Word: habitant
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...alcohol is not legal out of tragic necessity, just because Prohibition was a practical failure. Alcohol is legal because Americans like to drink. Almost all drinkers indulge their habit in moderation, with no harmful effect. Quite the reverse: alcohol is a small but genuine contribution toward their pursuit of happiness. Society has decided that the pleasure of drinking is worth the equally genuine cost to society and pain to many individuals of alcoholism, automobile accidents and so on. What's more, this social decision is correct. The world would not be a better place without booze, even if that were...
...time operators who may grab one cow at a time and load it into a trailer. Says Steve Westbrook, one of 32 private field inspectors hired by the state: "Used to be cowboy types would steal cattle. Now it's everyone, from a person trying to support a drug habit to an unemployed person who is behind on house and car payments." The victims of many of the Texas thefts are city dwellers who have weekend "ranchettes" of about 15 acres, where they relax and keep a few cows and perhaps a horse or two. With no one minding...
...Smoking: Nicotine Addiction, earned unanimous accolades from the medical community as well as praise from politicians. "The Surgeon General's report is a clear challenge to all who care about the health of smokers," says Ovide Pomerleau, professor of behavioral medicine at the University of Michigan. "This socially approved habit is going to go the way of the spittoon." Among Koop's recommendations: warning labels about addiction on packages of tobacco products, a ban on cigarette vending machines in order to curb availability to children and tighter regulation of tobacco sales through licensing. Democratic Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey...
...panic of a heavy smoker bereft of cigarettes speaks alarmingly of a physiological force at work that is more powerful than mere desire. Not long after taking up the habit, smokers become tolerant of nicotine's effects; as with heroin and cocaine, dependence quickly follows. Tobacco only seems safer because it is not immediately dangerous. Nicotine is not likely, for example, to fatally overstimulate a healthy heart, cause disorienting hallucinations or pack anywhere near the same euphoric punch as many other drugs. "People die with crack immediately," explains Alexander Glassman, a psychopharmacologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute...
Despite all this, smoking can be conquered. Although ex-heroin users have reported that tobacco's grip was harder to break than their illicit drug habit, 43 million Americans have managed to quit smoking, mostly succeeding on their own. Increasingly, though, the one-third of all Americans who still smoke are seeking help in antismoking programs, which generally stress that the tobacco habit is a treatable addiction. The best stop-smoking programs, says Thomas Kottke, a senior consultant at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., combine several approaches with plenty of long-term support for the struggling nonsmoker...