Are Smokers Dumber than George Will?

In a word, no. Though George Will thinks they are:

Someday the ashtray may be as anachronistic as the spittoon, but fear of death may be a milder deterrent to smoking than is the fact that smoking is dumb and déclassé. Dumb? Would you hire a smoker, who must be either weak-willed or impervious to evidence?

The rest of Will’s column is a reasonable, if hardly surprising, run through the contradictions and absurdities that abound whenever the US government turn its mind to tobacco policy. The latest example of this: decision to further restrict tobacco companies’ freedoms via  a bill passed with the enthusiastic support* of Philip Morris who know fine well that it entrenches their position as market leader.

But Will’s assertion that smokers must be “either weak-willed or impervious to evidence” is the sort of ignorant scorn you always see from scolds and the kind of lofty disdain that is Will’s trademark style.