on 6/21/00 9:47 PM, Paul Braunbehrens at Bakalite@ba*.co* wrote:

> I find that a lot of people who work dive boats smoke...the ones with
> a bit of sense do it while the divers are under water.  The fact is
> that quitting cigarettes is harder than quitting almost any other
> drug, including heroin.  I certainly don't condone it, but being an
> ex-smoker myself, I can understand it.


Paul,

I agree wholeheartedly. The woman I live with smokes and I can't get her to
quit no matter how hard I try. I won't let her smoke around me (when she
listens) and I am on her to quit. She has tried, but she's in a high-finance
type job where there's tension every day and everyone around her smokes so
it's tough. But I don't cut her any slack. You can bet I rented The Insider
for her. She loved my Mom too and I hope at some point it sinks in enough
for her to succeed in defeating about the most addictive drug there is.

I didn't want, by my original note, to start people naming names. I don't
think it's constructive to do so, but people have to deal with real
consequences of their actions. There are a lot of otherwise very good people
out there who smoke. As I've already indicated, they shouldn't be demonized.

I look at smoking as a disease. I think it should be illegal and people who
smoke ought to be given the help they need to quit, not ostracized . . .
well, except in restaurants. <g>

People who don't want to quit? Well, waddaya gonna do, kill 'em?

The trend is towards the idea that smoking IS bad, even evil and insidious
in its effect. But at some point smokers will be a tiny minority that will
probably die out as the profit in smoking dies. I don't see anyone growing
tobacco leaf in a closet with a growlight! A lot of smokers kid themselves
into thinking that smoking is just another cause of cancer and you are
either prone to cancer or you're not and there is some truth to that.
But there's a larger truth, that smoking, in and of itself, kills more
people than all other causes of accidental death combined, except the
occasional holocaust.

Later,

JoeL

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