Just ran into a fascinating article on the social value of smoking. No, not the costs of healthcare, or the burden it puts on your body, or the damage to the economy in lost worker productivity. There are a million reasons to not smoke. It's not healthy for you. But...
The author of the article identifies the social role that smoking plays in social settings amongst smokers.
There are a couple of authors here who have written smoking-fetishist (for lack of a better description) pieces which indulge in the romantic fascination of smoking. I'm not sure this piece goes very far to fully explain it, but I do find it illuminating.
For the record, I'm a nonsmoker and intolerant of second-hand smoke. It makes my eyes and nose run, and that's just for starters. Nonetheless, I remain fascinated with the social mechanics of smoking, and the positive role it plays in people's lives, given the article's premise that that social benefit is the reason people start smoking in the first place.
Click Here For Full Text Of Article In The Guardian Newspaper (England)
English/English Notes: "fags" = cigarettes; probably shortened from fagot, a bundle of sticks, especially when used to stoke a fire or as a torch.
Comments
Smoking in the US
I grew up in the years when smoking was heavily romanticized. I remember the black and white TV; remember the screens with the flat top and bottom and rounded sides; the Antenna sitting atop a 40 foot tower; being sent out there when they wanted to change channels to turn it this way or that; the snowy pictures.
I vividly remember the Surgeon General Commercials where the man appears in a white coat; looking like a much trusted Doctor and saying "The Surgeon General recommends smoking to reduce tension".
Does anyone remember the Philip Morris one where the man in a trench coat walks out of the fog to stand under a sidewalk light, where he lights a cigarette. Mean while the narrator is busily making some positive statement intended to romanticize the practice of smoking. I'll never forget the girl singing "Phillip Morris at the end.
In the early 50's as a small child, I remember sitting in the middle of the floor in a living room heated by a much blackened, rumbling wood heater in the center of the room. I was fascinated at how the smoke from my Mother, step father, and older siblings stratified in layers throughout the dimly lit room.
I don't smoke; can't even be around it.
Gwendolyn
Smoking
My grandfather and grandfather used to keep everything. They had National Geographic magazines from the 1920's in their attic, which my brothers and I used to go through. A lot of what would be considered strange ads nowadays were in them, advertisements for "modern" oil-burning heaters with a picture of a poor woman in a flapper style dress shoveling coal, and one of a famous 440 runner of the day, a cigarette in his mouth, who smoked, he said, because it improved his digestion. Nobody knew anything about lung cancer back in those days.
I seriously doubt if there will be a real effort to eliminate smoking anytime soon. Tobacco is too much of a tax cow. I noticed that no candidate in this last national election wanted to touch that smoking third rail. There's even a study that reportedly proves that smoking saves money in the long run; smokers die younger and therefor use less social security. Come to think of it, maybe that's a reason for instituting national health care -- a health care system that rations catastrophic health care for older citizens would reduce the tax burden for everyone else. :)
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
The Best Reason to not ban smoking out right
Is that prohibition never works.
Here in the US we should have learned our lesson when we put prohibition on Alcohol, what did it accomplish, not much except for giving organized crime a major foothold, fostering corruption in our police departments, etc.
No society has ever successfully prohibited anything that the public wants, because someone will take the risks, however draconian to supply the demand.
If tobacco products become completely banned, I can assure you, you will have a thriving black market spring up, and you will see otherwise respectable little old ladies and gentlemen, sneaking off to the corner black marketeer to buy their fix.
I'm not a smoker, and don't like dealing with second hand smoke, but I don't believe in prohibition.
Tax it, regulate it, fine... Don't make it illegal.
Hugs,
Kristy
It's no only smoking ...
