Ive smoked pure tobacco in a villiage in turkey. I was drunk at the time but thats not why i puked.

the farmers take it in from the fields in cars, tuktuks, bikes, lorries, horseback, whatever. The schoolyard is covered with black plastic and the raw tobacco is spread out on it. Some sections are mixed with fruit, to be used for shisha pipesmoking. Anyhow, its not really dry before all the kids come and walk all over it. Up and down they walk, all day long, trampling and mixing the tobacco. An utterly disgusting stench rises and its everywhere. I think, it must be possible to smell this shit from miles away. Well, many of the 'real men', myself included, smoked it while its still moist. Using bits of coal to keep it burning. The coal enters the lungs as vapour but inside it crystallizes - after a few years smoking arabic pipes i had to quit, HAD to, because of the coal in my lungs. Well, i only saw the harvesting process once but the one thing that sticks in my mind is the kids feet. Surely they must be discoloured for the rest of their lives. Maybe even stinking raw tobacco for a lifetime, i dont know.

Then there's the social element. disclose.tv had a great show about a drug called crocodile which is methodically destroying some russian border towns, and everyone in them. Even in that case I could'nt distinguish any justification for legal OR SOCIAL persecution of the users. In the russian case, they were their own dealers, manufacturing the drug themselves according to recipies found on facebook and ingredients bought OTC at 24 hour pharmacies. So indeed, what to do? Suggest to start by seeing the users, ALL of them, as victims. ?

Hfcampo over and over tries to insinuate that being addicted to something is a choice that an individual makes. And a further implication is that the addict continues to decide to be addicted on an ongoing basis.

I dont think thats correct at all. Nobody ever decided 'im gonna try to be a junkie/chainsmoker/alco/obese'. Nobody. But how to formulate another counterargument escapes me at the minute. There are various opinons on whether the tendency to be addicted is genetic. However i think hfcampos post adequately describes why nicotine addiction is not (just) genetic, but also chemical. So on the one hand we have the chemical element (treat all drugs as poisons, and the addicts as victims) and on the other hand we have the physiological/psychological element (treat addicts as mentally/physically allergic to a 'harmless' substance). In neither of these arguments can i see a case for legal OR SOCIAL persecution of users. Dealers, however, including cigarette companies, knowingly expose substances to the public, in full knowledge that their profits generate hardship yet contribute absoloutely nothing to society. Except tax dollars and a need for rehabilitation.

you should see puerto rico :)

american gothic was a fantastic tv show, 90's i think. great fun and entertainment, as well as a latent, intelligent philosophical proposal. sheriff calebs proposal was, more or less, everyone is guilty.

therefore...tolerance.

yapp, agreed. can't force someone to be free. i think id need to be high before i could continue down that line of thought :)
kafka & lou reed vs huxley & sartre in a king-of-the-ring tag team match? :)