I'm bothered when I hear someone deprecate a smoker, perhaps standing beside the door of an office building in a sleet storm, puffing away madly. Reformed smokers (such as me) are often the worst critics, asking with a smug self-righteousness just what it will take to convince the sad sack to finally quit.

Certainly high prices (you think gas has gone up? Look at cigarettes), smoking area restrictions and public scorn don't outweigh nicotine addiction for many. Why is it we don't sympathize with those unable to evade the drug's powerful clutches?

With smokes running $4.50 a pack in many places, a two-pack-a-day smoker (note: most smokers understate the amount they smoke) has a $56 a week, $2,912 a year monkey on his/her back. If the smoker were to quit and put the same amount in savings, in 30 years he/she could accumulate $168,761.82 before taxes. Quitting would also open more job opportunities, as some companies are unwilling to hire what they perceive (wrongly) employees who would incur more health plan charges.

What many younger people fail to understand is just how thoroughly we were brainwashed in the 50's and 60's about the benefits of smoking; relaxation, sophistication, sexiness. There was no depth to which the companies would not stoop, from coupons redeemable for gifts (and no, the rumor that an iron lung was one of the gifts was not true) to contests with magnificent prices, to coerce us to smoke.

The Marlboro Man and various celebrities pitched the cancer sticks like they were love and success wrapped in paper. Advertising works, and with the best and brightest minds dedicated to putting a Lucky in our lungs, I think its sad that we disdain those who fell for it. They deserve our sympathy.

I can't think of a better example of tobacco's determination to plant the smoking seed in even the youngest viewer than this ad from the stone age of television.

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I think it is safe to say that everyone knows smoking is an expensive habit. Besides the increased use of cost of health care for smokers the amount spent on cigarettes over a lifetime can be mind-numbing, especially with prices on the rise. Thankfully if you need to really see how much that nicotine addiction is costing you; you can use a free Windows tool called CostofSmoking to find out your current smoking tab.

While there are already more online calculators out there to help you figure out the cost of smoking, none of them offer the range of options that CostofSmoking does. This program takes increases in cost as well as future savings and inflation rates into calculating the cost of smoking. You can also set up multiple periods to account for any times in the past where you did quit, to get a more accurate total cost of smoking.

While we all have our vices and weaknesses when it comes to budgeting and saving, I don't see how anyone can be a smoker and still complain about not having enough money. Even though the estimation of my video game habits adds up to an awakening $10,000 over the course of 10 years, it still doesn't touch the out of pocket cost of $89,000 a smoker would spend on his addiction over a 20 year period, 10 years past and another 10 into the future. If you invested in a savings account over the same 20 year period you'd be looking at savings of at least $120,000 in money not spent on butts.

If this tool doesn't convince you that smoking is a fiscally irresponsible activity, then you must be pretty well off!

As I may have pointed out once or twice, I am a former smoker. As such, I would have to argue that I'm a little more sensitive to cigarettes than most. Whereas the average non-smoker merely has to deal with a little unwanted smoke, I have to deal with unwanted smoke while attempting to quell the demon inside that is telling me to steal the cigarette, suck it down, and go on a nicotine bender. In spite of this, however, I try to be a nice non-smoker. I don't fake cough, I try to avoid getting into preachy discussions about the dangers of the evil weed, and I generally do my best to live and let live. With this in mind, I can't help but feel that anti-smoking laws in Canada may have jumped the shark...

The first thing is the anti-smoking warnings. Since 2000, the Canadian government has mandated that cigarette packages must sport large warnings that take up roughly 50% of the available display space. These warnings, which have to appear in both French and English, feature highly specific information about the means by which cigarettes harm health. Best of all, they come with flashy and disturbing pictures.

Canada's latest tool in its war against nicotine delivery devices is a law requiring that stores cannot openly display cigarettes. By the end of this year, all Canadian cigarette retailers must either keep their cancer sticks in drawers or hide them behind gray wall hangings that cost approximately $1,000 US. The idea is that, if children cannot see cigarettes, then they will not be inclined to begin smoking. On the other hand, speaking as someone who started smoking in his early 20's, I'd have to say that there's a slight flaw in the plan.

Whoa man! The recession is like totally upon us! What am I going to eat for dinner? I think I will head to the local store and stock up on some shrimp, fettuccine, Now & Laters, Miller High Life and some pasta sauce. These wonderful staples represent the foods that the Nielsen research company identified in a recent study as the most recession proof foods. In order to find out exactly which goods rank the highest on Maslow's hierarchy of needs during a recession, the researchers looked at the performance of certain food goods during past recessions.

During this study they also found out which items are the most susceptible to a tanking economy. These include items such as pop, eggs and cigarettes, as well as food storage items and plates. I can definitely understand the drop off in cigarettes and pop but the egg avoidance in particular stands out as a shocker. Since eggs seem like an excellent source of low cost protein I can only guess that the downturn could be attributed to more people foregoing breakfast or switching to store brand dry cereal, though cereal doesn't show up as a recession proof good.