... that encourages social interaction. I was a smoker once upon a long time ago - most people were when I was a youngster - and 'lashing the fags' was the norm when in a group. Unfortunately that meant everyone tended to up their consumption to that of the heaviest smoker. What started me was going to 'camp' on warships as a school cadet and having access to cigarettes at a shilling for 20 (the civvie price was nearly four times that). It's true that most smokers start as children. It's always seemed odd to me that smokers always claim to be individual mavericks, against the social norms, and yet they allow themselves to be exploited by an industry which supplies a product which kills many of its clients - strange.
However any minority activity seen as persecuted by the majority can achieve the same level of interaction. In my case it's cycling and was once motor cycling. It's rare not to be acknowledged by a fellow cyclist when out in the country and, locally, many of the riders are known to me. It was the same when I rode motor cycles a lot, long before they became reliable :) Of course this site itself encourages social activity of a slightly different kind.
Geoff
One notes...
That this is a public blog, not a study, and evidently written by a smoker.
In the USA, smoking is largely a social marker, less so among the very old, and tobacco products are heavily advertised "down market." While not completely absent among the upper crust, in general, one can smell poor people at quite some distance away, and the habit tends to ensure that the lower classes are strongly inhibited from being present in many venues frequented by the relatively well-off.
Killing them is probably an afterthought.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Total rubbish
You seem to forget the number of films as Gwen pointed out - even as recently as the eighties where everyone smoked - a portrayal of the times,where even sports people were shown smoking.
It's not and never has been "down market" just like not all bikers are hells angels, not all blacks hoodlums and not all Americans part of the KKK or rednecks. Addicts of any kind, come from from all walks of life and all manner of social echelons - regardless of the addiction.
Don't tell me that I'm down market, because I smoke. I have for years and contrary to popular belief, stopping smoking won't mean that you'll live forever. Perhaps it isn't good for you, but then neither is drinking alcohol, getting drunk and running down and killing the healthy jogger - who died before his or her time and probably never even touched a cigarette.
It annoys me intently that smokers are frowned upon when in the long run they cause less damage to the environment than drunks, aeroplanes, cars, buses, motorcycles, trucks and of course - fossil fuelled power stations.
Many smokers live to a ripe old age, just the same as many non-smokers who die young. My sister-in-Law died of cancer at fifty and never smoked a single cigarette in her life.
Leave us smokers alone.
Like evolution...
One has to be able to look at the evidence objectively.
Do a search for "smoking" and "social class" and you'll find ample statistical correlations, as well as references to formerly confidential tobacco company memoranda obtained through the legal discovery process identifying their strategies to target poorer and less educated people throughout the US and Western Europe, including the UK and Ireland.
This is part of the evidence that allowed the States in the USA to prevail in court and assess substantial damages in the Master Settlement Agreement, criticised by many as far too lenient toward the companies.
A Philip Morris study found, for example, that:
"Lower class panelists smoke more and are much more likely to be smokers than upper class panelists..."
"...the incidence of poor mental health is greatest among the lower class...To the extent that smoking is one of the available strategies people can adopt to combat stress, we therefore would expect greater incidence of smoking among the lower social classes."
I'm sure one can find plenty of people still willing to argue the point, just as one finds dueling theories about the "actual" location of the Garden of Eden.
Not interested,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Not good for you
I agree, but look at the 20's and 30's when it was actually fashionable to be seen smoking and they even had quite sophisticated paraphernalia to accompany it.
Authors like PG Wodehouse and others of that time, had many references as well as depictions. Humphrey Bogart was rarely seen without a cigarette, neither were most of the more glamorous women.
You make many references, but I find it hard to believe that advertising actually caught only your perceived audience - unless you refer to the gullible.
Advertising has always been designed to fool the gullible and that cuts across all classes - having money or social stature doesn't mean intelligence too. In fact any advertising shows how the target audience would like to look/be or whatever, regardless of age or social stature.
I think you'll find that all advertising shows the 'beautiful' people, not the half-witted man in the street, because they want to make people think that by having that product, it will make the ordinary man/woman in the street feel like they were one of the beautiful ones. And if the man or woman is already beautiful, then it reinforces that opinion and strokes their ego accordingly.
