What is the magic, I wondered, that apparently makes cancer caused by cigarettes more acceptable or tolerable than cancer caused by a cranberry? What leads some of my golf cronies to buy a costly golf-course buggy and ride it from green to green in order to "save their hearts," while they calmly continue to smoke? (The death-rate from coronary heart disease for heavy smokers has been set by some authorities as at least twice that for non-smokers; is it okay to die from smoking, but wrong to die while walking from the eighth hole to the ninth?)
Putting my questions in another way: Why, in the face of current medical knowledge, do Americans smoke four hundred billion cigarettes a year? Why, despite personal resolution, do we as individuals find it so incredibly difficult to stop smoking? Why is it that cigarette sales keep climbing, despite the vigorous edu­cational efforts of such groups as the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association?

Within a few weeks, I began to find answers to these questions.

As good clues should, the new bits and pieces of information fitted together, jigsaw-puzzle fashion, and soon I could see not only why we smoked but also why every one of my many attempts to stop smoking had failed.