Thread by @mdavidallen

For some reason, some mutuals got me thinking about smoking

Memory: working as a teen, I knew a guy who was 100% sure that it was the glue in cigarette papers that caused cancer, not the tobacco. He smoked natural tobacco leaf-wrapped cigars, thought he was all good

at the shop where I worked, there was a 90-yr old guy who walked with a cane. Was the spitting image of William S. Burroughs. Every day, he came in and got his usual, 2 packs of Lucky Strikes unfiltered

when you're a teenage smoker yourself, a 90-yr old with a 2-pack a day Lucky Strikes habit is like a hero, but even then I knew he was more lucky than "right"

I eventually quit and I'd like to tell you that "I knew it was the right thing to do", but that's not why. I just kept getting sick and actual consequences (severe bronchitis every 6 weeks or so) caught up

"Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it dozens of times!"

So goes the bitter & true joke.

my kids now have totally different attitudes about smoking. It isn't cool, everybody who is 10-13 knows it's going to kill you with 100% certainty (even though that isn't entirely true, though the gist is substantially true)

Vape is of course the new thing; with added safety data I think some companies are trying to position is as almost like a "new coffee". Fun/relaxing stimulant drug with *coughcough* basically zero health effects worth worrying about

so the wheel turns; you can't really stamp out industries or human vice desires, (the prohibition era was a historical lesson) but you can tamp them down a bit, and force them to morph to possibly less harmful things. This is what passes for a major win and should be celebrated