I have seen many pictures through the ages of tobacco advertising and at no time would I say that it has ever targeted the lower classes specifically - either here or in any other country, but rather the escapist idealist who sees the person smoking and likes to think they look the same when puffing away.
Similarly, drinking too shows beautiful people, not some half-dead drunk with a face like a smacked arse and a body like a bag of spanners.
At least 99% of advertising does it and has done since it was invented - because you're worth it.
Smoking is dumb
There is nothing to be said in favour of it, and masses to be said against it. It's your choice if you want to reduce your life expectancy, which it will.
Now what's next? Alcohol - this stuff is dangerous, causes cancer and...
Angharad
(Wearing health professional hat).
Angharad
One thing...
There are a couple of things that are in favor of it: people often enjoy a good smoke and it makes a ton of money for the state. Same for alcohol and traveling to football games. There's worse, of course, terrible dangers that should be banned for safety reasons: mountain climbing, skiing, bicycling, swimming, driving automobiles, riding in airplanes, unregulated diets. There are also degenerative activities such as gambling, dancing too close without permission, sex without a permit, and last but not least -- Page 3.
:)
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
I look foward to reading the
I look foward to reading the article and I'm amused by the comments. They kind of got off track, but what the hey. The mind does have a tendency to wander from one subject to a related subject. With that said, I miss the 70s and even parts of the 80s. Conversations like this wouldn't have taken place then. Its funny how we as a society impliment new rules, laws, policies and bans to improve the "qualities" of our lives. In actuality, they have the opposite effect. True. We're all so much safer now, but it made life boring. The world isn't an adventurous playground any more. Its a sterile cage. I think we all need to poop in it. Stir it up a bit.
I wouldn't call watching my step mother's ...
... sister die of lung cancer, almost certainly caused by her smoking habit, exactly exciting. In fact when I picked up that once statuesque woman to move her in bed, I couldn't believe how light she was. Smokers whistling in the dark who come up with comments like "Well, you've got to die some time." should realise that there are many, many better ways to die than suffering lung cancer.
Of course we're talking statistically and certainly many smokers live long lives. My father was one and , thankfully, I've inherited his sturdy cardio-vascular system but, like playing Bridge or Poker, it's better to play the odds rather than hope for an advantageous suit distribution (or cancer resistant lungs).
Life isn't boring. I don't need to get excitement by risking my basic health; I can get quite enough of the brown adrenalin in lots of ways that are a lot more fun than coughing my lungs up every morning, even at my advanced age.
Geoff
Rights
I wouldn't ban smoking altogether. I am a non-smoker; I smoked cigarettes in my teens because I was forced to by my peers at school. I know that's hard for some to believe but it's true. If I didn't smoke, I was beaten up; but that was just one of the reasons I was beaten up.
I have no problem with people smoking, but with just one proviso - namely, that they don't have the right to make me smoke, either primary or secondary. Smokers often appear unconcerned that the smoke adversely affects me, and I seem to be the one who has to move when in the vicinity of a smoker.
As I say; smoke if you want to but don't make me do it.
Susie
Smoking as an anti-social activity
I remember working in offices back in the 70s and early 80s when smoking was allowed in the workplace. In those days more than 50% of my co-workers smoked and there was certainly a camaraderie amongst them. This caused them to hand cigarettes around to each other, so they all ended up smoking at the rate of the most addicted smoker! The rest of us just had to suffer - woe betide anyone who dared complain. You were infringing on their right to do as they pleased.
I'm sure some of them thought they looked suave and sophisticated. Couldn't see it myself, the smell, the ash and the yellow fingers seemed anything but!
At least that's one thing that has changed for the better. The smokers had their way for so long, but now the workplace is free from the poisonous fumes and the few remaining smokers have to stand outside in the rain to indulge their habit. If that's what they want to do to themselves, then that is fine. Just so long as it's not inflicted on anyone else.
