She Was Told to Smoke. Then She Was Told to Stop Trying to Quit.
October 07, 2026 by substack.com
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She Was Told to Smoke. Then She Was Told to Stop Trying to Quit.
She was first told to smoke, then judged for needing a way out. That contradiction captures a long public health failure: people were encouraged into cigarettes by culture, marketing and social norms, then later treated as the problem when they struggled to quit. Harm reduction starts from a more humane place. It recognises dependence, history and circumstance, and gives people safer routes away from combustion without turning their past into a moral verdict.
