When will the world give up this filthy habit? And can the US give up its addiction while it puffs away from every smokestack and exhaust pipe, giving the planet lung cancer? It’s setting such a bad example to teenage economies. 

Despite decades of evidence that smoking kills – that cigarettes are weapons of mass destruction – the lighting of fags still causes as much fatal disease as malaria and AIDS combined. And despite certain knowledge that fossil fuels are ruining the world’s respiratory system, the addicts are unrepentant. 

If we continue to ignore the health warnings on coalmines and keep exhaling great clouds of CO2 we’ll all go up the chimney. Yet governments are still opening mines as often as smokers open their packets of cancer sticks.  

Let’s look at the history of cigarette smoking in the US. Again and again it will remind you of the fight against fossil fuels. The same suppression of science, the same decades of denial, the same lying propaganda, the same consumer resistance, the same tragic consequences. 

As we move into the climate change century don’t forget the scale and cynicism of the 20th century’s mass marketing of death that turned out Lucky Strikes. 

Despite the warning labels finally forced upon the industry like emission smoke tunnels continues to grow and kill.