November 25, 2016
Source: Bigstock
The war on smoking and tobacco began much earlier and has, I suppose, been a success. Smoking is no longer respectable. A few years ago I came upon some postcards of Ronald Reagan; long before his White House days he was photographed with a carton of Chesterfields, which he said was his chosen Christmas gift that year to his friends. Imagine that now. I confess that, as someone who has been smoking happily for sixty years, and indeed has a Toscano cigar in my mouth as I write, the war on tobacco fills me with resentment, all the more so because I have come to think it not only nasty””Why are the laws levied against us smokers?””but downright stupid.
It’s a prime example of cockeyed thinking. If we accept that the cost of paying and caring for a huge aging population, an increasing number of them demented, is a prime social and fiscal problem, and one that is only going to get worse and more burdensome, why legislate against an agreeable habit that may well kill those who indulge in it years before they are candidates for the geriatric ward? Given the choice, would you rather die of a heart attack, or even of painful lung cancer, than linger for years, out of your mind and incontinent, with no pleasure in life remaining?
What is called joined-up thinking is needed. The best way to lighten the burden of an aging population is for people to be encouraged to live in such a way that there’s a fair chance they will die before reaching that stage. And of all killing drugs, tobacco is the most benign. Smokers don”t go out of their heads and commit violent crimes. I”ve never heard of a defense counsel pleading that the accused was suffering from diminished responsibility because he was under the influence of a pack of Marlboros or President Reagan’s Chesterfields. Slogan of the day: Smoking may damage your health, but it’s good for society.
