Ha ha, I'm already starting to pity you mate, you seemed like such a promising intelligent person before I read your latest argument, somehow attempting to excuse yourself from common knowledge and logic. 
If you made as much effort to just have the balls to give up, as you do to pick non-existant holes in the anti-smoking debate, your lungs would now be well on their way to recovery.............. 
ok i need to start off with a ha ha too: anti smoking DEBATE? I think this thread is the first documented instance of a debate actually happening. my issue was not with the aintismoking debate- it is with the anti-smoking forgone conclusion...
c'mon terry. focus on what i said. my point was somewhere in the words i said, it may not always be clear, but it certainly cannot be found in words i didnt say. i am not excusing myself. i am excusing smoking. this is because i am not special, and neither is smoking. i, like a lot of people- but not all, am unable to smoke in moderation so i isee my quitting as inevitable and do focus energy on how i am going to do it. that being said (in a previous post) this (hypocritically and selectively) nanny-state bull$hit makes me want to smoke twice as much. and if the real polluters of our earth and our bodies are not being held accountable i see it as an insult and a distraction technique to fully legislate smoking.
i realize i may have offended you by equating smoking to eating poorly (voluntary ingestion of harmful material; smoking is aromatically offensive, obesity is visually offensive. both drain the national healthcare resources (if your country is so inclined as to provide them), but one is treated as an inevitable consequence of being a happy human and the other is demonized and legislated against) but i was only trying to make the point that while i may be beyond your sympathy, i am not outside of your possible empathy, as i do not know anyone who's house is not made, at least in part, from glass. but lucky for both of us i can take a few stones lobbed my way.
the reason i write about things like this, with the flair of the devils own personal advocate, is that if i can put a tiny speedbump in the otherwise homogenous acceptance of 'cnventional wisodom' such as this, perhaps one person will see things differently for it. its worth a shot.
how does this relate? i dont think it is a coincidence that out of the three major killers in this country two get a free pass. to me the fast food industry and the oil industry should have been on trial with the tobacco companies, and they should all be forced to put a portion of their profits toward addressing the harm they produce. and then it would be a business decision to stay in business and keep paying for the ill effects, or find something more profitable (less harmful) to do. just like any other person, they should all be accountable. the only reason smoking would be singled out is because it is the most divisive issue population wise, spreading the impact onto places as removed as this forum for instance and away from the corporations that profit from it. so, while big tobacco did take a hit, the end result is less devastating to the corporate status quo.
i am flattered that you thought of me as intelligent, but i fear it is only because you have agreed with me until now. because as soon as we dont agree there you are questioning the sufficiency of my testicles.
on that you can rest assured though terry
-KK
