Smoking

When I was young everybody smoked. Complete strangers would come up to you and ask, “Say, buddy, could I borrow a cigarette.” I have no idea why this question was always put this way. No one I knew wanted their cigarette but back after someone had smoked it, and I really don’t think anyone intended to return it anyway.

The only dangers of smoking I knew of then was the danger of being cornered by that guy who only smoked OPBs, and, if you started smoking young, it would stunt your growth. (Does it still do that?)

Now, of course, all those diseases that had other causes before the Indian’s introduced white man to tobacco (one of the Native American’s greatest contributions to civilization), are now caused by smoking. I know it is hard to believe, but these things are all proved statistically.

Here’s how this works. If someone has a disease for which the cause is not certainly known, and the person who has it smokes, the cause of the disease is smoking. Before long, it becomes apparent, most diseases, as well as pimples, poverty, and poor taste are all caused by smoking.

Before much longer everyone knows almost all diseases are caused by smoking, and no one can figure out why everyone who enjoys smoking does not just quit. Well the reason is really quite simple. Before people smoked they got the same diseases, and up to now, everyone has died, no matter what they have done to avoid it. It is apparent to most people that nothing can be done to completely avoid disease, and death cannot be avoided at all. Furthermore, many people who smoke don’t get sick of anything. The odds of really improving their lives by avoiding something that gives them frequent simple cheap pleasure are just not there. Everything has risk associated with it. You can’t give up all risk without giving up life. The risk most people are unwilling to take is the risk of not enjoying there lives, which, after all, is the purpose of it.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. —Mark Twain

When a politician says, “smoking causes cancer,” that politician is lying. The politician knows absolutely nothing about the medical causes of anything, and even less about the nature of cause itself. In fact, when anyone says smoking causes cancer, they are either lying or expressing a totally ignorant opinion.

The nature of cause is a serious philosophical question which we are not prepared to delineate here. This much we can say about cause: Cause is determined by the nature of existents, and their nature determines how they will behave in any given situation. Cause means, given the same entities in the same situation, their behavior will always be the same. This means if human beings (the entities) get cancer (the behavior) by smoking tobacco (the situation), every human being who smokes tobacco will get cancer. They don’t!

There is no causal relationship between smoking and cancer. There is a statistical relationship between smoking and cancer which does not indicate a cause at all. The fact that some actions (like smoking) and some other actions (the development of carcinoma) are often found together does not indicate that one is the “cause” of the other. If smoking caused cancer, everyone who smoked would develop cancer, but, in fact, most people who smoke do not develop cancer.

The real reason smoking is the target of such hatred and irrational paranoia is that tobacco has produced great profits for those engaged in the industry, and tobacco has produced inexpensive pleasure for those who use it. Is there risk in smoking? It does not seem possible there would not be, since there is risk in everything people do. It is not any supposed risk in smoking the tobacco haters hate, however. They hate it because they are terrified of anything that people enjoy, all on their own, realizing the purpose of their life is their enjoyment of it, and proving that purpose can be achieved in this world. The two things that stand in the way of the altruist/collectivist mindset are profits and pleasure produced and enjoyed by individuals in defiance of any collective or “social” purpose or program.

Two things the altruist/collectivist mindset always hates are guns and tobacco. They hate guns because a gun enables an individual to defend himself without relying on some group or social program to protect him. They hate tobacco because its sole purpose is the enjoyment of those who use it and the profit of those who make it. They hate tobacco more than guns, because tobacco symbolizes everything they hate, profits and pleasure.