The Perfect Humanoid Symbol, 13
Finally, as the appropriate pinnacle on top of it all, smoking is the addiction enjoying the most incredible impunity – that is, the most wrongfully advantageous ratio between the assault perpetrated and the resistance encountered: it is utterly incredible, even if not at all surprising, how the addiction having the widest filthy and abject social impact is the most tolerated, the most accepted, the most blanked. And it could be said that just as apathy constitutes a basic for any humanoid faults long before they kick in, smoking addiction and its spreading, impact, filthiness, abjection and tolerance not only begun long before the current carefully planned overall tolerance of any drug addiction, but most likely paved the way to it. So, while we analyse both aspects, bear in mind their ratio as well.
George Orwell had us notice how eventually one fine day the pigs hung a single commandment on Animal Farm: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” Now let’s take stock of how all pigs – pardon – all poison addictions are equal, but smoking is more equal than others. There is no such thing as a better poison addiction, but there is such thing as a worse one: smoking.
In fact, it is easily ascertained whether smoking deserves the title of poison: you just need to research “substances contained in smoke” to dig pure poisons up, thousands of them, so I consider this aspect as understood. The point here is, the following aspects are peculiar to smoking, they are in addition to anything previously mentioned about poisons and addiction in general, and they exist as themselves, and they would haunt us even if paradoxically smoking did not harm.
Another shady side of smoking I consider here understood, as you can research it personally, are its particularly criminal implications tying up addiction, health and dirty profits: once ascertained the amount of money turned over by tobacco corporations, you may want to guess how much of it may be invested in making smoking more and more addictive, and all this keeping an eye to health in the background. And I consider understood as well that taking this side as implied here certainly doesn’t make it less shady.
