...and can you imagine George Burns without the cigar... or Milton Berle without the cigar... or Ernie Kovacs without the cigar... or Groucho Marx without the cigar... or Edward G. Robinson without the cigar...

I'm not a smoker, and I'm all for encouraging people not to smoke for the sake of their health (and mine!), but I think that allowances have to be made for the fact that we know more about the health risks of smoking now than we did in the past. Any attempt to erase (in this case, literally erase) the history of smoking as having once been popular and "cool" is futile and might even have the opposite effect to that which is intended.

I think that anti-smoking messages should concentrate on people's behavior in the present and the future. As far as the past is concerned, the messengers should take a hint from the Beatles themselves, and "let it be".