That was the sanest thing I've read in quite some time. As to slowing down the brain, I am passionately convinced from my own (admittedly young) experience of the fallacy of that. It really doesn't make a bit of difference. If you're stupid and you smoke, you'll just find a new and funner way of being stupid. If you have it going on upstairs, it's going to stay that way. I've been smoking HEAVILY since I was 15, and I'm in the middle of writing a novel, having read all of Shakespeare, Paradise Lost, War and Peace, etc. There's no bearing.