this latest chivvied minority...

...Secular societies, let us be grateful, do not deal with the notion of sin...

...Lately...

...What would be the cost in wife abuse, husband abuse, child abuse, and similar ills that we are told daily demand our most earnest attention...

...To point at a wrongdoer and lament that he is an unfortunate product of an inequitable society, or that he has had the misfortune to have been born with his genes askew, is milk and water stuff compared to the satisfactions of pointing at him and announcing, there, by God, goes a sinner...

...I have not yet been accosted by one of those people who reportedly carry with them implements to shuff out a cigarette or cigar as it is being enjoyed, but if such a one were to attack my after-dinner Havana ($2 a shot), no jury of my peers (cigar smokers) would convict me for any mayhem that ensued...

...they may reach ah accommodation or separate...

...they are flagrantly unjust, will probably subvert productivity (although that may not'matter in federal offices...

...But those who take a more benign view of our condition will wish to weigh the costs of disruption...

...The assault on the smoker, although it may offer an outlet for the frustrations, aggressions, and fears of the non-smoker, has its peculiar side...

...Acquaintances go out of their way to let smokers know how revolting they are...

...After all, smokers are victims-of their own weakness if you will-but victims withal...

...and if one does not, let him be damned But that line isn't popular anymore...

...But as long as the act is lawful, then the issue becomes one of balance, like most issues in a peaceable community...

...Attempts like those by a group of federal workers, on the other hand, to bar smoking wherever a non-smoker complains of discomfort, are a formof vigilantism...

...The man who smokes, Edward Bulwer-Lytton observed, "thinks like a sage and acts like a samaritan...

...Chairman Mao was too pure to smoke, and wrote terrible poetry instead...

...the imposition on the smokers' pleasures are temporary or partial...

...What would be the cost in dental bills for teeth damaged by excessive nail-biting...

...People who dedicate themselves to stopping other people from jeopardizing their immortal souls are, in the nature of things, disruptive of civility, the glue of the liberal comrtiunity...

...But if she invites me knowing thatl will smoke, then she must weigh t}ie charms of my presence against the vileness of my pleasure...

...The potential victims are treated as active sinners...

...At may, forone thing, incite resistance...

...Is the displeasure of the non-smoker of greater weight than the need of the smoker...

...Or I must weigh the lack of the evening's final satisfaction against the joys of her cooking...

...Whatever the merits of these contested matters, so far smoking is not a crime and cigarettes are not legally prohibited except in selected places like elevators...

...they are harming mainly themselves and their loved ones...

...They may-be as foolish as people who drink a lot or drive fast (though perhaps not as costly to society), but as things go in this World they are not sociopaths...

...Just as non-smokers insist on attributing the "addiction" of smoking to some need, that is to say weakness, of those who do it, so we must look to the psyche of the non-smoker to understand the current vendetta...

...Suppose that the present attack on smokers hot only shames us into taking our detestable pleasure only in the toilet, but actually works-and we all stop...

...How many heart attacks would result from the consequent obesity...

...and are bound to breed guerrilla warfare...

...The smoker's predicament ought to-call forth compassion...

...The hostess who is offehded by cigar butts need not invite me to dinner-or if she invites me with a stipulation that I leave my cigars at home, I need not accept...

...One is greeted at the entrance to his office by a bold American Cancer Society command not to smoke...

...Teng's growth...

...Let us avoid the word "rights," whether in regard to smokers or non-smokers...

...A sense of strain has insinuated itself into our cordially thick atmosphere...

...The Lord did not give man lungs in order that he should pollute them...

...The observation would be more persuasive had Joseph Stalin not spent his life with a pipe between his teeth-but probably it was hired for propaganda purposes, like those kids whose heads he used to pat...

...Given the overwhelming evidence that cigarettes are killers, a case can be made for banning them on grounds of their high social cost-lost work days, health insurance payments, survivors benefits, and so forth...

...If the body is a temple, then one ought to treat it with reverence...

...Someone lights a cigarette...

...When disagreement strikes in society, the parties need not wrestle it out...

...I fear to estimate what her sacrifice for the common good costs this exemplary citizen...

...How many new wars would be started by irritable reformed smokers...

...That does not mean that individuals or groups may not, on their own behalf', try to discourage smoking...

...I am put off by the odor of cigarettes and heavy perfume, yet I often endure both because I like some people despite their nasty habits...

...If necessary, I would bring forward a psychiatrist to testify to the psychic cost of such an assault on my expression of virility...

...No free society can satisfy those who insist on their purity, or their pleasure, at the total expense of others...

...The fact that Vice Premier Teng is a chain-smoker may prove of enormous benefit to his people and the whole world, even if it did stunt Mr...

...They do sometimes punish crimes'' against one's body-the use of narcotics, for example, or attempts at suicide...

...My physician, who gave up smoking about a year ago, exemplifies the nondoctrinaire approach...

...That would not necessarily deter me, but it could make conversation awkward...

...Here we are at a dinner party...

...Hostesses put out little cards as centerpieces on their dinner tables, with this message: "You may smoke if you wish, but most people don't" Or the guest may find at his place a plastic [stick figure in the act of breaking a realistic-looking cigarette and the snide line, "Thank you for hot smoking...

...One gets the feeling today that a lot of people would much rather insult a smoker than redeem him, rationalizing perhaps that the insult is the first step toward redemption...

...It's damnably hard to find a good sin in a time when such formerly sure-fire items as abortion, homosexuality, and adultery are celebrated as expressions of liberation...

...The idea of sin is powerful, both in attraction and repulsion...

...That depends...

...These days, as I light up an occasional cigar in the privacy of my office...