George Will (240) offers a series of arguments against smoking in an effort to demonstrate the ironies and paradoxes that abound when this topic is introduced. The primary premise offered by Will (241) is that smoking is damaging to one's health and costly not only in terms of human consequences, but also in terms of medical care, lost productivity in the workplace, and other intangible and human and social costs. One of the primary premises advanced by Will (241) is that "the fact that cigarettes are harmful has been broadly understood for several generations and today is almost universally acknowledged."
Will offers other premises that identify the irony implicit in the debate over smoking and its effects. First, government subsidizes tobacco farming alongside the treatment of illnesses caused by tobacco consumption, using a treasury that is diminished by revenues lost by decreased productivity linked to 1,164 smoking-related deaths every day. The conclusion that he draws from these explicit statements is essential implicit: smoking is far too costly to be tolerated.
Will also concludes explicitly that efforts to educate and inform people about the dangers of smoking have resulted in a dramatic decline in the number of Americans who smoke from about 50 percent of all adults in 1950 to about 25 percent of all adults today. He explicitly suggests that it is government's involvement in educational efforts that has resulted in this dramatic behavioral change.
To explain why people smoke, Will (241) offers several explicit premises. Cigarette smoking is seen as a highly sensual experience. It costs less than one penny per minute. Since smoking hastens the death of only one in four smokers, many people believe that the odds are in their favor despite their risk-taking behavior. Finally, most people believe that since death is inevitable, one should at least do something that is pleasurable even if there
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