Do:

1. Enjoy your membership in the Society of Smokers. Yours is an honorable, dignified class of pleasure-loving devotees. Smokers bought the financial security of the early American republic.

2. Try different brands until you find one whose taste you really like. But don't be afraid to try other brands on occasion, just for variety.

3. Try out different methods of smoking: smoke rings, French inhales, double pumps, etc. Avoid monotony at all costs. Play with your smoke like you did when you first started. Challenge your smoking girlfriends to the deepest inhale, the prettiest exhale, the most smoke rings.

4. Wear lipstick and freshen it BEFORE you smoke. Your publicly-smoked cigarette should always bear the imprint of your lips, whether in sparkling, barely-there lipgloss or deepest crimson, clasped lovingly around its slender stem.

5. Learn smoker's etiquette -- which includes having to respect the whiny wishes of non-smokers, but also the desires of the so-called smoke fetishers. Most will think they've died and gone to heaven if you will, upon seating yourself in proximity to them and been given permission by them to smoke, then proceed to bathe them in your secondhand fumes. It may perhaps feel a little bit odd, you having been accustomed to life among people who hate your habit, for you to be so free with your smoke.

The "fetishers" will appreciate your courage and should, on their part, not be a nuisance to you. Salivation, excessive staring, or demanding your phone number, are unbecoming behaviors and should be punished by your notifying authorities or leaving the area.

6. Make a pleasant ritual out of your smoking. Light up, inhale, exhale, with a flourish and a touch of glamour, whenever possible.

7. Keep your pack uncrushed and out of your purse as often as you can, as part of your office/home decor and symbol of your membership in the Smoker's Society.

8. If you enjoy their taste, smoke brands that cater to Women -- Misty, Eve, Satin, Capri and of course, Virginia Slims -- rather than mannish types such as Basic, Winston, Camel, etc. Exception: Some Women do excel at being glamorous even as "tomboys," and can make even a stubby corktip seem as sexy as a Satin. Know your "type."

9. Dispose of your cigarette properly. That means either pressing it out with your fingers or firmly stepping on the "cherry" with just the slightest twist of your ankle. Do not then pick it up and put it in a trash can. It is not trash. Leave it behind for the world to see, tinged with your lipstick, as a lovely testament to your Smoking Moment.

10. Make your exhales memorable. While each breath need not be dragged to the depths of your lungs, once in a while make the effort to swallow as much smoke as you can and then turn the virgin air around you gloriously smoky with your exhale. An occasional audible sigh of pleasure is nice, too, although it shouldn't be overdone.

10.5. Do make every effort to quit if you no longer enjoy your habit or if it has begun to affect your health. Only a minority of smoke-lovers would counsel otherwise.

Don't:

1. Smoke fat cigars, or hand-rolled, bent, or otherwise ugly cigarettes. Cigarillos and Mores are okay, and corktips if you have nothing else.

2. Treat your cigarette to the indignity of being flipped into a toilet, ground into unrecognizable pulp beneath your furious feet or disposed of in an ashcan that is wet or filthy with garbage.

3. Smoke like a robot or a starving dog. Your cigarette is a few minutes-worth of gourmet pleasure, like a slice of expensive cheese, a cut of steak or a glass of fine wine. It should be enjoyed, puff by puff, in measured intensity.

4. Smoke around children. Again, a minority of smoke-lovers would object, but they should be ignored.

5. Smoke your cigarette down to the filter, to its last grain of tobacco. Always leave just a centimeter or so of unburned tobacco behind.

6. Ignore your cigarette. Give it the attention it deserves. Keep it cradled in your fingers as much as possible; minimize its lonely moments in the ashtray. Keep its ash neatly trimmed and don't waste the smoke while you go off and do something else.

7. Flip it away burning. This has become quite common, and that's a shame. The cigarette butt then tends to keep burning, down to an ungracious nub. As previously noted, simply step on it or press it out.

Exception: While driving (unless you live in fire-prone areas). For some smoke-loving fellow drivers, it may make their day to see you take a final puff, stretch out your arm and brazenly toss away your burning butt in clear and casual violation of litter-laws.

8. Share your cigarette with a man, except in the privacy of your home or a solitary setting.

9. Give in to the antis and live your smoking life in fear. If you're in public and the signs don't forbid and the law doesn't explicity prohibit, light up and enjoy. If you were there first, the antis can walk away on the same feet they came in on.

10. Ever be ashamed to be a smoker, or consider it a "disgusting, vile" habit. It's a lifestyle choice, like wearing hose or driving a BMW. No matter how fierce the rhetoric of the antis, there will always be people who will stand by your right to smoke.

Fumefriend.