Smoke 'em if You got 'em

If you are compelled to have a beer every hour, on the hour every day from the minute you wake up until you go to bed at night, you have a drinking problem. If you keep a six-pack of Schlitz on the nightstand, you should seek help. If you take frequent breaks at work to go outside and drink a beer, evidence would suggest that you're an alcoholic. Alcoholism is frowned upon in todays society and folks who partake in this dangerous past-time tend to have other problems, great big ones, with nasty pointed teeth. But what if we substituted candy bars for beer? Is the same behavior just as dangerous? Instead of pickling your brain and running over pedestrians with your car, you'd be spiking your blood sugar to the moon and looking like Gilbert Grapes mom. Even a bottle of soda an hour would be more than your system can handle. There are studies showing that even too much water in a day can have detrimental health effects. The point, anything in excess can be bad while moderation can be acceptable, sometimes beneficial. They're examples of a disorder. If you just have to have a slice of cake on the hour, you're a cake addict. If you have a slice of cake after dinner with a cup of coffee, you're having dessert. If need to bust out a piece of birthday cake when you step out of the supermarket on your way to the car or vice versa, you have a problem. If people decide that they don't like public drinking, they ban it. The public part, not the drinking part, that didn't work. When it comes to cake or soda, the only victims, butterflies aside, are themselves so we're a little more tolerant(but civilized folks cast an evil eye). Bad behavior in public places should be unacceptable. There should be shame. Excessive smoking is bad behavior and should be shamed like bad behavior. People should not be tolerant of smoking in public. That's where the effort should be spent. It's wearisome to see an all out war being waged, relentlessly, against a product that is being misused. The war should be on the addicts that misuse the product. The folks that enjoy tobacco products in moderation and in a private setting should not be categorized with the "tobaccoholics" (it hurt me to type that). Tobacco has a terrible reputation due to the millions of tobacco abusers who don't have the personal discipline to not smoke a cigarette. Anyone who enjoys a smoke or two a day is counted among those who physiologically need twenty or more cigarettes a day and called a smoker. If you have a drink or two every day, you're not an alcoholic but have a smoke with those drinks and your insurance premiums double. It's likely that a diet of twenty to forty snickers a day will kill you faster than the cigarettes would. It's a shame that if someone has a problem with something, our government tends to try to prevent everyone from having access to it. It's like throwing a giant anchor on any chance of societal progress. How can any society succeed when it hinders those who can because there are some who can't? If I like to have a smoke or two in the evening with a beer, I am neither an alcoholic nor a smoker. Tobacco can be used responsibly.