With respect to the number of deaths, arms manufacturers are charitable institutions compared to cigarette manufacturers.

~Silvio Garattini, doctor, researcher, professor, and founder of the European Organization for Research on Treatment of Cancer (b. 1928)

A Thought for Today? More like bestial blather. Governments extort funds (read: taxes) from one set of innocent civilians to purchase implements of indiscriminate slaughter, which are then used to kill, maim, poison, starve and impoverish another set of innocent civilians. The transactions—extortion and mayhem—are void of any semblance of consent.

Smoking tobacco—like eating Twinkies, drinking bourbon, gambling, whoring and hang-gliding—is an activity freely pursued by adults notwithstanding its well-publicized risks. Only a nanny-state opportunist fails to see the difference.

Only that the cigarette manufacturers hook them young. And deny proven danger of their products for years, no decades. (Anu Garg)

Except persuasion is not coercion. Negative influences are a fact of life; it's parents' responsibility to protect their children from them.

~Tony

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

~C . S. Lewis