'What Is Wrong With These People?' Medical Experts Share Their Views

Smoke Gets in Their Eyes
Despite Overwhelming Evidence That Smoking Kills, 46 Million Still Do It. What Are They Thinking?

This week a reporter from the Washington Post Health Section asked to interview me. Here's her questions ... and my answers:

is choosing to smoke a rational act of free will?
Absolutely. I enjoy smoking, and view it as a very relaxing and normal hobby. I completely entered into it as an act of free will. I do not succomb to the close-minded rhetoric of a few anti's who think it's in my best interest for them to tell me what to do. Since it is so enjoyable, I often suggest my friends take up the hobby as well. And for those who fall to the peer pressure of the anti-smoking ads we see all over the media today, I help support my smoking friends by helping them not to quit because of the media.

Are there people who make that choice because they plain old like to smoke?
Definitely. Why else would you smoke? I don't think there is any other reason to start.

Is everyone who smokes doing so because they were influenced by marketing campaigns or by peer pressure?
I don't feel I'm influenced by any marketing campaigns. I'm 35, and I started smoking at 25. I was out of school by then, and did not have the kind of peers who apply pressure. I'd imagine there are some younger people, presumably high school age, who do start due to peer pressure, but they all smoke pot and drink beer for the same reasons. I don't think you can really lump cigarette smoking in with those kind of activities.

And do some smokers consciously decide that they enjoy smoking so much they're willing to take the risk of adverse health effects?
That is an extremely ignorant question. What adverse health effects?!? Part of the reason smokinglobby.com exists is to educate smokers that there is no real conclusive proof that smoking is bad for your health. There have been studies of correlations between smoking and illness, but people contract health problems due to a variety of reasons and we simply do not have the medical science to fully research all possible causes. The only type of person who wouldn't take up smoking as a hobby is the kind of person who would be swayed by the peer pressure of the media. And we don't want spineless individuals like that giving us a bad name!

Look, I realize you are a product of the modern media and the anti-smoking health nazis. It is "cool" for people like you to call smoking bad, and to treat all smokers as pariahs, because you want to fit in with part of the larger group of society who thinks and believes that kind of nonsense. You like to snub your nose at smokers and look at them shockingly and say "I can't believe someone would smoke today because of all the studies that show it's bad for you!" You like to do that because everyone will agree with you and you'll feel superior and feel like you fit into a group. And every day your worldview is butressed by anti-smoking ads and court cases against big tobacco, because it has snowballed to the point where so many people are doing it and it's become fashionable. (But wait - didn't Big T just win that last big one?)

But realize all those anti-smoking ads and rhetoric are just that - Advertisements. Did you go out and buy a Honda because the commercial told you to? Or did you research your last car purchase intelligently on your own. Next time try that with smoking and health facts. You'll be very surprised about the information you find. And, oh yeah, why not smoke while you're doing it? Everyone who's not cool is doing it.