3 packs a day just doesn't make sense to me, especially in today's world where you have to go outside to smoke. each cigarette itself is going to take about 5 minutes to suck down, or 12 an hour. just one pack of 20 cigarettes you're devoting an hour and 40 minutes just to cigarettes, 3 packs, that's 5 hours, just smoking. in today's climate, you gotta get out of the office, go to the designated area which is usually not right outside the door. tack on 5 minutes each way. 15 minutes a smoke while at the office. when I smoked, I'd have 2 cigarette breaks in the morning, then 2 in the afternoon, just because it was so hard to get out of the office.
in a world where you could be sitting at your office desk, and have one lit sitting in the ash tray, then when that one goes out, you light another one and put it in the ash tray, that makes sense.
maybe he had a clause with CNN that allowed him to smoke in his office because he was the King, but yeah, in today's environment, it takes a lot of work to smoke just 1 pack in a day.
I suspect that Phil Hartman's character on News Radio was modeled after Larry King. he'd be doing his radio show from the sound booth, and it would basically be a hot box of cigarette smoke.