[QUOTE=Frank]
Not at all. The pleasure for me no longer outweighs the drawbacks. Yet I am addicted, and when I attempt to stop, the withdrawal symptoms (which, while not convulsions, include aspects which are very unpleasant both to me and to those around me) are extremely strong, too strong for my willpower to overcome. Perhaps I should try wearing two nicotine patches next time.
[/QUOTE]
the only reason I quit was that I was pregnant at the time and I knew that I couldn’t just smoke one cig a day (did not know that even just one would harm my son). I completely planned to be smoking on the delivery table, he he he whooooooooo. by the time my son was born, I was over the immediate pangs, and knew that if I smoked one, I’d be back to two packs a day almost immediately .
frankly the same is true today. One cig and I’d be back to two packs a day w/.in a short period of time.
I know one guy, quit for more than a year, completely past it, craving wise and then one day just picked one up, lit it, and you know the rest. Guy’s one of the most centered and sensible people I ever knew, and can’t for the life of him explain what happened.
Another guy I know took hypnosis, and it actually worked. From that very moment, he didn’t want or need a cigarette at all! For about two months, and then one day it just wore off.
One problem I have with suing tobacco companies is that it’s only really been in the last 15 years or so that anything like the current societal revulsion and abhorrence of tobacco has been reached. Prior to that, we were still a society that was largely laissez-faire and accepting of smoking in public, and I’m not sure how much the tobacco companies should be held accountable for something that was was, in my opinion, largely a result of cultural intertia.
And I’m not voting for any more cigarette taxes. In California, much of the money so raised goes to anti-smoking TV spots, which to young people may work like pro-tobacco commercials. Think about it: teenagers see a TV spot which amounts to adults telling them how bad tobacco is…in the minds of some that’s tantamount to urging them to go score a pack of cigs somewhere and start in!
[QUOTE=Frank]
For those arguing the moral non-culpability of cigarette companies, between 1998 and 2004, the amount of nicotine (both the addictive and the useful component of smoking) in cigarettes has been increased by 10-36%. My brand has gone up 30%. Why, one wonders, would a company do so if it did not desire its consumers to keep consuming, and to ensure that new consumers get addicted more quickly?
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See, I dunno, I’m in the same boat as Airman–I smoke because enjoy it, I average maybe 2 pipes and two-to-four cigarettes a week, and I note that where in 2000-2001 I’d smoke two normal cigs if I wasn’t around my pipe, now I smoke one, I just let it take longer.
YMMV, clearly, and for the record, I started smoking at 18, ramped up to my current minimal intake around 2002, and have been about the same ever since. I’m actually smoking more pipes now and fewer cigs, proportionately, but about the same amount of tobacco by weight. (and I use filter pipes, for a number of reasons). Perhaps more to the point, I’m under no illusions of the harm, I exercise due diligence instead of believing advertising, and I’ve been known to stop for weeks or months when it was inconvenient to smoke.
I wonder if Airman and I are really as anomalous as we anecdotally seem to be.