Template talk:Smoking

Image ideas

I'll admit I was in a puckish mood when I added the template to Smoking cessation, complete with its cigarette awaiting some hapless ex?addict's attention. Like most bad things, it started at Jimbo Wales' talk page.

Logically though, a photo of a cigarette isn't "smoking" (well, OK, the cigarette is smoking, but if that was the kind of smoking meant here there would be an article on the list for those brats I forgot about on the stove a few weeks back). We should clearly have an image of a person smoking.

For the past 2 1/2 years, we had the image of the smokerless (though not smokeless) cigarette heading this category, replacing the rather elegant first image in the gallery, which would have met my requirement. The explanation given was "switched to pic of cigarette; the painting is nice, but it's not a representative image of smokers worldwide". I don't think that was a good change, because Wikipedia is about all eras, not just the present ("WP:RECENTISM", you could say). Additionally, the Smoking template series is not only about tobacco, but other drugs such as opium. Any concern about the hapless ex?addict is like any other kind of POV, a valid motivation but not a valid factor in deciding; it should be considered kinetics rather than thermodynamics, in other words. In any case, here are some image ideas

• 
  The previous template image
• 
  Opium smokers of Java, 1870
• 
  According to its use in the Opium article, this is madak, a combination of tobacco and opium, so it checks off two categories
• 
  Another opium example
• 
  The oldest artistic depiction of smoking we're likely to find, from the Aztecs
• 
  Unlike the current illustration, this one is not being bogarted

Please feel free to add suggestions at the end of the gallery. My preference is 3 > 2 > 5 > 1 > 6 > 4 > current illustration, I think. Optionally 3 could be cropped a bit for our use, despite its excellent composition as a photo. Wnt (talk) 13:41, 5 June 2019 (UTC)