Pleione
Totally mean sprited.
Well, I have gotten so exasperated by it all that sometimes I wonder if everything should be legal. Alcohol, Dope, LSD, shooting in the streets, and crosswalks.
Then we would get a truly pure genetic selection where only the truly intelligent and ruthless would survive. That would have eliminated my entire family tree.
Hmm.
Gwendolyn
Wrong Focus
"Yes, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
I was hoping to have an intellectual conversation here on the sociology of smoking, and in particular the incidence and presentation in the arts, literature and film. The traditions, folkways, and morés of it. Several of the comments above, in fact, do exactly that. As for the other ones...
The personal health, public policy and individual preference issues I think are long established, or certainly the sides well delineated. They've been nicely reprised above, so if anyone needed a refresher, there it is. But, that's not the issue of either my blog post or the Guardian article.
In other words, imagine for a second that we're not talking about actual smoke, or anyone's mortality, health or air supply pollution. Idealize, sanitize and depersonalize the issue for a moment. For the sake of this discussion, imagine that ciggie smoke doesn't smell, careless smokers don't set their bedding alight, and no one is harmed. Discuss smoking as an attractive social phenomenon and the effect on our popular culture. After all, that's why people smoke in the first place, apparently. Peer pressure, jealousy, longing for adulthood, sophistication, the romantic imagery, THAT'S the issue.
(Yes, in the light of day, once you factor in the realities and side-effects, it's a bunch of bollocks. That's not the point, though. Lots of popular culture is like that.)
Smoking Elephant
Sorry, Pippa. The "ideal" of smoking is an illusion created by advertising and addiction. I think it's probably impossible to discuss the hat on the elephant in the corner without having a discussion about the elephant at the same time.
There's also a lot of social interaction wrapped up in the use heroin, especially in the music scene. Different elephant, different hat.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
A Social Fad
I don't think it's either an illusion or a creation of advertising. Advertising certainly promoted and supported the practice, but it didn't create it.
The great boom in smoking probably followed Hollywood's glamorization of it, but it already preexisted that. In the "Roaring 20's", smoking was part of the whole milieu of speakeasies, flappers, and the high life. Our grandparents and great-grandparents were young once, in the same way that people are young today, and just as rebellious, status-seeking and trend-driven as any.
By the '30s, the sophisticate, the bad guy, and the wild woman are all being depicted as smokers in film. In the '40s, there's a devil-may-care, bon vivant aspect of it. Think Bogie and Bacall. Film noir, in the '50s, has the doomed or tormented protagonist as a smoker, but not enjoying life much. There's a definite progression in attitude. Advertising on television in the '50s is an attempt to brighten up the image a bit. By the '60s, smoking is nearly universal, no longer the badge of rebellion, sophistication, or luxury. It's also about then that the public health crisis starts catching up with us, but doesn't make any real inroads in social status or practice of smoking.
Although it's greatly died down as either a social or personality marker in Hollywood film, it still pops up now and again to make a statement. The 80's sci-fi hit "Blade Runner" uses cigarette smoke to great artistic purpose, mirroring film noir effects, but taking it even further.
I did say "advertising and
I did say "advertising and addiction". I'll stand by that statement.
If it weren't addicting, I don't think anyone would do it dozens of times a day. But now that the deadliness of the habit is known, advertising helps maintain the illusion. And I'm counting the glamorization in films and books as part of that advertising. If it weren't for the advertising, the glamour would be much paler.
I'm not trying to say that you're wrong about the uses in literature. That's there. Smoking is often used as a symbol of risk-taking and death, as well it might. I really don't think there is a heck of a lot more to say about that part.
But the glamour is an illusion and it is in large part created and sustained by advertising. Advertising that went back into the 19th century, BTW. The American Tobacco Company was created as a monopoly, in part, to avoid the expense of competitive advertising.
