| | I am sorry, Ed, but you are going to have to explain the "Toohey" thing. I have read this a couple of times and I do not see that angle.
Should you not enjoy tobacco?
Is pleasure bad?
Is bad pleasure good?
What, exactly, is the subtext for you in this that you want us to perceive?
Moving right along (though not with a spark of mental fire at my fingertips)...
Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization. [by Iain Gately ] - book review
Science News, March 9, 2002
By the time Christopher Columbus reached the shores of North America, tobacco had reached every corner of the American continents including offshore islands such as Cuba. Europeans, like the Native Americans before them, embraced tobacco with verve. But why do some people like to smoke? And why is tobacco their plant of choice to smoke? An unabashed smoker himself, Gately helps answer these questions by relating 18,000 years of tobacco history. He reports that the plant's leaves have had many uses. They were an insecticide for other crops, and some South American tribes used tobacco juice to kill skin lice. Tobacco has also had a life as a remedy for toothaches and a tool of shamans. Early Maya and other South American cultures used it as currency. Some cultures reacted harshly to the plant and its users: Murad IV, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire from 1623 to 1640, is believed to have had 25,000 smokers killed during his reign, and Japan banned smoking five times before giving up. Yet more than 1.2 billion people in the world smoke today. Originally published in Great Britain in 2001. Grove, 2001, 403 p., hardcover, $25.00.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Science Service, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
from Wikipedia:
According to the World Health Organization, tobacco smoke is the second biggest cause of death worldwide, and is reported to have been responsible for the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century.[2] [2]2008 report on tobacco smoke, World Health Organization, 2008. [Link to PDF here]
(That would put tobacco right up there with Mao and Stalin.--mem)
According to WHO from the report:
SIX POLICIES TO REVERSE THE TOBACCO EPIDEMIC
Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies
Protect people from tobacco smoke
Offer help to quit tobacco use
Warn about the dangers of tobacco
Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship
Raise taxes on tobacco
(Now, if we could only do that with collectivism... oh! wait!... I get it... that would be collectivism... and that raises a deeper question, perhaps the deepest in politics: why do we have to have legislation against things that are naturally bad for us? Why is the law of cause and effect not self-enforcing? Oh, of course.. that would be anarchy, something opposed by conservatives, liberals, and the World Health Organization...)
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