William S. Lear wrote: >I think Doug makes a mistake of too easily letting the tobacco >companies off the hook for helping to shape preferences for smoking. I've never let them off the hook. I said that anyone who believes that people smoke only because evil tobacco companies manipulate us into doing so (and I smoke about a pack or two a year, in the interests of full disclosure) has a pretty limited understanding of human desire. Ditto Seagram's and drink. Sure they manipulate us into buying their brand, and maximizing our purchases; sure they trick people into thinking there's something sophisticated about smoking, etc. etc. But it's a fact that the very danger of cigarettes can be part of their attraction; that's why Richard Klein said they're sublime, right? And the more the impeccably moral Bill Clinton makes teen smoking the centerpiece of his moral renovation campaign, the more teens take up smoking. As William Osler put it, "The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals." Doug