Note the exact wording of what I am saying, there are qualifiers. I don't think it can reasonably be argued that advertising has no role in the one-time popularity of smoking, in the existence of a smoking mystique, and in the excruciating deaths of millions of people.
The elephant cannot be ignored.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
And, I Did Agree...
...that the glamour and such was an illusion. I think the words I used were "a load of bollocks," to be exact. But, glamour is as glamour does, and if some huge portion of the population feels glamourous about smoking, well guess what? It's a self-fulfilling delusion.
I think to some extent reality has started to set in, and that most people, even many smokers, finally can see it as a wretched addiction with some nasty characteristics and consequences. But, I also think that the article raised an interesting point about how smoking, at least among fellow smokers, is a positive form of social interaction and communications, a point of fellowship.
If we want to understand smoking, and I think that given the huge public health consequences we do, then it's important to understand why people smoke, what it means to them, and what they found attractive about it in the first place. Certainly, Slim V.'s work, amongst others, explores that aspect in great depth, subconscious and otherwise.
Granted, we're not public health officials, but we are involved in literature, and smoking, in literature, is still a powerful bit of symbolism, however it's used. It has its own shorthand, its own legends and clichés. Correct use in a story can add a real sense of reality. So, one way or another, I do think it's a phenomenon worth understanding, and useful to understand how to use it with some sensitivity. That's not the same thing as condoning it. Not at all.
Smoking And Sin Tax
Tobacco is taxed to death by all levels of the government. Only thing is that mostly the poor smoke [according to some reports. ] I myself do not smoke, but live with bro that does. Why not tax the rich on their stuff? Transfer the sin tax on poor to sin tax on the rich who have the money! Taxing tobacco to force smokers to quit is a sin. you should choose , NOT be forced!
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Sorry Stan, here I have to disagree
Smoking puts additional costs on society in many, many ways, and taxing them helps to pay for those costs.
I'm all for the rich paying there fair share, trust me I am, and am not opposed to luxury taxes, but taxing cigerettes is a tax on a habbit that has high costs for society at large.
Kristy
Costs...
Including production. In the USA, tobacco production is subsidised by the public at large. Since the year 2000, the public has paid more than half a billion dollars to tobacco farmers whenever prices drop below programme minimums. To be fair, some years, they receive nothing, although some farmers are paid *not* to grow tobacco in order to keep the price up, so it's difficult to untangle exactly what the web of public subsidy entails.
On the other hand, the various taxes on tobacco are a deceptive "cash cow" for both the States and the Federal government, of which the Feds take in around twelve billion a year, while the states split a bucket of around seven billion dollars a year.
In that sense, the subsidies are a drop in the bucket primarily paid for by smokers.
On the other, other hand, the health costs of smoking are paid for by everyone, around a hundred and ninety-three billion dollars a year, not to mention four hundred thousand deaths each and every year, a social and emotional cost "paid for" primarily by the families of smokers, which latter unfortunates may well be stupid, but it's a stupidity contributed to by very expensive and sophisticated advertising campaigns which aim to make smokers justify their habits to themselves by the "pleasures" it provides, and a blending strategy which manipulates the percentage of addictive chemicals supplied by the delivery system so that the brain creates "reasons" for feeding that chemical transport system in the body where none actually exists, increasing retention of "customers" whenever sales slump.
Some of that cost is paid for by smokers, but the majority comes from the public at large, since smokers are a relatively small proportion of society who collectively generate a large proportion of costs for their fellow citizens, sixty percent of US health care costs extorted from the rest of us by twenty percent of the adult population.
Thanks, guys.
The hostility directed towards smokers is fairly understandable, once you grasp this simple fact, that smokers aren't in fact, "only hurting themsleves," but are the source of enormous financial and other burdens shouldered by us all.
