In spite of all the negatives that tarnish much of the advertised allure, there is at least one societal benefit to the existence of smoking as an activity. That it is an intangible benefit and is consequently difficult to quantify should not be interpreted to mean that its impact is negligible. After all, many of life’s most meaningful aspects are priceless.

Each day, the world over, one of the most repeated questions between strangers is “do you have a smoke?” If the person questioned replies in the affirmative, the ensuing act of generosity transforms the entire exchange into an invisible thread that weaves the participants into transient amicability. Given that a chemical dependence is involved, I’d guess that, while active, this thread is stronger than the fiber woven by random acts of kindness. The cigarette provider is arguably as happy to give help as the receiver is to accept it. This is chemical dependence related, too: the provider has no trouble sympathizing with how the receiver feels because they have often felt the same way, and knowing that they are enabling the hunger to be satisfied is like taking a drag themselves. Meanwhile, the receiver looks forward to inhaling cloudy poison and gratefully thinks “during my darkest hour a stranger came to my nicotine fix rescue.” Similar effects result from the “do you have a light?” query. And even though these interactions are fleeting, their sheer number, combined with their biological-addiction-attributable strength, must surely mean that they have an influence on establishing the norms for how the world’s populations interact.

For the pessimists among you, I offer the paragraphs below. They detail two escapes from the bonding of strangers happening in the paragraph above.

Rather than seeking to alleviate the smoker’s nicotine cravings, the cigarette provider might only be handing over the cig because they want to passively help the smoker die. The idea that a non-smoker would carry a pack of cigarettes in order to contribute to the early demise of those who request cigarettes of them is both twisted and unlikely. It’s an idea, however, that’s deserving of its own quotation. “A smoke? Sure, I would be happy to withdraw from my pocket and hand to you something that will increase your likelihood of developing cancer.”

The larger threat to the stability of the strangers are kind assumption is that the person seeking to bum a cigarette will believe they are being lied to when the person they’ve approached claims to not have any cigarettes in their possession. For symmetry, a quote, representative of what the liar (if they are really lying) may be thinking to themselves, follows. “While it is in my power to do so, I do not believe that alleviating your suffering is worth the price of even just one of the many cigarettes I have tucked safely away in my jacket. Your present condition warns me of how I may feel in the future, and I should like to have the necessary tobacco resources to be self-sufficient when that time comes.”