I think a bit of clarification or rebuttal is needed here. I started smoking in 1953, as a young teenager, and smoked until August 14, 1995. When I started, the tobacco companies were running ads about which brand of cigarettes doctors (yes, MDs) preferred! A few years later, in the service, I got 'free' cigarettes (4 or 5 at a time) in C rations when we were "in the field". At that time, it was considered a courteous thing to offer others a cigarette if you were going to light up; you saw it all the time in the movies. By the time anyone knew cigarettes were dangerous, in the 1960ies I think, I was hooked, addicted to nicotine.

A book published by Consumers' Reports in 1972, "Licit and Illicit Drugs", reported on conclusions by a scientist at Rockefeller University and the Synanon drug addiction help agency in 1971: "It is much easier to quit heroin than cigarettes". The principal author of that book, Ed Brecher, a personal friend, had earlier lost his wife, a heavy smoker, to lung cancer. He himself was also a smoker, but even with this horrific example was unable to quit and later did away with himself rather than face the terminal ravages of emphysema. Both my wife and I saw what smoking did to Ed, and also to my sister’s father-in-law, up close, but neither of us was able to quit. It wasn’t until the ‘patch’ became available and my father was dying of congestive heart failure, brought on at least in part by his heavy smoking, that I was able to quit, and that was on my third try with the help of the patch. A work-place ban actually helped me to stay off cigarettes, but many couldn’t stop. Some lost their jobs over it, good jobs! No one should lightly criticize people with a smoking addiction, as it is a very tough thing to stop, for some, an impossible thing to stop.