“I’m sorry you feel that way, but if your daughter C”V never gets married because she refuses to go out with her Bashert who is a smoker, are you going to kick yourself or not?I don’t mean to bring this home at all, lets just say its a hypothetical.I’m not Pro smoking or marrying smokers, I just feel desperate people can’t be choosy, and there are many things (this being one of them) that can be put aside if one really wants to get married taking into account the currect crisis. “
GAW, I often have agreed with many of your opinions. These, however, are not in that category. CH”VS that my two daughters remain single – they are amazing, loving, nurturing young women, who are going to make amazing wives and mothers B”EH. I would rather see them single than to marry a smoker, that is how much I hate smoking. We have a lot of asthma in our family, my husband, son, and married daughter, to name three who have this condition. A smoker would not be welcome in my home, as long as he has the stench of it on him, or a lit cigarette in his hand. My kids feel the same way. My daughters are very much eckled by the smell, even were it no a health issue. That is no way to build a joyful fulfilling marriage.
As to desperation – desperation is trying to do anything and everything to save the life of your loved one who has lung, lip, throat, or stomach cancer because of his filthy hab it, and knowing he is going to die an agonizing, ugly, death, drowning in his own lack of air. There are all sorts of crises in life. Taking a path that is almost SURE to lead to sitting shiva at a young age and possibly being left with young children (and THEN try to find a shidduch for that young widow, it is not as easy as you think, something I have observed over three decades, and especially if this woman married the smoker because nobody else was asking her)is not in my opinion the smartest thing to do. Crisis or no crisis, smokers should stop, especially if they want to continue to beleive that they are following the Torah in all other areas of their lives. This is a mitzvah directly from hashem, and not some chumrah that Lakewood decided was necessary in order to protect our neshamos. HASHEM wants us to protect our neshamos, and HE said so explicitly. If you can find me a heter for smoking,given what we know about its dangers today, then I will tell you that any Rov who gave such a heter should go back to the Beis Medrash and start learning again.