Whether smoking should be protected

本文用3个问题中讲述了为什么从开始吸烟之后就很难停下来？吸烟这种表现形式是否予以保护？吸烟这种现状是否应该存在？

Answer all questions in your own words and cite all sources!!!!!! Write more than two complete, substantive sentences per question. Answer all three questions.

1) Why, in your opinion, do people begin to smoke? Why do people find it so difficult to stop?

I believe that people first come into contact with smoking for different reasons. Some are influenced by friends, some may find the act of smoking glamorous and cool, and some may simply be curious enough to try. I think that the fact smoking is difficult to quit is due to the addiction caused by nicotine and other chemical compounds in tobacco, which leads to unbearable withdraw symptoms when one attempts to quit. More importantly, in my opinion, the reason that most people have not successfully stopped smoking, is that even though they are fully aware of the negative impact that smoking can have on one’s health, the impact seems to be so chronicle that the smokers simply choose to neglect it. And by the time they come to realize that the tobacco has taken a toll on their health, they have already become too heavily addicted, which, by all means, makes quitting extremely difficult. 
  

2) According to Klein, smoking is a form of expression and should be protected as such. How does he justify this claim?

Klein’s justification for smoking is a form of expression that needs to be protected is based on the beauty and benefits of smoking a cigarette. Claiming cigarette to be sublime and possesses charms of the dark beauty, Klein listed several literature involving cigarettes as artful objects (6). Moreover, he also suggested that the behavior of smoking a cigarette could be representation of the smoker’s personality and thoughts (8). Though the bad physical influence of smoking has been widely acknowledged, Klein raised the point that smoking servers the function of regulating anxiety and mediating social interaction (17). The fact that smoking was widely promoted during war fairs, and that women were given cigarette rations upon gaining freedom connects smoking and liberty (14). 



3) What examples of smoking does Klein take from Sartre's Being and Nothingness? Can you find any in what we have read so far? 
 
Klein referred to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (L’etre et le neant) in his first chapter of Cigarettes Are Sublime several times, quoting Sartre’s philosophical view of cigarette and smoking a cigarette. Klein mentioned Sartre’s regarding a pipe as being, whereas cigarette as nothingness (28); Sartre’s conception of smoking a cigarette as appropriation, taking smoking as a symbolic act, which dissolves the smoker into his/her surroundings (38). In his first chapter, Klein even quoted one piece of excerpt of Sartre’s own reflection on his attempt in giving up smoking (36).

Work Cited
Klein, Richard. Cigarettes Are Sublime. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 1993. Print.