Smoking can make your skin wrinkle and age, smoking can give rise to bronchitis or emphysema, smoking can delay the healing of gastric or duodenal ulcers, smoking can contribute to the development of coronary heart diseases, smoking can cause lung cancer, and yes, smoking can definitely, undoubtedly, and thankfully kill you after you've suffered from all those ailments! These alarming and outrageous expressions are now heard everyday, everywhere, and by everyone. They are the numbers and figures of laboratories, the talk shows and topics of the media, and the fears and nightmares of the public. But is this widely feared phenomenon what it really seems? And is the smoking monster the real reason behind the increasing death toll worldwide?

For an eight cm paper-tube full of tobacco to cause such severe pain and intense controversy, it has to have some kind of curse...