I dont get this.

I'd rather be in a dystopian future, than be in a dystopian future with painful lung cancer and a crushing hospital bell.

Alcohol is still in decline.

...Smell like marketing, to me.

Not the article, but the statistical rise. Engagememt algorithms probably love smoking and boost it to kids. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the influencers are bots; not even tobacco company ones, but regular old grifters trying to find something that catches the algo.

I'd like to think people are free minded, but honestly so many just do what advertising asks.

Really well written, and frankly not surprising.

When everything is going to hell, why care about the future? It’s a common, though depressing sentiment. Extending your lifespan isn’t a great reason to not smoke when you have no hope for the future.

Hopefully we can start to turn it around in the next few years.

Barf

Should we all start smoking cigarettes again? asked the author Xochitl Gonzalez, in a viral essay published by the Cut.

“With each passing day of this absolutely deranged year, my desire to contemplate how to make sense of it all while puffing on a cigarette grows,” wrote Gonzalez, later admitting “I’m no longer certain that the future I’ve been preserving myself for is all that promising.”

I quit smoking cold turkey almost ten years ago. The few times I’ve tried to have a cigarette since then have just made me want to barf. I don’t think I could pick it up again.

"Why let someone else sabotage my future when I can do it myself", essentially.

Escapism is OK when you need to de-stress, everyone needs that sometimes - (games, TV, mild drugs, etc). But fatalism is dumb, especially when it comes to decisions of health - just ask any ex-junkie; they have to deal with the health fallout of their past decisions for the rest of their lives.

In this scenario, smoking a pack of Marlboro's directly funds the arseholes you're pissed off at. The southern conservatives that own the tobacco and their finace-industry investors that directly fund the politicians fucking society and the planet to make selfish decisions on their part..

If you're unhappy with the direction of the world, do something about it and you'll improve your life and your emotional state. Teach, organize, volunteer, protest, find a job that has a positive impact on the future, serve poison to a far-right politician (in the videogame Hitman), the list of options are endless.

Many years ago, I was sitting in class at community college and, for some reason, the teacher told us that taxes are being reduced on cigarettes.

Fellow student next to me says "I'm gonna start smoking again".

I either said or thought "What the fuck is wrong with you?".

I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. I need a clear head to do good for the world and fellow humans.