Dear Dr. Boli: I’ve never smoked cigarettes, and in fact I’ve never held a pack of cigarettes in my hand, so forgive me if this seems like a stupid question. A lot of the people I work with smoke, and when they go out on their smoke breaks, they have a ritual: the first thing they do when they take out a pack of cigarettes is bang it repeatedly as hard as they can. Why are they doing that? What do they hope to accomplish? Is tobacco activated by percussion? —Sincerely, A Non-Smoker Who Feels Left Out.

Dear Sir or Madam: Cigarettes, as you are doubtless aware, take years off the average smoker’s life; moreover, they make a drawn-out and unpleasant demise far more likely. If that were not enough, they cost absurd amounts of money that the average working smoker can ill afford. They banish their users to the outer darkness away from polite society. The stench of stale tobacco makes the smokers’ own families avoid them. Most of those smokers you see have tried to quit smoking multiple times, but the cigarettes have always got the better of them in the end. And all this goes to enrich a small number of obscenely wealthy executives who thrive on the misery of hundreds of millions, and who lie, cheat, and bully to keep their trade in vice profitable. Considering all those known facts, it is not surprising that cigarette smokers give way to violence against the only part of the whole sordid business that is momentarily in their control: namely, the single pack of cigarettes they are holding right now. They know that the cigarettes will win seconds later; but for the moment, at least, they can have the symbolic satisfaction of giving the tobacco industry a good spanking.