Oh, fer cryin' out loud. Laura Bush smokes, too, or at least she did when she became First Lady. She may have since quit.
That pic of Obama looks pretty old, at least he looks pretty young and his hair's a helluva lot less gray!
I quit in April 1989, after pretty much smoking every day since I was 12, and before that whenever I could scrounge one. I did NOT quit smoking to harass smokers. I quit because I got too damn sick to smoke. When I quit, Keith stopped smoking in the house. I can honestly say that -- if he'd been the one to quit first, I could
never have been that considerate.
Both of my nurses smoke, along with my chief tech, a couple of the other techs, and one of the physicists, and this after looking at lung tumors all day long. One of our doctors, who's no longer with my dept., used to go out to his car and puff his pipe at lunchtime. I found this recently and printed it out for them to decorate the smoking shelter:
As for "but think of the
children!", I've always wondered why children of smokers grow up to smoke. Seriously, I started smoking because my boring old parents
didn't -- in fact, my Mom hates smoking precisely
because her Dad smoked. So, IMO, she did the correct and expected thing and rebelled against it. I once asked Megan, some time after I'd quit, and all she could tell me was, "Well, Mom -- even smokers don't want their kids to smoke!" I guess that makes as much sense as anything else.
I have 3 kids. The oldest smokes, the middle one absolutely hates smoking, and the youngest used to sneak a puff back in her early teens, but quit when she got a little older.
I will close by saying that if I
could smoke one or two a day -- instead of one or two
packs -- I would probably smoke. Or, there are times I wish I could, but I remain grateful that I no longer
have to.
