smoky dilema

When I was really small I used to gape wide at the TV admiring the bollywood and Hollywood stars. With their macho body, clean or ruffled looks (moustache if its an Indian actor – or actress) fancy clothes and the numerous accessories that they carried. I used to copy whatever they did (except for the censored scenes of course) jumping from a moving vehicle (believe me I am not joking), fighting with guns (the best part was dying slowly after I am shot – the actor took half an hour, a packet of popcorn and expletives from the audience before dying but I finished it quickly so that I can get on with the next act), riding horses (poor liza – my dog – was so scared of me), killing the bad guys (in this case it used to be the old uncle who never gave our cricket ball back) and one particular thing which is smoking.
“oh my god, he used to smoke when he was a kid?” no my dear friend I just pretended that I am smoking. I don’t know if you people are aware of it or not but smoking has been banned in Indian films now.
I still remember that scene from the movie The Good, The Bad and The Ugly where Clint Eastwood has the cigarette in his mouth and he shoots the bad guys without removing it and then puffs the smoke in the air with some equally stylish dialogue. Even Shahrukh, Amithabh, Salman, Rajkumar and plethora of other actors used to smoke cigarettes on screen. So what was the problem that the government had in banning them?
Okay I know that many of you are going to disagree with me on this topic nevertheless I am going to champion allowing cigarettes in cinemas. The primary reason that govt. gave was that it encouraged children and elders (like they need encouragement for this) to start smoking cigarettes seeing their favourite actors on screen do so. Encouragement of cigarette smoking means more people start doing that and as smoking causes many ails in the body, cancer to name the major one.
Some points to counter them
1. looking from the cinematic perspective it is a crime to disallow smoking scenes in movies. What do they want the macho actor to do? Drink milk and eat sugar coated candies. Maybe I don’t know anything about films but I am pretty sure that if a director wants to enact a scene he has in mind and if smoking is in that scene then no matter what other means he uses to convey his feeling to the audience it will always be incomplete.
2. I think that movies does very little to encourage smoking. The government would be better off levying more tax on cigarettes than banning them in movies. I have practically grown up watching movies and never in my life have I once smoked cigarettes.
3. Right now the Hindi movies are at a stage where they need encouragement to go to that bigger platform parallel to the Hollywood movies and such conservationism might take away little advantage that they command.
4. If you need to ban cigarettes then also Ban the cruel action scenes where blood splattering might as well induce children to enact it on their friends and foes, also Ban the drinking scenes (wow! so many would be interested in a sober Devdas) and especially the rape scenes (its usually Suneil Shetty’s sis getting raped).
5. This is democracy and not some anti smoker’s fiefdom. Let the audience decide what is best for them. And anyways govt won’t be able to censor the smoking scenes from the Hollywood movies.

I completely agree with the fact that smoking is dangerous for health and earth would be a better place without cigarettes but if you want then ban them completely but its pointless to target the entertainment industry alone.