acrid /ˈakrəd/

I used to think that if politicians came equipped with brains or balls they might be inclined to accept my suggestion with regards to tobacco regulation and simply raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco by one year every year, in effect banning them but grandfathering them in so that current addicts may be allowed to go on destroying themselves if that’s what they need to do – and I mean that with sympathy.

Of course now I’m not nearly so naïve and I realize it has nothing to do with the brains or balls they are missing but rather that the community of friends, family and business associates of which politicians are a lifetime member, include valuable friends family and business associates making kazillions of dollars in the tobacco industry, and loving every breathless second of it.

I wish they had accepted this grandfather regulation suggestion when I first made it 29 years ago when a dear friend, Captain Plonk in fact, declared that he wished tobacco would be outlawed because he figured that was the only way he could manage to quit. If so, the minimum age would now be 45!

Very happily though, Plonk managed to quit on his own.