I am afraid that the first time I sent this out those who receive a digest form of Lactnet got it in gobbledegook :( My reply was a spoof on the original article, which can be found at http://www.betsyhart.net/PAGE-This-Weeks-Column.htm Pat Young - please note that I corrected the spelling error <G> THAT will teach me to reply on spell-check! norma (Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by e-mail at letterstohart(at)comcast.net.) My reply to: "Breast-feeding wars go into overdrive," by BETSY HART 29-DEC-05 http://www.betsyhart.net/PAGE-This-Weeks-Column.htm Anti-smoking wars go into overdrive Leave it to the Federal Government to get on the anti-tobacco platform. The legislature has banned—yes, banned— hospitals throughout the nation from giving out free samples of cigarettes, provided by tobacco companies companies, to patients. Typically, a patient, before she leaves the hospital, will get an allotment of cigarettes with coupons for more. (The stuff is really expensive.) The ostensible goal in banning the giveaways is to "encourage" the practice of healthy lungs, versus giving him the much-despised even occasional ciggie. What a crummy way to start the new year. For the uninitiated, there are all sorts of "debates" in elite cultural circles about zero tobacco use verses cigarettes , and to what extent people should be encouraged to the former. And so, for instance, every few years the debate over a person's right to publicly smoke makes national news. My argument on that score, which typically ruffles a lot of feathers, is that if a person is discreet—as I was when I occasionally smoked—no one needs to know and there doesn't need to be an argument in the first place. What I do object to is the "I am woman; watch me not smoke" demonstrations some mothers seem to insist my children and I witness in wholly inappropriate places. But back to the subject at hand. These tobacco debates have taken on ridiculously huge philosophical and political importance, when it should just come down to this: Everybody knows that not smoking is physically healthier in all sorts of ways than puffing away on a ciggie . We also know that some people who smoke do ... just fine. And some people, for a host of reasons, choose to, or have to, smoke. That should be their prerogative. But instead it is an absolute no-no according to some of the "experts." That's when the no-smoking zealots, all the national organizations and advocates who lobby for and can actually accomplish an amazing thing like having the federal government ban the free distribution of an expensive product to needy patients (as well as wealthy ones) step in. These folks are able to make even those who only occasionally smoke feel like a complete loser. And that's what I object to. For the longest time I couldn't figure out what the angle was. Yes, not smoking is best, but so is, for instance, a situation where people have NO drug addictions or eat nutritious foods. Such commitments will have a lot longer and more important and positive impact on the nation than avoiding tobacco. But we don't hear a peep about such things from many of the same folks on the no-smoking zealotry bandwagon. Perhaps one factor is that smoking has become a palliative for guilty people who choose to engage in other health-risk behaviours. (Magazines are rife with information and expensive products for those who choose to behave responsibly.) Maybe it has something to do with the reality that cigarettes are expensive and probably profitable, and the fact that corporations make money on feeding the tobacco habit (inexplicably) drives some people nuts. But more and more I've come to think we so desperately want to believe, literally, there is some formula, preferably a comparatively easy one, for making our nation better, stronger, faster. Some pill, some expert advice, some technique, some guarantee, some answer to this business of living a long and healthy life. And so we've glommed onto tobacco-avoidance as the national Rosetta stone of ensuring health. Wouldn't it be nice if it were that easy? Wouldn't it kind of let us off the hook? We've come a long way since the time when my mother, like the other moms she knew, sometimes rolled her own cigarettes. OK, how well we survived that whole thing may still be in question. But, yes, we know a lot more today about how tobacco causes cancers. But if the anti- smoking wars and the zealots who lead them are any indication that we now trust people less—or worse, value their role less—when it comes to making the right decisions, then we haven't come so far after all. _____________________________________________________________