Misophist: Your accusation that Annamill has beaten down, disenfranchised, and silenced her family members is not at all in keeping with her statements: "...if someone asks me if it is ok to smoke [in the house] I bring out my ashtray and make them feel at home. I don't stand on street corners and spout anti-smoking slogans. I used to smoke and every now and then I have a cigarette." Sounds like a pretty tolerant home atmosphere to me... not the sort of environment where one would smoke just to be "stubborn" or "passive-aggressive".

Yeah, she wishes her kids and her sister wouldn't smoke so much. Why does her concern for her family's health and well-being warrant an attack from you?

You said that you resisted quitting until medical reasons gave you no option. Okay, so you were passive-aggressive. That doesn't mean that every other smoker in the world is. Some of them are listening to the health warnings about cigarettes. Some of them actually want to quit but are struggling because it's so hard to break that chemical addiction. Some of them have quit and have started up again – like Annamill's daughter – because of that addiction.

Yes, it's true that there are other carcinogens in our environment, and you're right that that problem needs to be addressed. But that doesn't mean that cigarette smoking is not a health risk as well.

As far as I'm concerned, if the government wants to hike the tax on cigarettes, that's wonderful; anything that sells fewer cigarettes and hurts the tobacco industry is fine with me. And trying to compare this tax with the Prohibition era or the "war on drugs" is comparing apples and oranges. Cigarettes haven't been outlawed; they're not contraband. They're just a convenient means of generating tax revenue.