Buying cigarettes for underage friend?

[Jaypeeto4]

It's well known and well documented that cigarettes are terrible for one's health.

I am not at all denying that cigaret smoking is not good for your health.
But I will not repeat over-reactions, either.
Smoking creates several health problems. The tar coats your lungs.
The nicotine makes you want repeated cigaret "fixes," guaranteeing that you
will continue to coat your lungs with the tars. This is not good at all.
But marijuana is far, far, far more dangerous, and nobody knew that until recent years.
Growing up, I smoked cigarets, tobacco cigarets, usually SALEM brand (full strength or "lights", it didn't matter, but usually full strength).
Many of my friends ABHORRED tobacco cigarets and cigaret smoking, would "read me the Riot Act" for doing it, but THEY smoked Marijuana. While not "Pot Heads" by any stretch of the imagination, they did like to have, every day, at least one marijuana joint, to relax and loosen-up after all their studies and study hall and homework assignments.
(( these were, by the way, kids from well-off families, who belonged to all the high school fraternities and honor societies and got all the terrific grades, not wild eyed junkies )).
But they were PROUD that they did not smoke "those damned Cigarets that give ya' cancer,ugh !!" and would actually brag that they smoked pot INSTEAD. Not unreasonably for, though we were always encouraged to NOT smoke pot, we were constantly told in school that pot was NOT HARMFUL, did NOT cause cancer and was NOT habit-forming.
It was just, well, against the law to sell, buy, or smoke it, but most kids did. MOST.
If you asked my cigaret hating friends if they Smoked, they would reply, proudly,
"Well, NOT Tobacco !!" Well, in recent years, they have learned to their shock and horror that they were smoking something over 10 times as carcinogenic as tobacco.

My point is not to claim that smoking cigarets is in any way harmless, but these studies showing a direct correlation between cigarets and lung cancer, for example, are usually not taking into account OTHER equally important factors, namely, family history of cancer, type of diet, and a host of other factors that contribute to the ruin of a person's health, especially taken together WITH smoking.
Things that smoking WILL DO, that you should also think about, are promote unhealthy clumping of your blood platelets, it's rough on your kidneys because your kidneys have to work twice as hard to expel the multitude of chemicals present in cigarets made from processed tobacco (bathed in chemicals, and ALL American made cigarets ARE).

No, cigarets are not good for you. But neither are cola drinks, too much coffee, highly sugared foods, WHITE BREAD is HORRIBLE for you and directly contributes to Colon Cancer, yet it is in no way a mortal sin to eat bread made from white flour. All processed grains create simple carbohydrates which contribute to the development of deadly Diabetes. Point is, there is a LOT of things that we do, that can be and are VERY bad for our bodies, that are not mortal sins. Red Meat (even all natural, organic, non-factory farm cattle red meat) is horrible for your body (it clogs the intestines and directly contributes, through it's rotting process, to the release of carcinogens into your gut and bowels, yet God Himself gives us all permission to eat Red meat, and Christ Himself removed all restrictions, for his followers, against eating pork (which is a very dangerous meat to eat and can cause you to become infested with worms among many other serious risks). Scripture is clear: HE (Jesus) declared ALL foods "clean," i.e., permssible for his Followers to eat. And as he MADE these foods, he knew and knows, the health risks associated with eating them.
We have to be modest and temperate in everything we do, that's my point.
There are many other co-factors that cause smoking to be very dangerous, not
moderate smoking alone. It ain't good for you, at all, but it's not the worst thing you can do to your body, either. There are a lot worse things, things that do IMMEDIATE and serious damage to you. Smoking, even heavily, takes decades usually for the harmful effects to start really showing up.
But don't do it if you can avoid it. Don't.