Comment by johnea
2 days ago
> for whatever reason, cigarettes were a conservative cause
For.. the.. money?
Money is a very conservative cause. Anything that gets in the way of money is "terrorist" and "commonism" (sic).
It should be noted, tobacco was the cash crop that finally made England's American adventure profitsble. Without it, we euro-americans might be speaking french or Spanish across all of north america now...
Does it even need to be that analytical? Conservatism can also also be general skepticism of change. And I don't know if you've ever tried to quit nicotine before but it's very good at convincing you it's a relatively harmless habit that helps cope with all sorts of stress and anxiety. If you're already inclined to be generally skeptical of change, smoking would slot right in there.
That said I'm curious if we're projecting back strong moralistic or party/ideology-aligned takes on smoking before it was really prevalent. I don't think anyone is questioning the role money plays in broadly misleading the public about smoking itself, just that the ideological/partisan divide such as it exists today might not map cleanly to the past.