I'm an ex-smoker, I -loved- smoking. I wasn't addicted, I enjoyed the taste. I mean I was addicted, but it was something I did when I sat down with a good book. A good book, a glass of nice brandy and a pouch of tobacco. I fucking loved it. I had to quit because of certain medications I was taking, but rest assured ... if I wasn't on meds you better believe I'd be puffing away.
And yes, you get treated as a pariah. I think it is absolutely ridiculous.
As a person who has spent 95% of their lives living in congested cities ... do you know how much fat people impinge upon shopping, getting to work, or having a nice plane trip?
I was all for charging fat people more for airfares because why is it I have to pay 100 bucks for being over my luggage when someone who weighs as much as me AND my luggage doesn't have to pay diddly squat?
And they talk about medical costs associated with smoking ... in Japan, everybody fucking smokes. EVERYBODY. Like blast furnaces they smoke. And yet everybody lives to be 150 (slight exaggeration, but they do live a very long time on average). Obese people? Not a chance in Hell ... even the kiss of the Devil can't avert all the degenerative effects that come from excessive calories and fat.
I have a theory ... you see everybody who diers of a coronary who was a smoker, they blame cigarettes. Doesn't matter that the guy might have been 26 stone of human mass ... nope ... cigarettes killed him. I'm willing to bet that all the 'untimely deaths' from cigarettes under the age of 60 in the Western World the grand majority of them were overweight. I'm also willing to bet dollars to donuts that it's your diet, not the 10 or 15 cigarettes a day you smoke that lay you under.
I mean look at all the allergies, the diseases, the cancers that accrue in obesity cases or the children of obese parents. Then look at the piddly few that cigarettes are known to cause (and even then, completely cultural specific, like in Japan ... people don't die of coronaries even oif they are pack a day smokers).
I'm willing to bet that being obese is 10 x worse for you than being a heavy smoker. But no ... if you're a fat guy who smokes, doctors in the Western World will say that it is the smoking to be blamed if you die before 60.