good luck quitting smoking, smokers.

that is all. good day.

It doesn’t matter that YOU don’t think it’s neither smokers’ rights or anti-smoker. The ANTI-SMOKERS have taken ownership of it to USE for their stop smoking material. THEY think it’s theirs (anti-smoker). The “addict” has been one of their stongest weapons to intervene in people’s choices through legislation and taxation: “They (smokers) wouldn’t smoke if they weren’t addicted and not thinking straight because of it. Therefore we must ‘help’ them.” They DO use it against us.

And don’t ignore the fact that Twain NEVER said it. Yet the anti-smokers use it to shore up support for themselves. Just like using any other celebrity to enhance their “product.”

Amanda, you are not an ANTI-smoker obviously. It’s possible you smoke but I’m guessing you don’t. So then, that would make you a NON-smoker — a different animal from the antis who are rabidly for scorning smokers. They try to lay claim to you (the non-smoker) too and say they speak for you.

What makes it difficult for the smokers’ rights people to combat the anti-smokers hate campaign — that DOES seek to scorn (and that’s putting it mildly) smokers — is the naivete over what’s going by the non-smokers.

That’s why I was attracted by Mike’s piece in the first place. It’s a welcomed rare voice.

“apocryphal” ? Hmm. Riggs, this won’t do.

I believe in backing up my statements so here is just one example: http://www.smokefreemv.com/quit.html

Audrey, I’m sorry to learn that the Twain quote is apocryphal–I interpreted it as a pro-smoking quote. After all, quitting 1,000 times comes out to once every two weeks or so, which isn’t quitting at all!

The day 8 decades worth of movies equate being fat with being cool, that’s the day you can say that society makes it harder on smokers than on fat peeps.

Also, I don’t see how that fake-Twain quote is even anti-smoking. It seems to be belittling the very idea that you ought to quit permanently.

According to Snopes.com (that myth-buster site):

Mark Twain uttered a great many memorable lines during his lifetime, but he has also had many a saying attributed to him that he never gave voice to. Other apocryphal Twainisms include: “To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.” http://www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp

In fact, Twain found the anti-smoker as utterly annoying as many other people who want to be left alone to smoke. From Mark Twain in The Californian, June 17, 1865,Answers to Correspondents:

“MORAL STATISTICIAN. – I don’t want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc…”

The rest here: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/paine/index.html

Twain must roll over in his grave everytime an anti mutters his name in their war on smokers.

Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment
(C.L.A.S.H.)