Quit smoking! Do it now and do it forever! Don’t wait until you’re in the right frame of mind or feel up to it or have adjusted your corsets or the moons of Jupiter are in the ascendancy in the house of Capricorn. It’s what the American’s would call a ‘no-brainer’ – and they elected Bush so they should know.
Smoking kills you. It stinks to high heaven and is unpleasant to everyone – children and adults alike – around you. Except for other smokers, of course, who are infinitely grateful that they have some other people in their club who agree with their habits and join in. But you’re not passing sweets around here.If I were to consume sweets in the same way a smoker consumers cigarettes then I’d have to aggressively march around a restaurant rubbing my chewing gum into everyones' hair. I’d have to stick half-chewed toffees down lady’s dresses…and don’t think I haven’t thought about it. You hadn’t thought of that? Maybe it’s just me then…
It costs you a fortune that you could be spending on red wine. Apparently red wine has anti-carcinogenic properties: http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13241871,00.html
and that makes a lot more sense than actively seeking the disease.Current plans being considered by the government include putting really gory pictures of people in anguish and misery on the packets of cigarettes. This is amazing considering that John Reid the Health Secretary recently dragged his feet on the issue saying that the evidence was TOO unanimous. Well, of course it is, Johnny. If everyone is pointing in the same direction and shouting, ‘Watch out for the arrow!’ maybe that’s the direction it’s coming from.
In debates on whether smoking should be banned like it is in Ireland (remember when there were Irish jokes making out the Irish to be thick? They’ll be the ones laughing now!) you get a lot of viewpoints and one of those is that of the smoker.The smoker doesn’t like the nanny state. The smoker pays his/her taxes and can do what he/she likes. The smoker doesn’t want some do-gooding-namby-pamby-wishy-washy-rose-spectacled-liberal-pibberal-wibberal whingeing on like a fairy about their God given, inalienable right to emit the stench of cow-dung in public places.
It’s a right. If it wasn’t natural and perfectly normal why would huge profit-making corporations employ expensive spokesmen to lie and twist the statistics to suit their argument that it is? After all, as we all know, there’s no correlation between smoking and lung cancer is there? I’m just making that up because I’m a bad person.My daughter makes me proud by being very much her own person. A few minutes chat with her will reveal clearly that a Jehovah’s witness doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of gaining a convert, and that even though her school-mates make themselves look completely ridiculous walking along with stinking fags going, she isn’t going to join in. There’s a moral to this paragraph and it is – you are you. You will be no less ‘you’ if you don’t join in with the mob.
As a child I would sit on buses with my mum and she’d smoke. Her smoke would go in my face and hurt my eyes and I’d say so. Then she’d give me such a nasty look as if to say, ‘You worm! How dare you complain about the source of my enjoyment! Who do you think you are?’And as any smoker who smokes when there are children around would agree – I was only her son. Still, she showed some affection by not having a problem with me smoking as a fourteen year old and by giving me her own cigarettes if I ran short. Such was a mother’s kindness in those days.
Luckily I was able to repay that kindness by taking her out in her wheelchair when she was dying of cancer so that she could have a cigarette in the hospital corridor.When I was in my early thirties I was able to stop smoking. I think it was a bit of a shock to my system for a week and after two weeks much less so, and after that it wasn’t an issue at all. I sometimes find my old Ronson Comet, stainless steel lighter with my initial engraved in it in a drawer and it seems like an old friend somehow. I was very fond of that. It was a birthday present from my late mother.
I went for a meal with my wife and some friends recently. One of our friends has cancer and has recently quit and started smoking again. I guess for her it’s academic now. It was still a surprise when we were waiting to be seated and she lit up. There were people eating all around us. Fortunately we got a non-smoking section for the meal itself and we could all enjoy ourselves. We did. It was a great night.Our next meal won’t be a problem because that’s just our family and it’s going to be in a pub with a no-smoking area, and we’re off in about ten minutes!
The one after that might be, though. My wife’s old friend can be trusted to light cigarettes continually anywhere and in any company at regular intervals. It isn’t just that this puts my kids, my wife and myself at risk because of the secondary smoke, and it isn’t just that we’ll all have to wash our clothes when we get home because of it – it’s that I don’t want to eat any food when the air smells bad.If you are thinking of starting smoking may I commend it to you for the following reasons:
1. At only four or five pounds for a packet cigarettes represent excellent value.
2. A certain percentage of people who smoke don’t get cancer.
3. You will be able to get more if you experience discomfort and mood-swings when you run out of them.
4. People will know just how much will-power you have when it comes right down to it when they see you rushing out to a late night shop to get them.
5. Non-smokers (who aren’t really proper people) and their kids won’t bother you much.
6. You’ll be very fashionable and part of the in-crowd with other smokers and – let’s face it – they’re the sensible ones.
7. The National Health, paid for by mainly non-smoking tax-payers, will take care of you (as best they can) in the extremely unlikely event that the fags do what it says on the packet.
8. If you fall asleep with one you won’t have much to worry about ever again.May I commend to readers the excellent (though irreverent) review on this subject by Lost Witness and leave you with the thought that at four pounds a day fags will cost you 1460 quid per year. If you put that in a tin instead you could buy a second-hand car, a nice computer or a really good laptop, loads of new clothes, gallons and gallons of alcoholic drinks, or go on a decent holiday.
And finally, speaking as a man – if you were as beautiful as Star Trek’s ‘Seven of Nine’ played by Jeri Ryan, but smoked…and if you suddenly decided you really ought to snog me right away, I’d probably be flattered and very tempted. But at five feet I’d pause, at four feet my nostrils would flare, at three feet I’d sigh, at two feet my throat would tighten involuntarily, at one foot I’d be holding my breath, and there would be no kiss because I’d then be walking backwards.Quit smoking and do it now!
by (12%):
10.06.2005 18:28
Exceptional review. I totally agree. Try this for a read... A review by Trixie_Firecracker on Should smoking be banned in all public places?
30.01.2005 16:31
I smoke, but I'd never smoke around people who don't without asking first...I can see many of your points...I think I'm on my 3rd attempt to quit now...none of them worked...Another point to add to your argument is that it's so darn addictive that even when you want to quit it is oh so difficult...Lissy
29.12.2004 21:59
What can I say, fantastic!!! I dont know about putting pictures of people dying on the packs I think your review will sink further into many minds!!! I have to say that Im a struggling smoker who has got the addiction down to one every now and then at the mo, but am desperate to get rid of that last bind. Hopefully your review will have sunk the final nail in...Ill keep you posted!