If smokers actually *believed* in their twisted accounting system, they should be willing to pay ten times the current price for a packet of cigarettes (the majority of US consumption), or around US$38 per packet, the proper offset against real cost.
I'd like *my* refund cheque paid promptly, as I've never smoked, so y'all *owe* me.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Osama bin Laden is the US bête noire, but he's a piker by any standards. If he'd had any brains, he could have founded a tobacco company and made a substantial profit through killing people, and done well by himself as well, since killers on a truly massive scale are invited to be members of the very poshest of country clubs and welcome in the very "best" neighbourhoods. In the time since the 9/11 attacks, in which perhaps three thousand lives were snuffed out, the tobacco companies have murdered more than three million US citizens, and many more worldwide.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
The Costs Pale
The cost of agricultural supports for tobacco pale in the shadows of the immense costs to life and health in this country. I don't remember the stats (and I'm too lazy to look them up) but lung disease is only a portion of the problem. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in this country, and smoking is a major contributor to that.
But, that's not what this blog is about.
This blog is about the social (as in socializing, not as in society) aspects. That is, the positive interchange in social environments amongst smokers and the presumable reasons smokers were/are attracted to it in the first place, the place it plays in their interactions, and in their self-image.
In other words, it's about how it might be useful in a story.
Personally, I'm anti-smoking, but it's foolish to deny yourself the use of literary tools which could make a story better. I'm against murder, too, but I'm not prepared to swear off ever including it in a story!
I don't see it as a particularly useful tool...
It references a small minority of society.
It's either offputing or annoying to a significant proportion of one's probable readership.
It's so predictable and cliched that it's dead boring most of the time.
It's not the sort of thing one can usually hang a crisis on, so exactly how is it supposed to contribute to character development?
If you want to deal with addiction, there are far more dramatic substances to introduce, at least some of which come paddling a small raft of dangerous characters.
And we (the collective, not the royal) have shown exactly what it's good for, as this little interchange shows a tiny portion of the resentment and disgust generated by smokers amongst the general population, the majority of whom are more fastidious and polite than to steep their bodies and smear their surroundings with poisonous filth, more self-reliant and proud than to mooch off the public purse, more instinctively humane than to harm their own children and those of others, and more chary of eliciting public scorn by "shooting up" in public than the average unwashed street ruffian.
As part of my training, I once attended a Synanon meeting, a cult-like "drug rehabilitation program" founded in Santa Monica, California in 1958 by a junkie who "found the light" and created what became a "church" characterised by violence and threats of violence as well as delusional self-importance. The thing I noticed first was a crowd of junkies, clearly caught up in junkie self-centredness and self-congratulation, smugly patting themselves on the back about their ability to "transcend addictive behaviours" whilst chain-smoking (all of them, a stage filled with the leadership of the cult, lighting their next cigarette from the smouldering butt of the former) to the point that the very air was thick with reeking smoke and many in the audience (including me) were so adversely affected that we had to leave and the stench of it clung to my hair and clothes to the extent that I had to pop in the shower immediately upon returning home and my then favourite wool jacket had to be discarded, as even dry cleaning couldn't eliminate the foul odour despite repeated return trips.
Puddin'
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Thank you for Not Smoking. Cigarette smoke is the residue of your pleasure. It contaminates the air, pollutes my hair and clothes, not to mention my lungs. This takes place without my consent. I have a pleasure, also. I like a beer now and then. The residue of my pleasure is urine. Would you be annoyed if I stood on a chair and pissed on your head and your clothes without your consent?
--- Sign from Ken's Magic Shop
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Agreeable To Disagreement
When you're writing a short story, or introducing a minor character in a longer story, relying on props, stereotypes, clichés, and any form of descriptive shorthand is definitely called for. To deny such a prop as smoking might further the cause of trying to make it go away, but I don't think it makes a story any easier to write, or necessarily any better.
