as long as selling smokable tobacco remains legal, there must be SOME place smokers can do it...but if smoking is **inherently** dangerous and unhealthy, there is a flaw in the logic.

Imagine if tobacco had not been discovered before, and just this year someone came in with this plant they found, and said..."Hey! If you dry this, roll it up in some paper, set fire to it and inhale the smoke, it gives an 'interesting' physical sensation!"

You can imagine what the various health authorities would say after a few years of tests and analysis. "Sorry, folks...this stuff is bad news...'taint good for you!"

Every day they find drugs that do something useful...but also are found to have unfortunate side effects...and those are usually pulled from the market post-haste. (Thalidomide and a couple of pain killers come to mind). So, we have this drug cocktail that has NO benefits except for 'relaxing' folks from the tension that comes from not using it..and it remains on the market in the face of staggering statistics of its dangers? Why?...We know why....too much money and addiction to it (probably among those who make the laws).

It is obvious that they are committed to 'gradual' elimination of the habit....and perhaps there is no other 'practical' way....but as long as it IS legal, kids are going to keep trying it and people are going to continue dying from it, whether at 20 or at 50 or 80.

It is obvious that IF it remains legal, people can get together in a **private** home or club and smoke...and if some of them happen to sing, *shrug*....but the day every civilized country officially bans commercial sales of it can't come too soon for me!