When you smoke, cigarettes become a part of your very identity. You become devoted to them and will defend them—and those that make them—to the death. Unfortunately, for many, that's not just rhetoric.
Apparently the Tobacco Institute (Big Tobacco's one-time lobbying agency) ran ads in newspapers in the late '60s/early '70s asking smokers to write to them if they wanted the "facts" about smoking and health. I've come across several of the letters written in response to these ads, and they all have one thing in common: devotion.
Click on the below to see one example, a letter from 1970. The writer, a 30-year smoker, talks about how important smoking with pals in the VA hospital was and how he thinks "C.S." (for Cancer Society) actually stands for "Crock of Shit."
