Nicole Winton’s column on Thursday expressed the most selfish argument I have ever heard for pro-smokers (“Cigarettes are a choice, not morality issue,” SN 1/11).

Everyone knows the harmful effects smoking has on the body. Smoking four cigarettes a day, from age 20 to 50, for “three to five minutes of clarity and relaxation” adds up to at most five months of blessed enjoyment.

Thirty years is also plenty of time to get cancer. Now think you’ve got maybe 1 1/2 years of chemo, radiation, failing health, losing control and painful last breaths.

If you could acknowledge these timelines and accept them, you could make your fair choice. Every smoker, however, with every cigarette, needs to think about the spouse, neighbor, close friend, coworker, parent, sibling and child that has to deal with that pain. They feel depressed for your illness, angry it happened to you, and possibly even guilty they didn’t try to make you quit. If you just have one of each of those people in your life, that’s 10 1/2 years of pain that far outweighs your “clarity and relaxation.”

There are hundreds of other ways to relax at a moment’s notice. Get some discipline and learn them if you need. If you think those people’s pain isn’t worth it, and that hurt you bring them is something to be ignored, then you definitely need to re-evaluate the morals you say don’t play a part in smoking.

Steve Guillaudeu
chemical engineering junior