I think at this point we just agree to disagree. (Mind you, we're only disagreeing on the literary value. We're not disagreeing on the physiological merits or second-hand properties of smoking.) I am disappointed, though, that there isn't more sociological/analytic interest in the phenomenon from a dispassionate viewpoint. I think it's been a significant factor in society for some time and worth understanding, if only to understand people better.
Dispassion
I have little patience with calls to be "dispassionate" about real issues that affect real people, and especially when one is personally involved.
Although I don't at all imagine that you would advocate any such thing, it reminds me of those grotty members of NAMBLA who want to "discuss" whether paedophilia is really all that harmful to children, or those hate-mongers of the vicious right wing who want a "thoughtful dialogue" about whether the torture and degradation of prisoners is "appropriate" when one *really* dislikes the people one wants to coerce.
I have no problem with stories that depict torturers or paedophiles accurately, placing them in proper context as monstrous enemies of civilised society, but I do object to stories which attempt to portray them in a sympathetic light, or use these activities as "quirks" that might help the reader to distinguish one character from another in a "value-free" manner.
There are, in fact, no kindly paedophiles who are so filled with compassion for children that they wish to ease their transition to adulthood by raping them as children. In reality, these people are vicious criminals and perverts.
There are, in fact, no heroic "Guardians of Democracy" who preserve "Western Values" by subverting both law and decency, corrupting our governments and destroying civil society. In reality, these people would have been just as happy running death camps for the Nazis.
There are, in fact, no innocent smokers who "just want to do their own thing." Everyone knows by now that most people don't like it any more than they like smelling farts, so smoking is a deliberate, selfish, and hostile imposition on the people around them, forcing the public to "keep their distance" through obnoxious flaunting of social norms and manners. The addiction comes later, so the habit usually outlasts the nasty pose.
Smoking is a passive-aggressive assault on society-at-large, and if one uses this hostility as a distasteful character trait to which other characters can relate appropriately, that is, with disgust and avoidance, that's fine too, but the typical use is collusive, the happy camaraderie of fellow-haters, and I object, just as I object to the book and later movie, Lolita, because it seeks to obfuscate and then reverse the culpability of the adult perpetrator and the juvenile victim, a twelve-year-old girl, and the countless sado-macho "heroes" who "beat the truth" out of "obviously guilty" suspects.
It's not a "normal" behaviour, it's both attitude and addiction, and should be accurately portrayed, if at all, as an undesirable and anti-social activity that has real and terrible effects in the real world. The perpetrators should be correctly shown as a minority population and neither romanticised nor bowdlerised.
I can partially understand it being mistaken for an innocent "quirk" because it was so portrayed in countless films by producers anxious to prostitute their audiences for the generous payments made for "product placement" by tobacco companies, and it's easy for some to mistake the faux-eroticism of the whore for the real thing.
Product placement of tobacco products is still going on; it's just disguised by ever more creative accounting tricks and lies to protect the pimps and dope pedlars from even the weak laws against it now.
In the olden days, of course, it was blatant, from mandatory cigarettes symbolising post-coital bliss to the obligatory "last cigarette" given to a grateful dying soldier to the little "free" packets given to every soldier overseas to help ensure that those who survived came back as smokers, all paid for.
The extent of the dreadful holocaust this money buys is rarely discussed, possibly because it's "just business," but smoking kills around five to six million people each and every year, while all the world's wars since 1950 have barely managed to meet that yearly average in total.
With the rise in marketing penetration of formerly isolated societies, smoking deaths are slated to rise steadily over time, so that by 2030 8.3 millions of humans will die every year to put money in tobacco pedlar's pockets.
Puddin'
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He gives the kids free samples
because he knows full well,
that today's young innocent faces
are tomorrow's clientele.
--- Tom Lehrer, The Old Dope Peddler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFtK0rcAvCA
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I Remain...
...utterly disappointed!
FWIW, in my opinion, you're not furthering this discussion one whit. Yes, yes, all the statistics you cite are true. So what? No one was arguing with them.
