I don't think this is expounded enough: smoking does make you look cool. Hollywood inculcated society with this back in the 50s with the James Dean types. You go down to drags with bars and you see all the people outside doing it. There's something alluring about someone not caring that they're shaving off a fraction of a fraction of of their lifespan. To me socially I've found myself drawn to those who smoke vs. those that don't. They're right below the surface to where I can quickly find something in common with them. At one of my previous places, the CTO told me how he took a bunch of the employees from another job to start their own successful company. How did that happen? They got the idea because they were all smokers and all congregated at the same.
