mendozanow said:
Smoking is often a sign of "power" and arrogance.
Strange, i feel just the contrary. I m a smoker and i feel i m smoking because i lack of power/control on myself. My smoking is casual, mainly provoked by other smokers. That "social" smoking shows more a will to adapt than a will to dominate.
I have no clue why argentine women smoke more than anywhere else, but the price of cigarettes has certainly something to do with the higher number of smokers in Argentina (1 Euro against 5 Euros in Europe). Everywhere in the world tho, the "liberation" of women has induced more masculine behaviours, smoking included. Babyboomer females are now affected much more by deseases that were mainly masculine for the previous generation (lunge cancer, heart attack...). They expose themselves more to the stress linked to the responsabilities of a professional life.
Argentina might not be a paradise for non smokers, but there like in other domains (driving for example), it s a trait of the argentine culture : "live and let live" where law didnt interfere in every detail of private life.