Puff Daddy

(Note : There are a lot of pages I’ve linked to. They’re not long articles, or hard to read. I strongly advise you read them. I rather enjoyed them myself.)

A good friend of mine recently started to smoke, and that got me thinking about the whole process of smoking.

So this is what I see when someone claims they want to go for a smoke :

“Hey… I really wanna go for a smoke!”

(Read : I think I’ve left my brains in my other pants)

“You got a light?”

(Read : I would like to coat my lungs with tar. Care to join?)

“I don’t know what your problem with smoking is… we enjoy it!”

(Read : I enjoy inhaling/salivating on a burning bit of paper. Let me be!)

—

You may have got the general gist of what I think of people who smoke. I don’t consider it a particularly smart pastime, as pastimes go. It ranks right up there, with wanting to see what roadkill feels like. Frankly, I just don’t understand the motivation behind smoking.

I did a quick Google search on ‘smoking’ (to be completely unbiased) and apart from the first two results, which were Wikipedia, every single other result on that page spoke about how dangerous it is. Clearly not that hard to get this information, if you can spell. Forgetting all the other aspects of smoking… supporting an industry which fudges the numbers on the deaths of thousands of people to stay in business, it seems to be a really stupid thing to do, defying the science that says it will eventually kill you.

I have to point out that people often accost me with “Smoking kills, but so does driving. You don’t yell at people for driving!”. Yes. Driving kills. But smoking isn’t essential to daily livelihood. And they advise seat belts + not driving like a moron for a reason. This logic is the same as saying “People say standing in front of a moving train will kill you, but it doesn’t happen to often. So it may not happen to me”. It flabbergasts me. (Yeah, I use that word.)

Then there’s the stress relief/depression argument. “No… I only smoke occasionally, when I’m depressed/stressed.” Turns out there are other proven ways to release endorphins in your brain (happy chemical in the brain that makes you feel better).

People who’ve been smoking for several years can perhaps be pardoned… addiction is a hard thing to fight. But someone who’s starting to smoke now? I frankly don’t understand it.

I guess you stand judged when Science collectively calls you an idiot.

Peace. :)

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