Can Someone Explain This To Me?

So in my morning email was the usual Groupon offerings (once or twice I've taken advantage, mostly they're hawking things I don't want), and this time there was an offer for an "E-cigarette starter kit." What The Fuck.

Okay, I realize for some people with deeply entrenched habits, e-cigarettes might be a way around a socially difficult habit.  It's not a way to kick that habit, certainly.  But what I don't get is why anyone =starts= smoking anymore.  It's sixty years since the first Surgeon General's report about the hazards of smoking, which exploded the "nine out of ten doctors smoke Camels" myth that smoking was a positive good.  And I may be a little grouchy on the subject because, although I have never smoked tobacco, I still have permanent second-hand smoke damage from my youth, which will be with me always.  And it may be that the term "starter kit" just hits a sore spot for me.

My mother taught herself to smoke when she was 19.  She was living in a sorority house on the UCLA campus, and had taken the required pledge not to drink.  But, like most 19-year-olds, she wanted to appear older and more sophisticated (particularly because she had two best friends in the movie business, which meant she got taken to really interesting parties). So one night she locked herself in the bathroom and taught herself to smoke: lit, inhaled, vomited, inhaled, vomited, inhaled vomited, finished a cigarette and lit a new one, over and over until she could smoke.

And of course forty years later smoking killed her.  My teenage years were rich with the soupy sounds of my parents' coughs.  Mom didn't stop smoking until she was forced to do so (hospital regulations), and after her death it was discovered that, in addition to chronic bronchitis and emphysema, there was a small tumor on the back of her lungs which had pressed on her heart, causing congestive heart failure, and etc.

Smoking, as an act, infused every part of her life.  Reach into her (tobacco scented) handbag and, in addition to tissues or pens or her wallet, you would get little crumbs of tobacco (my father's pockets, years after he quit smoking, were also lined with tobacco crumbs).  The plaster on the ceiling of her room was a different color from the plaster of any other room because of the years of smoke.  She kept boxes of tissues with her everywhere, and little wads of used tissue scattered around her like flower petals.  She smelled like an unpleasant combination of tobacco and stale air, all the time.  And as her life went on and she became increasingly frail (for a variety of reasons, some of which were not tobacco related) just crossing a street could take all her strength.  It was horrifying to watch.

I understand why she went through the unpleasant process of teaching herself to smoke...in 1943.  But in 2014 why is anyone under the age of 60 learning to smoke? Becca says that at her college a lot of kids smoke tobacco--and regard her with awe because she has never done so (we will not speak, regarding her or her mother, about non-tobacco behaviors. Generally people don't light one joint immediately upon finishing the last one.  I hope).

I have nothing but awe for people who have the tobacco habit and kick it.  I saw my father (who did read the Surgeon General's report, and quit cold turkey) go through six kinds of unpleasant getting on the other side of the habit.  People who are entrenched in the habit don't get a pass, but I do understand how awful quitting can be.

But starting? Now? Why?