<What I want to see is the day when these companies, who still prey on the young, except they go abroad to do it openly, are driven into bankruptcy. I want their stock to be just as poisonous as their product. If lawsuits hurry that process along, I'm for it. That's my agenda.

You don't understand how the anti-tobacco forces play the system. Nobody's going to drive the cigarette companies bankrupt. The idea is to keep the companies running just fine, as long as lawyers and governments can continue to siphon big chunks of money off of them. Ever wonder why no politician ever just up and made cigarettes illegal, when so many other deadly substances have? The tax money is just too damn good.

Keep in mind when dishing out the moral indignation that the cigarette companies aren't the only ones who like hauling in big bucks from cancer victims.

Meanwhile, take comfort in the fact that smoking, at least in American, isn't anywhere near as "cool" as it was when I was a kid, and everyone in the movies and everywhere else was dragging on cigarettes. In fact, smoking is a declining habit, hanging on in areas of the Third World and a few other places. Eventually, as with anything else, the rest of the world will follow America and smoking will be the exception rather than the rule.

Ayn Rand enthusiastically smoked, and few were the Ayn Rand characters who didn't have a cigarette sticking out of their mouths. It was kind of pathetic to see her stubbornly defending smoking even as cancer was killing her--not the first time her vaunted objectivity failed her when it came up against a matter of personal taste or preference.