While I do find the selection of goods which weather a recession well surprising in some areas, I can get behind the fact that when times get tough, people can rationalize an item such as beer as an escape or even picking up a king size candy bar as a cheap meal replacement. We haven't altered our food intake significantly in any of these areas. Since it is summer time we have been "feasting" on cheap chicken and sales on beef products for grilling at our local stores. We have also been eating more salad, which can be had pretty cheap, and lunching on any leftovers.

Has the economic downturn affected your diet yet? What foods will you run to and what will your holdouts be?

Emphysema, heart disease, lung cancer, necrosis, crib death, bad smells...smoking has been accused of causing an almost endless list of problems. Recently, however, New York's outrageous taxes have added a fresh one: funding terrorism.

Because of recent tax increases, cigarettes currently cost approximately $9 a pack in New York city. On the other hand, they cost roughly $3 a pack when purchased at Indian reservations on Long Island. For years, New Yorkers have used reservations to help fund their habits by purchasing cartons of cigarettes, either in person or via the internet. The recent tax hike, however, has made cigarette smuggling an easy and relatively safe way to make a lot of money.

According to a recent report, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is currently investigating over 300 smuggling rings that are purchasing cigarettes from Indian reservations or southern states with lower taxes and reselling them in New York City. Some of these smugglers supposedly have links to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda.

In an opinion piece in the New York Post, Congressman Peter King (R-NY) cited the case of cigarette smuggler Mohamad Hammoud, who allegedly made $8 million from 2000-2002 and donated $100,000 to Hezbollah. Congressman King noted that the operational cost of the 9/11 airstrikes was approximately $500,000, a sum that could be generated with only a few cigarette runs. Of course, from the perspective of international terrorists, this is a win/win situation: if the Camels don't get ya, the fundamentalists will.

While I'm sure that cigarettes will end up bearing the brunt of outrage over this issue, it might be a good idea to look beyond the obvious. Congressman King is calling for a repeal of the "forebearance" that allows Indian reservations to sell cigarettes without charging tax. As a student of history, I feel like we've cheated the Indians enough, but I agree that something must be done about this. May I humbly suggest that we stop using cigarette taxes as a way of dictating our health policy, try to treat smokers like humans and, perhaps, find another way of filling our public coffers?

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. As a former smoker, he doesn't like the smell of cigarettes, but tries to not be a jerk about it!

Wired should get an award for one of its latest articles, which offers a fascinating look at what ingredients can be found in your typical cigarette. If anyone thinking of smoking reads this article first, it seems like a sure-thing that they'd never light up. Seriously, do someone a favor and forward this post or the Wired article to an impressionable teenager who you think is at risk of smoking.

For instance, one important ingredient in cigarettes is called castoreum. As writer Patrick Di Justo notes, it's "commonly found in the secretions of a beaver's castor glands (located near the animal's genitals)." Castorem gives the cigarette a sweet odor and smoky flavor.

Other wonderful ingredients in a cigarette include copaiba oil, which is "so flammable it can practically fuel a diesel engine without any refining at all" and phenyl methyl ketone, a "major component of tear gas." Copaiba oil is in cigarettes, Di Justo theorizes, because "ammonium hydroxide, another ingredient, decreases combustibility, so manufacturers have to counteract it with a nontoxic accelerant." He then adds that copaiba oil is also used as a folk remedy for prostate tumors and gonorrhea.

The Wired story has a very entertaining summary of the ingredients in cigarettes, though the article doesn't mention all of them, and how could it? According to information given to the Department of Health and Human Services in April of 1994, there are 599 different additives that can be found in various cigarettes, including as its often been reported, carbon monoxide. It's a testament to just how addicting these tobacco products are (oh, yes, I forgot to mention that tobacco is also in cigarettes) because you know that most smokers who have read stories like the Wired one continue smoking, anyway. But it should be enough to make smoke come out of enraged cigarette users' ears.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

Sheraton and Four Points by Sheraton recently added a new revenue stream: a $200 fine for smoking when all of the chains' hotels become smoke-free by the end of 2008.

According (subscription required) to the Wall Street Journal, Disney World will charge you as much as $500 if you light up in one of their hotel rooms, all of which are non-smoking. Swissotel Chicago pays its maids $10 for every smoker they catch.

Of course, plenty of smokers are complaining about the policy, but I think it's a good one: if you can afford to stay at Disney World and spend money on cigarettes, you can afford to pay a fine. Efforts to create inconveniences for smokers -- some hotels won't allow their guests to smoke within 15 feet of the entrance -- will encourage people to quit smoking.

And a hotel that charges $500 for smoking might be an excellent location for a "quit smoking" retreat -- Add in some spa treatments and hypnosis services, and chains like the Sheraton could probably market it as a "Stop Smoking 1-Week Getaway."