People who don't smoke will never die

It's true, I saw it on TV.

If you don't smoke, you will live forever. Unlike those irrational swine with the butts hanging out of their mouths, you won't have to miss out on the smiling, happy faces of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Ha! Ha! Ha! That poor dumb bastard over there, the one with the zippo? His ass is grass, just like it says in Ecclesiastes! He's mortal! His days are numbered!

But not you. You had the good sense to say "no". You'll be here when the sun grows cold, when the stars wink out, and the whole damned universe slows to a crawl.

So don't smoke, kids. Really, I'm tellin' ya this fer ya own good. Eschew the demon nicotine, for he and he alone has brought death into the world.

---

Wyclef: "Environmental hazard"?! Are you serious? Are you comparing my output to that of a truck, or a steel mill? Or perhaps a solid waste incinerator? Yes, I've probably shortened the life of the average citizen of Cambridge by 0.0001 seconds or some such. God will punish me when my time comes. Of course, it is true that non-smokers will hunt down and kill all smokers, sooner or later. That's why I'm wired with a bomb at all times. I'm nobody's fool, heh heh heh.

Lest we forget of the perils of

second-hand smoke,

let me remind you, smokers, that those of us who do not indulge in your habit still have our life-spans irrecoverably shortened by the environmental hazard you pose. Yes, theoretically, we are near-immortal. But the American Indians destroyed our Eden. I offer three possible solutions:

1. Non-smokers enclose themselves in hermetically sealed rooms a la the Bubble Boy
2. Non-smokers hunt down and kill all smokers
3. I had a third solution, actually, the premature aging brought upon me by second-hand smoke robbed me of it. This shall not go unpunished!

3. Or you could all start smoking.

You know, I used to smoke but I quit 6 months ago. Now second hand smoke bothers me... yet... Every time I hear a non smoker whine I still feel like breaking his/her face. Why is that?

It is noteworthy to comment that one of the best and funniest takes on non-smokers and thier life spans was by the late great Bill Hicks and his infamous "Smokers die... every day..." skit.

I took a public speaking course way back in my university days. The class was about half mathematics and engineering majors, and half artsies. About 1/3 of the way through the term we had to do our first major speech to the class. Everyone tried to be polite and attentive, because of course our turn was coming.

One nice young lady chose to speak on the topic of smoking. During her talk, she told us that "If you quit smoking, it reduces your chance of death." Now, we all knew what she meant ... but at the same time, the concept enthralled all the mathies and engineers. Laughter, whispering and note-passing (P(death) < 1.0?) ensued, and I regret to say we distracted her thoroughly¹.

The consensus of the techie half of the class was that we should all start smoking, and then quit. So our theory was really People who quit smoking might never die ... but close enough.

---

1. We did apologise afterward, for whatever that was worth.

This is with reference to a since-deleted writeup. I've heard a lot of people giving the arguments above, saying that Smoking is actually good because it takes away the last few miserable years of your life.
The primary assumption here seems to be something like this:If you do not smoke you will live for 70 years, and if you do then you will live for 60 years but at at age 60 your health level will be the same as the health level of a non smoker at 60-That is a manifest fallacy.

Before you die, your body begins to fail. So if you die at 70 your body begins to fail at 65 and if you die at 60 your body begins to fail at 55. So there doesn't seem to a way of getting those years out of your life (except for providence). If you smoke you are still going to go through them.

Also, smoking tends to affect you even when you are in the prime of you your life. I have seen people who were brilliant athletes in school, not being able to run even a single kilometer(without a lot of effort) after a few years of smoking.
Then of course there is the added chance that you would contract a painful disease like lung cancer.

So on the whole maybe its wise to stay off...

Suvrat: I think you're missing the point here slightly. Dennis Leary was a comedian, he wasn't speaking seriously.

I think I can safely say that what Leary actually meant was that the obsession with longer living, and the spin-off obsession with smoking, are exaggerated and ridiculous. We're all gonna die sooner or later, and most of us are not going to have fun doing it.

In smoker's rights, themusic says that smoke-related deaths are a terrible way to go. So? What's a good way to go? At 27, weighing a quarter of your normal weight, with no body hair or natural immunity left, like my friend Dannie did? In a screeching ambulance, en route from one hospital to another because his insurance wasn't valid in the first one, like my grandfather did? In a government nursing home, not having remembered her own or her children's names for the last twelve years, incontinent, lonely and befuddled, like my husband's grandmother did?

These people did not die of smoking - they died from cancer, bureaucracy and old age respectively. And they all had horrible deaths. So will I. So will you. Dying is an ugly, sad, undignified business, and the paranoia about smoking is just a displacement activity for the natural fear it inspires in us.