Information I've never been exposed to.

You have seen in many other areas how the mass media works. Any time you study some subject in more depth, as you did about mercury toxicity, you find that mass media which is driven by the not-so-invisible vested interests, creates a virtual reality, carefully filtering and distorting (even outright lying) information fed to the public. People indeed live in this "matrix" and it often requires the 'red pill' to see what the real situation is.

While mercury business is profitable, the antismoking business is vastly more so, hence the reality distortion by the "matrix" is much stronger and more shocking, once you take the "red pill" and see the rest of the story. Ignoring profits for nicotine patches, gums and antidepressants, consider vast amounts of money for all the extra millions of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia patients, just few diseases reduced by smoking by factors 2 to 10, who will linger on expensive pharmaceuticals for years and decades. No wonder Big Pharma or the "Sickness Industry" is 'investing' over a billion a year into antismoking scam ("research", "grass roots" antismoking organizations, buying political & bureaucratic influence,...).