In Defense of Smoking

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

...That depends...

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

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

...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...

...Someone lights a cigarette...

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...Cigarette smokers are killing themselves...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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 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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

...Teng's growth...

...someone makes ah adverse comment...

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

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

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

...Lately...