Is Smoking a Universal Vice?

[Briar Lee]

She’s been dead over forty years, so I can tell it now. My grandmother Myrtle “Ma” Cahow Agee loved to smoke, but had such a large fan base of people who read her weekly columns in The Index she had to smoke on the sly all her life.

She was born in 1897, and got her taste for tobacco when her father let her drive a mule team as part of his drayage business when she was about 13. Association with other mule skinners led to her trying out tobacco, and she loved it.

Her opinion on tobacco was that except for social disapproval and cost and health risks everybody in this old sin cussed world would smoke tobacco, not just for the wonderful flavor, but for the solace smoking gives a weary soul.

Her example was, that the first time a European tasted tobacco when the New World was discovered, they not only liked it but took plants back home so they could keep smoking.

This morning I’m smoking Sutliff Heavy English in a fat billiard as the sun comes up, and it’s hard to imagine anyone not liking pipe smoking.

Is there any culture anywhere, that hates the taste and feeling of well being tobacco smoke provides?

I say it’s like booze, and a universal vice.

I have an occasional shot of good whiskey or a cold beer, and except for not wanting to be an alcoholic would drink more.

Everybody would smoke if they weren’t afraid they’d like it too much.

 

[bullet08]

Nope. Sex is. Too many people not smoking now days. Alcohol is prohibited by religion in too many places. But sex.. Everybody loves it.

 

[Briar Lee]

Nope. Sex is. Too many people not smoking now days. Alcohol is prohibited by religion in too many places. But sex.. Everybody loves it.

In the lobby of the UMKC dormitory 45 years ago we decided the perfect sin tax would be to tax sex. All cultures do it, and the ones that do it most would be glad to pay more if they could do it more.

But it wouldn’t raise as much money as the vices old men have, such as pipe smoking.

Besides there would be a lot of tax evasion on a sex tax.

Another universal vice is coffee.

But the do gooders must drink lots of coffee. They never tax it, don’t claim the fumes endanger children, and pay ridiculous prices for it.

 

[Streeper541]

I don't know if smoking is a universal vice, but it sure does seem to be popular here on Earth.

 

[bullet08]

In the lobby of the UMKC dormitory 45 years ago we decided the perfect sin tax would be to tax sex. All cultures do it, and the ones that do it most would be glad to pay more if they could do it more.

But it wouldn’t raise as much money as the vices old men have, such as pipe smoking.

Besides there would be a lot of tax evasion on a sex tax.

Another universal vice is coffee.

But the do gooders must drink lots of coffee. They never tax it, don’t claim the fumes endanger children, and pay ridiculous prices for it.

I can't believe people pay $5 for a cup of coffee. During the scouter training, I wouldn't drink their coffee even they pay me. But I drank it anyway. Was very cold in the morning.

 

[Chaukisch]

Her example was, that the first time a European tasted tobacco when the New World was discovered, they not only liked it but took plants back home so they could keep smoking.

Kinda random but:
I've read a story about the man who smoked the first pipe in Europe. Spain, IIRC.
When he stood in public and lit up, the people around him would recoil in horror and it didn't take long for him to get arrested, handled by the Inquisition, and thrown into prison for about a decade.

Reason: Only the devil would be able to blow smoke from his mouth and nostrils.
When he was released, pipe smoking was widespread throughout Europe. Tobacco certainly conquered this planet once the people learned about it.

You could light up right there in a hospital and doctors even prescribed it.
Nowadays I can't even smoke freely at the larger train stations, I gotta stand in some rectangle painted on the ground or go into a glass cage.
There may be at least one tobacco friend in every country that we humans managed to make up, but I certainly wouldn't call it a universal vice just for that.
I don't even know what exactly you could call a vice. Isn't the general human need and seek for all these substances/pleasures a vice in itself?

We always need something to calm body and mind and every single one has his own medicine to take and feel better.

 

[WVOldFart]

In the lobby of the UMKC dormitory 45 years ago we decided the perfect sin tax would be to tax sex. All cultures do it, and the ones that do it most would be glad to pay more if they could do it more.

But it wouldn’t raise as much money as the vices old men have, such as pipe smoking.

Besides there would be a lot of tax evasion on a sex tax.

Another universal vice is coffee.

But the do gooders must drink lots of coffee. They never tax it, don’t claim the fumes endanger children, and pay ridiculous prices for it.

It seems appropriate that coffee and pipe smoking go together so well. I tell my wife that coffee and a good pipe go together like prune juice and toilet paper. Coffee and pipe smoking the vices that were meant for each other.

 

[burleybreath]

Accept other people's definition of vice at your own peril. I need a more rational one, rather than someone's religious construct. Meanwhile, I'll smoke without guilt, drink coffee, have sex, and adore whiskey.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Love of money trumps them all. I'd take money over any other vice.

 

[CallMeSangy]

For me, if it wouldn't lead you to be stoned to death by a large mob it isn't a vice. I just look towards the Bible when I need to know when to watch out. If they got stoned for what they did there, don't do it.

