THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE: The once-glorified cigarette graced the silver screen and could be seen in almost every magazine. Lucky Strike advertisements were as American as apple pie. Joe Camel was a four-legged hero and probably more popular than Spuds MacKenzie. Who didn’t want to look as cool as James Dean with a cigarette between their lips? On the battlefield, a cigarette provided tranquility even if just for a moment. Taking a few drags in a foxhole on a French battlefield while German soldiers were heard yelling or reloading was a little reminder of home.
For decades, cigarettes were a normal part of life. People smoked in every setting. From dinner parties, at the office, on airplanes or in the kitchen after a long day. It was normal and accepted. Then we started learning about the negative health implications. Americans became aware smoking cigarettes can have long-term negative effects on our bodies. We learned a lot of about nicotine and its addictiveness. Cancer was then linked to tobacco use. Long-term cigarette or cigar smoking could cause lung cancer. As people became aware, folks changed their behavior. Tobacco use, naturally, started to decline. » | Jess Nuñez | Wednesday, November 25, 2020
As far as I am concerned, the problem of obesity, as brought out in this German documentary started at around the time that the authorities and do-gooders started waging a war on cigarette-smoking and smokers.
I am going to stick my neck out here and state that there is a DIRECT CORRELATION between the decrease in the use of tobacco and the increase in obesity and the incidence of type-2 diabetes. When people smoked cigarettes more, both obesity and type-2 diabetes were far less prevalent in society.
Further, the authorities keep pushing vaping and e-cigarettes as alternatives to smoking real, traditional, combustible cigarettes, yet they have absolutely no reliable data on the long-term health consequences of vaping. This is grossly irresponsible on the part of medical people and governments worldwide.
People have been fed fairy stories, myths and lies about smoking cigarettes. If you listen to what they say about the dangers of smoking, if you dare indulge in the pleasurable habit, you will end up wrinkled, bald, toothless and you'll cough your lungs up! This is all balderdash, of course. I have smoked for most of my adult life and have very few wrinkles, a full mouthful of healthy teeth, a headful of thick, dark hair and I NEVER EVER cough! Moreover, I am not fat and I DO NOT suffer from diabetes. I believe that being a moderate smoker has helped me stay relatively slim and keep diabetes at bay. So, if I wish to do so, I shall continue to smoke real cigarettes despite the nonsense being talked about them. I am as proud to be a smoker as I am to be gay! I make absolutely no excuses for either!
As it happens, I have not smoked a cigarette for about ten days now. I had no intention of giving up smoking—and maybe I haven't long-term—but due to inclement weather, it was too wet to go out and buy cigarettes; so I didn't and did without. I haven't bothered to buy any cigarettes since that time.
Despite having a twenty-a-day habit for most of my adult life, I find it very easy to stop smoking when I wish to do so. Hence, I do not believe thaat smoking is half as addictive as they say it is. In my opinion and experience, smoking cigarettes is a habit rather than an addiction. Smoking is addictive only if one allows it to become so. Personally, all my adult life, I have refused to allow myself to become addicted to anything. When it comes to cigarettes, addiction is a choice: one becomes addicted if one allows oneself to become so. Basta!
At this point, I should add that I find it both maddening and stupid that at the very time that they are clamping down so much on smoking cigarettes, they are relaxing laws on smoking cannabis and other soft drugs. It is maddening because they have made the life of a smoker so difficult and expensive; it is stupid, because they are replacing one habit they say is so unhealthy with an even unhealthier one: smoking cannabis!
I would be the first person to admit that it is far better not to smoke at all. But only if the person doesn't replace smoking cigarettes with a habit which is even unhealthier than smoking cigarettes has ever been.
There is much more I could say about this subject, but for now, I shall leave it at that. – © Mark
