Obituaries: Alan Landers

Cigarette smoking is a very interesting topic in that there are so many perspectives relating to this topic. In regards to Alan Landers, I think he learned his lesson too late. It sounds as if he truly thought that cigarettes do not harm you. I think that people who smoke choose to do so and they are knowingly harming their bodies and know that they may potentially develop various kinds of cancer, yet they do so. You can't blame the tobacco companies for making the product, but you can blame them for creating lucrative marketing campaigns to manipulate and set social standards/opinions on smoking. Fine, if a person has a biological need to nicotine to have a better life than so be it. But if one is smoking because they feel there is some sort of social reward, then there is something wrong with that. Either way, it is the individual choosing to make the decision to light that cigarette up. The tobacco companies are not putting the cigarettes in their mouth and lighting it up for them.

I guess the lesson here is that in life, certain things are already there. The air quality in your neighborhood is what it is, the pesticides in fruits and vegetables in Vietnam are there, any social standards in society, and it’s all there. Even though these things directly contribute or shape your life some how, you can't blame them for anything that goes wrong in your life. It's the cards you were dealt. What you can do however, is learn to accept these things and avoid or resolve these things them if you don't want to put up with it.


Alan Lander's obituary can be found at http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13276462&mode=comment&intent=readBottom