"Inhaling Fear"

...is the title of a NYTimes op-ed today (side note: "a NYTimes" or "an NYTimes"? the latter sounds right to me (thanks to vowel sound at the beginning of the pronunciation of the letter "N"), but, N being a consonant, I though maybe it should be the former...).

Anyway, it's about how brain studies have shown that anti-smoking ads actually lead people to crave a cigarette more and how anti-smoking efforts should be reformed.

I don't know how to fix this, because I don't really understand why people smoke at all (because it's relaxing and looks cool, of course, but the health risks just seem so obviously a deal-breaker, for me), and I don't even know if it's the government's place to tell people not to do something that's legal. Acccording to the op-ed, they're using money from a Big Tobacco settlement on these ads, which is better than taxpayer money, but are public funds being used for similar campaigns, like encouraging kids to exercise? I'm not really cool with that (despite the fact that I obivously think that children should exercise and not smoke cigarettes).