[WhiteWarrior]

Both of my grandparents on my mother's side died from lung cancer. He had smoked all his life. She had never tasted tobacco - but she lived with him.

My dad smoked 40 a day when I was a kid. I recall sitting in the back of the car opening the tiny little back seat window trying to breathe fresh air through it. But he quit one day and never had a cigarette again.

I started smoking when I was 18 and got hired for the summer on a construction crew. Everyone else were gnarly old guys and they were all smokers. I felt silly during the smoking breaks being the only non smoker, so I got on it as well. The only thing construction crews smoke(d?) is rolled tobacco without filters. That's pretty rough stuff. Once I became a student I entered a different environment and lost the habit fairly quick.

As a military history reenactor I found the clay pipe very nice. There's a lot of time on shows between battles where you just walk around in uniform and I found all the fiddling with the pipe and the sailor's tobacco very historically correct. But I never did that stuff outside such events.

I don't think I have had nicotine now in what, twenty years? Time passes so quickly. I still think nicotine has some potential benefits. But the health issues outweighs them. In my country now, nicotine is practically vanished. Social tastes changed, smoking laws killed smoking in social settings, and the taxes on all tobacco products make a pack of twenty cigs cost 15 dollar in shops. I have better use for my money - and for my lungs.