Why would anyone ever choose to smoke?

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Look at all the hatred that smokers get. Does the meaning that smoking is not a choice?

Well, it's kind of similar to the question "Why would anyone ever choose to be gay?".

Smoking is rarely a choice - addiction in any form isn't a choice, regardless of what led you to the addiction you cannot appreciate the meaning of addiction until you're trapped, and by its very nature addiction removes any choice you had...

You may choose to TRY a cigarette for whatever reason, and that's all it takes to get hooked - once you're addicted (nicotine is highly addictive, but mental addiction is more ingrained than chemical addiction when it comes to smoking) then you loose your choice. Smoking removes your will to replace it with an addiction that overrides all common sense and makes a million excuses or rational reasons why you 'choose' to smoke.

Anyone that is a smoker at some point were presented with the choice of taking a cigarette and they took it, that is a choice. I was presented with plenty of opportunities to smoke in the one place it usually begins, school. One friend does it then the other blindly joins in, strange world we live in sometimes. But I was already fully aware that the negatives very much outweighed the positives and always declined. The reasons for trying smoking are usually along those lines, but for some it can be difficult to override the addiction. I seen this for myself when my mum managed to quit, which I could tell was not easy. But both starting and quitting are choices. Anything you do in life is a choice after all.

I don't know why my grandmother started, but she raised hell in the hospital during chemo to smoke in her room until they caved, and after that failed she'd still smoke with a cigarette in one hand and the oxygen mask in the other. No, she wasn't the Darwin award lady that tried to do both at once.

I don't think any straight man has ever decide to try cock once and then become helplessly chemically addicted to cock and had to wear cock patches that artificially inject him with cock throughout the day to help him overcome his cock cravings and give up being gay.

I also don't think any smoker has ever said they were born a smoker and had cravings for nicotine all through their childhood and that their first cigarette experience just felt so right.

How are these two things comparable?

Smokers get hatred because the people that run our society have decide that smoking is undesirable and people that do it should be persecuted to encourage them to stop and to dissuade other people from becoming smokers.

The sheep then do as they are told and persecute smokers deciding that smoking stinks and is disgusting etc when a few years ago they loved the smell of smoking because it was refined and all the cool people did it.

Personally, because they hate themselves. It can be a form of self-harm.

I took it up partly because I knew it would harm me. I've stopped now, but I still feel the same way, sometimes.

People choose to smoke. I don't know why anyone would want to die and murder others though :S

Because a good cigar is a sublime pleasure, like a well made cocktail or a perfectly cooked steak.

Smoking while you drink is great. It's great after a few other things too.

Plus it looks cool.

Don't act like it's heroin. It's a bad habit to pick up and certainly not a healthy thing to do but it's hardly the death sentence that the special interests make it out to be. That's why you get ridiculous headlines like "sitting as bad smoking" or "eating egg yolks as bad as smoking"(just saw that one today) Yes, they may be unhealthy but so is basically everything. Everything in moderation.

Hatred, yeah...

On my old university about 80% of people smoke - I think because of all this smoking people around

It's easy to torment students with all this "no smoking area" - but try do this with professors Good luck, really

You are under deep stress, you got smoking people all around, many people will give you cigarette if you just wish - it's hard not to try
And when you try - you are in.

Strange analogy.

Every smoker in the USA today that Ive ever met or ever heard of got started in highschool. They got started because it was "the cool thing to do"- peer pressure and because the elders disapproved.

They all say they choked and coughed for a long time.
But then they used to it. Then .... they got hooked.
Since its so addictive its virtually impossible to kick. So they continue to smoke as adults- and virtually all of them regret starting.


With smoking - you GAIN social approval. And you loose status if you DONT smoke. In highschool only a nerd, or a dork, or an aspie, would be so uncool as to not smoke. Women seem to have the added incentive of wieght obsession-cigarattes as an appatite surpressing drug (but thats another can of worms).

Years later you do start to loose social acceptence if you smoke- (but even thats only been true in the last 20 years or so). But initially you gain social status- and thats how it starts.


Nobody GAINS social status by being gay in highschool or middle school. You get your ass kicked.

And nobody is born with the urge to smoke- in the way most people are born with a sex drive (be it towards their own or the opposite sex).

So smoking tobacco is not analogos to homosexuality in that way.

You choose to smoke. You dont choose to be homosexual.

Maybe you could make a case that "once you start smoking THEN its just as ingrained as your sexual orientation (which it isnt really-because people do quit smoking but nobody quits being either hetero or homo sexual but lets go with this idea anyway) but if you do that then you would have to say that about EVERY chemical addiction. Alcholism, crack, chrystal meth, heroin, etc are all analogous to your sexual orientation.

The smoking question is obviously linked to lack of intelligence.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/c ... 0.abstract

really?

cause plenty of the people that did best in my high school class smoked and not only normal tobacco at that.

me included.

you should look for something more recent to support your claims, we didnt excactly know a lot about addiction in 1959, just look at how people were treated for it.

What was true in 1959 remains true today.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/ ... UQ20100223

in israel, a single culture,

and in a military setting at that.

im not saying there cant be a trend only that it is quite loose and by no means a way to distinguish people.(which is basically what said studies are used for in the public eye,)

note that the actual mean difference is only about 7 points, almost statistically irrelevant in any practical sense.

then comes the general issues with a self referential system with no actual objective measure of inteeligence.

Smoking your first cigarettes is a choice—addiction is not.