WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. – Clinical therapist Dr. Peter Kleponis, a Pennsylvania counselor and occasional proofreader of anti-pornography edicts issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, says porn is the “new tobacco.” The claim is dubious on its face, but certainly worthy of investigation, given the man’s impeccable credentials as a Catholic guy who has earned a doctorate in some field or another.

Before I could even find a smoke shop that sold porn-vaporizers, however, it seemed like Kleponis’ analogy had begun to migrate toward other substances, including crack cocaine. The metaphorical shift served to increase my skepticism, in part because the “porn is like cocaine” claim is one I’ve previously debunked, a process that took a serious toll on my bank account, nasal passages and reputation among South American cab drivers.

Still, I figured it was possible Kleponis had discovered a nexus I had missed between cocaine and porn. Although a counter-intuitive possibility, maybe the presumably less-potent cocaine available in the suburbs of Philadelphia was more like porn than the uncut variety available in places like Bogota and Lima, for example.

In making his case for porn being like an addictive substance consumed via smoking, Kleponis also introduced something called the “5 As” of porn. According to him, porn is “affordable, accessible, anonymous, accepted and aggressive.”

Right away, embedded in the 5 As, I’m seeing some ways porn isn’t particularly like tobacco. Anonymity, for example, doesn’t seem to describe tobacco very well, especially the Marlboro Man. Everybody knows who that badass motherfucker is. We could hardly miss him, after all, riding through town on his trademark cartoon camel, “Joe,” wearing his flannel shirts, manly mustache proudly displayed.

At the same time, porn definitely is “accessible” and nothing is more “affordable” than free, so on those two points, Kleponis’ claim appears to be on solid ground.

I’ve also seen plenty of “aggressive” porn — and I’m not talking about just the stuff filled with slapping, spanking, spitting, hair-pulling and the like. I’m also referring to a certain centerfold I had tacked up on my bedroom wall in the 1980s, which always seemed to be pushing down the poster of Pele behind which it was supposed to remain concealed from my mom. The model in question just really wanted her work to be seen, I guess. (Either that, or I needed longer thumb tacks.)

As for porn being “accepted,” I guess I understand where Kleponis is coming from, but when I tried to pay for my groceries at Safeway with several copies of This Positively, No Doubt About It, Ain’t Bosom Buddies XXX, the cashier glared at me and called for store security.

So, evidently, in terms of broad acceptance, porn still has a way to go before it reaches the market penetration of Apple Pay, let alone debit cards.

The real test, of course, was actually smoking the stuff.

Obviously, any meaningful similarity to tobacco and crack cocaine rises and falls on porn’s performance as an inhaled stimulant. After all, you can roll up dog poo in rolling papers and call the result a “fag,” but all that’s going to accomplish is getting you in trouble with both PETA and GLAAD.

As most of the porn I consume is online, my first dilemma was how to go about smoking it. The fastest solution seemed to be igniting my tablet using some sort of accelerant while porn was displayed on its screen, then fanning the smoke toward my mouth. But wouldn’t that mean I was smoking my tablet rather than the porn itself? Clearly, this was no way to put Kleponis’ claim to the test. I needed a better, more direct, solution for my clinical trial.

Heading out to a brick and mortar porn store to obtain porn in a more traditional, physical form was the next idea I considered. After looking up the word “mortar,” however, I balked at this approach. Call me paranoid, but I’ve never liked the idea of getting too close to artillery weapons unless I’m the one who’s to be responsible for firing them.

Finally, it dawned on me: I could use the internet to order a porn DVD and have it delivered to my house, which would get me what I needed while avoiding the risk of being shelled in a parking lot by a nervous porn store clerk, perhaps out of concern I was about to “cruise” his establishment’s coin-operated viewing booths.

I’m not going to name the DVD I wound up ordering, because in fairness to the studio that produced it, I’m pretty sure they didn’t intend for it to be smoked — or not in a hooka, at least, which was the only device I could find with a bowl of adequate size for accommodating a DVD jewel box.

As for the experience of smoking the porn, I found the flavor smoother than expected: somewhere between the plastic cap of a ballpoint pen and the lawn clippings I once purchased from a very sketchy, possibly homeless man at a public park, sold to me under the pretense of being “high-grade hydroponic chronic” (whatever that means).

I will say this much for porn as a smoked substance: It lasts a lot longer than a cigarette and the taxes imposed are way more reasonable.

Still, even though it’s hard for me to imagine wanting to smoke more than one or two pornos a day, when you combine the cost of each DVD and pair it with the expense of obtaining a very large ash tray, I think most smokers would be hesitant to make the switch to porn, with the possible exception of those who prefer menthols.

At this point, having smoked several more DVDs, the dominant features of the experience are a severe headache and significant short-term memory loss, neither of which I’ve experienced when consuming porn through more traditional means like direct injection or atomization for the purpose of absorption through my skin.

All in all, on the familiar truth scale used by media fact-checkers, I’d have to rate Kleponis’ claim “porn is the new tobacco” to be Coffee Table On Fire, because this is exactly the unfortunate result to which my experimental investigation led.

Next week, I’ll investigate another modern claim I find dubious: “Orange is the new black” — which I assume to be some sort of left-wing conspiracy theory postulating that former Speaker of the House John Boehner is secretly an African-American.