There is a sociology of smoking, and unlike the silly examples you cite, up until fairly recently, it was an acceptable part of polite society. Still is in some circles, as long as the smoker is polite. Close your eyes, deny, rant, rave, makes no difference. The subject is still there, to be understood. Or not.
Puddin', darling, remind me not to invite you to any garden parties. You'd probably spend the whole time lecturing on water conservation and land-use policy.
Perhaps where you live...
Not where I live. My general opinion is entirely unexceptional, and there are some who will take one outside and punch one in the nose if one lights up in any public venue without asking contrite permission and then slinking off outside, paying careful attention not to lurk within twenty-five feet of any window or door and preferably to go hide around the corner lest one give the venue a bad name.
There was a local cartoonist who once published a one panel gag in which a well-dressed man in a business suit and tie was standing, his chair tipped over behind him, his just-discharged handgun out, still aimed at a man with a cigarette in his mouth who was slumped over a restaurant table, obviously dead or dying while the other diners smiled and applauded politely. The caption was: "I *told* you I was a militant non-smoker." Someone had posted it on the company bulletin board. As far as I know, everyone thought it was rather droll, and I knew several people who had copies of it posted at their desks, and one had it paired with a commercial plastic sign saying, "Smoke all you want, but stop breathing now!" which seemed strangely apropos.
As for garden parties, I used to hire out as a party facilitator and am well-known for sparkling conversation, charm, and the ability to turn a dreary chore into a delightful evening. The only particular reason not to engage the services of my partner and I for any social function is that people might not come back unless you guaranteed our presence.
Although of course I *could* lecture on water conservation and land-use policy. It would depend on the crowd, but they'd enjoy it.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
You do go on, don't you?
Face it.
Your ranting and ravings are akin to Mary Whitehouse - "I don't like it therefore no-one can".
I was refreshed to hear that in Spain, you can smoke where the hell you like. In France too, many of the hotels, bars and restaurants will allow it.
I understand that someone smoking in a story would put you off reading it.
My God, who the hell died and made you Pope?
People have far worse habits than smoking. How about shooting one another, blowing up innocent people, paedophilia, rape, theft and pollution.
Just about everything in this world is bad for you in some shape or form - even life is nothing more than a slow death with entertainment thrown in.
If its the death bit you're worried about, then don't cross the road, don't do extreme sports, don't eat cholesterol-laden stuff, don't drive your car, don't fly on an aeroplane and live your life in a hyperbaric chamber.
While you're complaints are not entirely unjustified, the output from smokers represent only a very tiny percentage of the airborne pollution in the world and much of that is far more dangerous.
The United States alone pump 5.8 tons of carbon dioxide per person into the atmosphere per year and a staggering 60,900 tons of carbon monoxide. Over one fifth (21%) of the world's greenhouse gasses are emitted by the US alone, of which 332,000,000 tons are chloroflourocarbons - refrigerants and aerosol propellants.
I have not made up these figures, you can see for yourself at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-pollutioncomparisons.htm
I think a few people having cigarettes is the very least of your problems. After all, firearms and other weapons kill more people than smoking and it's legal to have a gun - or several, but not to smoke. That's bizarre.
Thank Heavens Guns Don't...
Thank heaven guns, knives, axes and bludgeons don't kill more people than smoking, or we'd be ankle deep in blood everywhere. If you factor in the blood-lipid-altering effects of smoking and the concomittant heart disease, strokes, etc., smoking kills an awful lot of people, at least in the U.S. If I'm reading my shoddy research correctly, and if you can trust capsule Google summaries of random websites you never heard of, the CDC credits smoking with taking 440,000 lives annually in the U.S. alone.
BUT, again, this is entirely off topic. It's a pity this thread headed straight down the smoker/anti-smoker feud path, without any decent discussion of how and why smoking is used in fiction.