I love the idea of smoking.
cause ideas aren't carcinogenic. Smokers are sarcastic, free breathers are earnest (see wholetruth.com). When a smoker offers to get up and leave so as not to bother me by blowing a haze of stink over my food, I emphatically say No. I do not want to be left alone with a table of nonsmoking jibbajabba while my ugly jerk friend gets to share private time with the fetching tar-sucking brunette who's joined us. If free breathers are annoyed, they should take their plate and drink outside until the interesting pretty soft girl is done blowing tiny particles of crap out of her mouth.

Smoking habits also make for good stories, like this one about Uganda's cigarette industry.

Story has everything: San Fran anti-smoking jihaddists bankrolling the fight against smoking in Africa. President Yoweri Museveni--by most accounts one of sub-Saharan Africa's most progressive leaders--arguing that Africans do not inhale cigarette smoke. A reference to Canada's warning labels, "which show gruesome photographs of suffering smokers." Cigarette execs arguing in the 80's that smoking's not bad for people, and cigarette execs today arguing that in a continent beset with an AIDS crisis, harping on the dangers of tobacco is somehow petty. Everybody's a freak.