If we want people to quit smoking, we must not quit our search for a solution that does not replace one carcinogen with another; that does not further cloud the air with the stench of tobacco and the staleness of secondhand smoke; that does not so much end an addiction as start another, with individuals unable to stop their cravings for cigarettes and nicotine.
That this mission must be a priority is obvious, given the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, given, also, the medical costs of treating smokers who have lung cancer or emphysema.
We cannot afford, in short, to perpetuate a system that disproportionately taxes the poor and impoverishes our national treasury with higher insurance premiums and longer hospital stays.
We cannot afford to let the smoke, real or rhetorical, blind us to our duty: to emphasize a natural—and harmless—means of helping people to quit smoking.
Such is the rationale behind Harmless Cigarette, whose name is self-explanatory and whose mission is urgent. Such is the reason we should encourage the attempt to make quitting smoking less of an ordeal and more of an ideal; one that is attainable without additional risks; one that does not risk a person’s already fragile health—including his mental health, as the brain dictates what the body wants—damaging his mind with the same impunity by which it destroys his lungs.
Let us celebrate the campaign to end smoking.
Let us campaign to achieve what we want to applaud.
Let us win this fight.