I have a friend who’s a vegan, and I asked her this very same question. Her reasoning is that the bees aren’t being harmed in the beekeeping environment, unlike how the cows in the milk industry are “bred for milking and cramped into stalls.”
She also tried to give up cigarrettes for awhile, but that lasted a week. OTOH, she’s the only vegan/vegetarian I know who smokes on a regular basis. Also, apparently American Spirits don’t use animal testing. (Not an unbiased site by any means, but it is clearly run by vegetarian/anti-animal testing people.)
Hey, anybody want to be fascinated by bees and honey? Read Robbing the bees! I really enjoyed it (finished it yesterday), and learned a ton about bees.
I went to the University of Michigan (“The Harvard of the West, the Berkeley of the East”) in the late '80s. We had amazingly large numbers of vegetarians who smoked, and didn’t believe in bathing all that often either. You could tell them by the slight brown pallor over their skin and clothing before you got close enough to smell them.
No, tobacco isn’t controolled the way, say peanuts are. You may grow tobacco if you like and try to sell it at auction. It’s simply that the people who do this really know what they’re doing. What you’re smoking in a cigarette is as far removed from anything found in nature as a dachshund.
Yes, we stand proudly on moral principle in refusing to inflict the deadly compounds and gases that result from burning tobacco on the lungs of poor, helpless animals, so smoke American Spirits and be confident you’ve chosen the ethical smoke!
Aside from any sort of coolness/trend factor that might be associated with smoking/going veggie, could the appetite suppression induced by smoking play a part?
Stonebow, why would that matter? Vegans aren’t by their nature any hungrier than other people.
I guess the real issue is WHY someone doesn’t eat meat. If it’s for health reasons, yeah, it doesn’t make sense that they use tobacco. But if it’s animal cruelty, there really is no logical disconnect here.
People don’t always give up meat for the same reasons. Please keep that in mind!
It matters as a means to regulate food cravings. Meat is tasty, and usually smells really good when cooked. If a committed vegan had to associate with meat-eaters, why not employ something to diminish the natural reaction to otherwise tasty food?
Also, don’t underestimate the social aspect of this. Food sharing is a vital human interaction, one that many vegans (and veggies of any stripe) get cut out of…and I’ve noticed that smoking is a very social activity as well.