[Avodah] No Smokers for My Daughters

[Zev Sero]

Prof. Levine wrote:
> Please see the article at * 
> http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/1366/no-smokers-for-my-daughters* *
> 
> *I find it strange that Jonathan Rosenblum does not mention the psak 
> titled "The Prohibition of Smoking in Halacha" that is at  
> http://www.rabbis.org/pdfs/Prohibition_Smoking.pdf  
> <http://www.rabbis.org/pdfs/Prohibition_Smoking.pdf%A0%A0> In light of 
> this, how can one call any young person who takes up smoking a Ben Torah?
> 
> When I emailed Rosenblum pointing this out, he replied, "That is not a 
> universally subscribed to opinion. I did not want to get into it." I 
> asked him for the names of those who disagreed with the RCA opinion, but 
> I have not heard back from him. Does anyone know of a poseik who permits 
> smoking today in light of what we know of the health risks of this habit?

Smoking has a chezkas heter, so any posek who didn't sign this or any
similar proclamation can be presumed to still permit it.  There's no
need to ask again.  The argument given in this resolution is rather
tendentious.  In particular it depends on the CDC's ludicrous claim
that over 400K people a year die in the USA from tobacco's effects.
It fails to recognise that the CDC have become highly politicised and
are now prisoners of the "public health" lobby; they can no longer be
regarded as neutral sources of unbiased fact, at least with regard to
any political issue, and tobacco is a highly political issue.  Without
these unfounded CDC claims, the premise falls away and we are left with
a mortality rate of less than 50%, or at least a safek, which is not
enough to destroy a chazakah.

Even if one could prove that more than 50% of smokers live slightly
shorter lives than they would otherwise, I don't see the halachic basis
for forbidding it.  R Bleich is quoted as writing "if the majority of
smokers do indeed face premature death as a result of cigarette smoking
there is, according to Binyan Tzion’s thesis, no halakhic basis for
sanctioning the practice even though the multitude continues ‘to tread 
thereon’.  That is so even if longevity is reduced only marginally."
But no basis is given for this assertion.  It's simply taken for
granted.  But who says it's so?    It's generally accepted that one may
refuse chemotherapy even if has a >50% chance of extending ones life
for a few months; one is entitled to decide that those few months aren't
worth the pain.  So who says that one may not accept a >50% risk of
losing a few months at the end of ones life in return for the presumed
pleasure of smoking now, decades earlier?   Surely a source is needed
for such a proposition.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher