Smoking has been proven beyond a doubt to be harmful to ones health...

Different people have different standards of what they consider a "proof". Being educated as a theoretical physicist and having also studied the antismoking "proof", including the financial interests surrounding it, along with the much longer history of tobacco (which was highly revered as a medicinal plant), I have concluded that the antismoking "proof" is a self-serving scientific con job (one among several peddled by the present-day health con industry, which includes not only amalgams & thimerosal frauds, but the entire "cholesterol mythology" with its toxic statins ruining the "golden years" of many millions in USA alone).

Since you have no doubt, smoking would certainly be harmful to you for the same reason that a death curse is genuinly harmful to those who believe in it.

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... tobacco companies know this and have begun buying up food companies because they know their demise is on the way.

That has nothing to do with scientific proof. It is simply the result of corporations pursuing their self-interest, which is certainly not identical with the interest of smokers.

The Big Tobacco realized that the Big Anti-tobacco (Big Pharma, Big Med and the "health" bureaucrats on their pay) is a far bigger fish than themselves, hence they joined them at the expense of smokers. It may be short sighted and it will eventually backfire, but the corporate managers mostly care about the next few quarters at best, hence it's a right decision within their horizons.

While the demise of the Big Tobacco is on the way, and it will be a well deserved fate, that is not the same as demise of the ancient medicinal plant, tobacco, or of those who believe in and are helped by its healing properties revered in its long history. Smokers, who number about 60 million of voting, working and consuming adults in USA (or about a third worldwide), are just beginning to awake to the scientific scam and the underlying financial extortion, at least those better educated and independently minded ones, who can check and critically evaluate the scientific literature.

The beneficial side-effect of present "denormalization" and herding of smokers together into streets is that the word is getting around quicker and it won't be long before these 60 millions currently extorted and discriminated against adults shakes off the antismoking parasite for good. After all, the entire antismoking enterprise, their "science" and their media power lives on mere few crumbs from the spare change extorted from these same smokers (who were mostly sucked into the antismoking propaganda matrix, for now).

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Finding reasons to smoke and all the information posted appear to be trying to convince yourself this habit is okay.

It surely is perfectly Ok, as it was for thousands of years before the present swindle took off. Recall that the driving force behind this antismoking swindle is the same one that fights all other natural remedies and your access to medicinal herbs and vitamins, the Big Pharma and Big Med , the Sickness Industry. They're the same forces that bought laws and bureaucracies to force their thimerosal laden vaccines on our kids, ruining brains of millions of children and lives of uncountable familes, the same force which maintains that mouthful of mercury is "safe and effective" for you and that any problems you experienced from it is due to your "rare sensitivity".

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That kind of parasitic and extremely harmful enterprise cannot go on for much longer, or the society tolerating its thievery won't go on for long, and that is where you should look for the real big demise in the near future. The ancient "gift of gods" will certainly survive our present "Sickness Industry" parasite.

I do hope you consider that this experiment is on your own body and down the road when difficulties do arise there is no turning back.

That observation applies to any important decision we make in our lives.