Kurt Vonnegut, author, bearded man and smoker, considered smoking "a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide." It also, of course, looks cool.

Modern-day, forward-thinking Americans have ostracized smoking, flooding our lives with anti-smoking propaganda that make cigarettes look uncool, and the people who smoke them look like dirty losers with bad haircuts. I have found that most smokers in fact have very nice haircuts. But this is beside the point.

The point is, very few people have a clear understanding of what smoking is. Non-smokers don't give the defenders of smoking a chance because smokers are naturally biased toward smoking.

I, though, am a non-smoker. And I am going to defend the cigarette.

The cigarette creates atmosphere. Smoke curls into the air. There is movement where there was none before. Suddenly, ghosts are creeping around a person's head, floating out of his or her mouth, ascending up toward heaven and disappearing into the blue yonder.

The same principle applies, to a lesser extent, to being able to see your breath when it is cold outside. Who doesn't like seeing their own breath? It's a fascinating experience that is multiplied by a dozen when you have a cigarette in your hand.

Suddenly, the smoker has a completely new form of punctuation. The smoke that trails around as the cigarette moves through the air, held by an expressive hand, adds a new level to the significance of our bodily gestures. A cigarette hanging lazily out of someone's mouth can signify things a person without one could never dream of signifying.

And all of this is visually pleasing. The cigarette creates a new aesthetic truth, an air of mystery and rebellion. Mystery and rebellion are very cool things. They are interesting, alluring and provocative. One is drawn toward these characteristics, and the cigarette is often a quick and easy indicator of all of them.

A person becomes animated when he or she is smoking a cigarette. The smoker has something to do with the hands and mouth, and there is always attention-grabbing motion around, in the air, moving eerily. The non-smoker invites awkward pauses. The non-smoker just stands there, with nothing to do between those moments of conversation and practical movement. "Smoking" is an action verb. The smoker is always acting.

Of course, smoking is not healthy, but practically everyone knows and understands this from a fairly early age. The smoker is more than aware of it. Thus, smoking becomes a form of noble suicide, as Mr. Vonnegut suggested. It is an admittance that at some level there is something miserable and gritty about this world, and that life in it has to end some time, maybe sooner rather than later.

It is the slow burn suicide; a social suicide that kills you and at the same time initiates you into a kind of secret club.

The smoker can ask for a light or ask to bum a cigarette from another person. And if that person can provide the cigarette, there is an immediate connection. The cigarette suddenly becomes a tool for meeting new people, starting new conversations, entering into certain social spheres that are gradually being limited to very few hangout places, which of course only increases the allure, the rebellion, the atmosphere.

The cigarette is an ice breaker, a kind of password, an escape. The smoker can go outside, find a dark area and just smoke, be alone, without anyone thinking it odd or suspicious. The non-smoker goes outside to enjoy the fresh air and feels awkward if anyone walks by. The passer-by is immediately wary. Why is someone just standing up against the wall, doing nothing? Shouldn't they be doing something?

Yet, anti-smoking organizations, obviously concerned for people's health, want to deny that smoking is cool. While they can preach about the harms it causes our health, they are making a mistake by portraying smokers as disgusting people who spit up sludge all the time.

These anti-smoking advertisements are aimed mostly at children, but the methods often used are just as bad as the methods cigarette companies have used to get kids to start to smoking.

The cigarette ads make smoking look cool while the anti-cigarette ads make not smoking seem cool. In both cases, advertising is not presenting factual information to teach children and let them think for themselves.

Many people complain that cigarette ads are brainwashing children, but many anti-smoking advertisements do the exact same thing.

Is it any better to brainwash someone into doing something perceived as good than it is to brainwash someone into doing something perceived as bad?

Smoking can be seen as a rite of passage, a way for young people to move into an adult world where suddenly their choices have consequences. There is an entire history behind the cigarette, a history of a type of American image that has carved a permanent place in our culture.

But I've run out of room. All I really wanted to say was: Smoking really is kind of cool.