[jasonwatkinspdx]

Your argument above is mistaken.

It's a major factor in why my 80+ year old father is about to go into his 4th open heart surgery, having had a pacemaker the last 2 of those.

He still smokes. He refuses to quit because he sees it as an all or nothing precipice as you characterize above.

Quitting smoking is not some impossible mountain to climb. Talk to your doctor. What works for you will be context dependent. It does work, as proven by people every day. The answer to physiological dependency is time delay + taper down. The psychological re-enforcement loop will break and fade away.

I have done this and am not speaking in terms of hypotheticals.

You could not force me to smoke in any way. I will physically retch at the thought.

Please do not falsely portray quitting smoking as some eternal struggle. In fact, once you do it, it fades within a comparatively short time.