Alcohol per se may not make people thin. But if people have after-dinner drinks instead of fat-rich desserts, the upshot might be lower calorie intake. Or it could simply be that the sort of people who consume alcohol moderately also tend to consume food moderately, unlike people who drink to excess or who abstain because they're afraid of losing control.

 Fortunately for those who need an excuse to have a drink, the beneficial health effects of alcohol consumption go beyond the association with lower weight. Many studies have found that moderate drinking reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, for example, possibly through its impact on cholesterol.

 Although alcohol can be at least partly redeemed, it seems tobacco has been irrevocably condemned. Explaining the World Health Organization's new policy against hiring anyone who admits to using tobacco in any form, a WHO spokesman told The Associated Press: "With tobacco, there is no middle ground. It is black and white."

 From WHO's perspective, then, the occasional cigar is indistinguishable from a pack-a-day cigarette habit, even though the hazards are vastly different. When you combine this blind botanical prejudice with health-above-all puritanism, you get the self-righteous intolerance displayed by the typical anti-smoking activist.

 The rest of us are left to wonder whether everything we enjoy has to be good for us. Or could it be that we only enjoy what's bad for us? Then again, maybe our enjoyment is what makes it bad. Put that in your pipe, but for heaven's sake, don't smoke it.