Twain wrote: "The question is this: Being 50 or 60 lbs. overweight is just as or more harmful to your body than smoking. Also, a person can smoke in private and not encroach upon someone elses clean air. So why is smoking a disfellowshipping offense and being severely overweight is not?..."
Being overweight myself, I have often wondered why we have no talks at the Hall about how obesity shows a lack of respect for the body Jehovah gave us.......maybe because half the Hall would be disfellowshipped.
My feeling on the two issues is this: in alot of ways, smoking and being overweight is comparable, but in other cases its not. I for one can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke and no matter where I sit or stand, if I'm in the company of a smoker, the frigging smoke ALWAYS drifts towards the non-smoker (it jes knooooooows somehow) and I don't want to breath in somebody else's poison that they've just exhaled. If I'm in a restaurant eating a piece of cake, I don't chomp half of it down and then spew half of it on the people around me - not unless I want my face bashed in. This is the difference between obesity and smoking. With smoking, you're harming the people around you as well as yourself, obesity, you're generally just hurting yourself.
Plus it's a known fact amongst doctors that children of smokers have more ear infections, are sick more frequently and develop more breathing problems such as asthma, than children with non-smoking parents.
Both obesity and cigarette smoking are "addictions" and people struggle all the time to overcome them. Although I detest the smell of cigarette smoke, I don't think someone should automatically be DF'd for it, because they may be really struggling with it, just as I do with my weight.