 

[sablebrush52]

I dunno if it's Universal. Could be Paramount. Could be Warner Bros.

 

[The Amish Tyrant]

Love of money trumps them all. I'd take money over any other vice.

And a lot of people don't understand that money both stacks and can work for you.

 

[elvishrunes]

One man’s vice is another man’s virtue…. I think balance is key, pipe smoking to me has been a benefit especially over cigarettes, as “tobacco“ can take on many forms.

 

[warren]

An unhealthy activity, expensive and socially frowned upon, certainly a vice. And, a vice by any available definition. But, universal? If it ever was it certainly be curtailed today.

Is there any culture anywhere, that hates the taste and feeling of well being tobacco smoke provides?

Obviously a good percentage of "western" culture reviles tobacco.

 

[cigrmaster]

Sex. drugs, (nicotine and caffeine included) and rock and roll.

Lots of people look to alter their conciseness in any way they can and there are tons of options on the market. I believe it is a basic human condition to help them deal with their realities.

 

[Briar Lee]

An unhealthy activity, expensive and socially frowned upon, certainly a vice. And, a vice by any available definition. But, universal? If it ever was it certainly be curtailed today.


Obviously a good percentage of "western" culture reviles tobacco.

Only do goooders, could possibly revile the taste of good lard fried meat,,,which really is another vice I’m addicted to.

Just before one o’clock on November 22, 1963 Earnest Ashworth’s classic Talk Back Trembling Lips was playing over the kitchen radio as my father fried me an RB Rice bologna sandwich when an announcer interrupted —-

We interrupt this broadcast to inform you that President John F Kennedy has been shot and wounded by a sniper in Dallas.

I can still smell the bologna frying, hear the telephone ringing off the wall, and still remember my mother coming home early from teaching school at Fair Play and watching all the drama unfold on television, when I was five and half years old.

Meat, guns, tobacco, radio, television, record players, hard country music and gin and beer were made to soothe a troubled soul. You don’t actually need any of them. There are self righteous do gooder hypocrites that campaign against eating animals.

While wearing leather shoes.

 

[mso489]

Universal in the sense that it is widely done, if not really universally done. Not universal inasmuch as people relate to it very differently. Some people are locked into an addiction on the first draw, and others smoke only for flavor and ritual and don't crave nicotine much or at all. For some it has been mostly ritualistic, and for others it is a daily need and compulsion. With all gradations and permutations across the population. Myrtle sounds like a wonderful person; I get a feeling about her life story just hearing a few details.

 

[mortonbriar]

I do not know about the integrity of this website's statistics (they claim the stats are from WHO), but apparently Ghana only has 3.7% of the population smoking, and that is more or less all male:
smoker stats by country

I will ask my brother what he observed, he worked in Ghana for a couple of years maybe a decade ago.

 

[Briar Lee]

Universal in the sense that it is widely done, if not really universally done. Not universal inasmuch as people relate to it very differently. Some people are locked into an addiction on the first draw, and others smoke only for flavor and ritual and don't crave nicotine much or at all. For some it has been mostly ritualistic, and for others it is a daily need and compulsion. With all gradations and permutations across the population. Myrtle sounds like a wonderful person; I get a feeling about her life story just hearing a few details.

In her youth she was almost six feet tall with waist length locks of curly raven black hair.

In her old age I can remember her with a tall, slim erect figure and silver hair, working out a deal to have the wealthy owners of The Index come personally to her on Sunday afternoons when us grandkids would be there to split the proceeds of the last week’s sale of her book, and pick up a new weekly column of her Ma and Pa series for publication in the next week’s paper.

Of course being an old time Christian she’d never consent to suing or testifying against the producers of the Beverley Hillbillies who were wholesale ripping off the story lines from her weekly columns, no never.

Besides over a thousand dollars a week each and the largest circulation of any one press newspaper in Christian civilization was surely enough, wasn’t it?

She left behind little witnesses, and we’uns ain’t about dead yet, you know?

We’d take her long blacksnake whip out in the garden, and try making it crack like Grandma.

She’d try showing us, but we were too young to master the perquisite skills of a mule skinner, that of cracking that long whip around (but not on) the mule’s ears.

Truth was she was embarrassed by her eight grade education and secret hillbilly ways.

 

[anotherbob]

like anything people weigh the consequences and benefits (not that they're good at it, but it's something people do). The weird thing with smoking is not all people react the same too it. But pain and stress seem to be the thing that really get the numbers up on tobacco. After and during super stressful times people use way more tobacco. There for example is a huge spice in tobacco sales during finals. The flip side is people are far more aware of the dangers of cigarettes. When almost everyone smokes cigarettes the effects can't be separated from the effects of age. When less people do something you can really see the effects stand out. It's obvious that all the old ladies who smoke have that terrible smokers hack.... while no one else does. But yeah it's universal but it's going to vary over time as far as what percentage of people take on the vice. And yes if people realized how much safer it is if done any other way then cancer sticks.... I bet a lot more people would use tobacco. Funny how the first real huge drops in tobacco use came after cigs became the most common way to use it. Only a few generations after.....