h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And it will make kids even cooler once they've banned it. I welcolme all smokers and non-smokers alike to consider many things surrounding the ban, including how pubs will smell of vinegar and vomit once they throw all the puffers outside. I think the biggest problem is peoples fear of death...discuss.

This is not a very well-known area for starting discussions. So you are unlikely to get much response. You should consider the merits of <./>Askh2g2</.> instead

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The h2g2 Tour - An Introduction to h2g2' to 'Ask the h2g2 Community'.

how? give it time and patience and we shall see.

I'm sorry, but how can smoking make you cool? I smoke. I certainly doesn't make me cool!!! It makes me kinda sad and pathetic. The fact that I can't give up the evil weed makes me feel pathetic

My advice? Give up now while you can!!!

Smoking kills, it makes you stink and it gets you banned from a whole lot of places if you want to do it, including my apartment.

I find it amusing that with this ban I will be less welcome in a restaurant/pub which serves food than a lepper with avian flu

No no no, this is the UK. The ban won't make you cooler, it'll make you colder. As you stand huddled in the street trying to get your between pints nicotine fix. If you're unlucky it'll make you wetter too.

I dont smoke, and I am something of an evangeligal anti smoker but...

IMHO it is undoubtably seen by large swathes of young people as being "cool". cool kids and adults do it. filmstars, rock stars DJs.

It aint good, but unfortunately it is

U.S. - See: Prohibition (Alchohol outlawed) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition

The prohibition had greatly the opposite of the effect intended.

I've given up smoking some ten years ago, but there still lingers (to my generation at least) a certain sensousness about a shared cigarette, or this cool image of a guy, he's good looking, but he's been down on his luck recently, it's late at night, collar turned up, he walks down a deserted street, pausing to reach for a pack of cigarettes, and with a sideways glance at a steetlight, he thumbs his Zippo and a banshee curl of smoke wafts towards the moon. Down these mean streets .............

Have you been watching me

I can't see tobacco ever being banned the way that alcohol was during Prohibition. I believe it's more likely to be a slow chipping away at the acceptability of smoking, the way that drink-driving has steadily become less acceptable over the past 30-40 years. There's still a very long way to go however and I think it will be just as long a process with cigarettes.

I smoke. I'm an artist and the majority of my fellow artists I know in London also smoke. We all know it's silly but we all still do it. What I find strange is that when I went to Greece a couple of years ago the vast majority of people smoked and yet they are supposedly one of the longest living nationalities in Europe. I'm sure someone can be bothered to hunt out some stats!

I smoke.

I am not proud of it - it stinks, I stink, my clothes stink, my house stinks and even my cats stink of it.

My walls are yellow, my teeth are yellow and on heavy night even my fingers can be yellow. Not very attractive.

Give it another few years and society will look down on smokers in the same way we now look at drunk drivers.

Anyway the government will crap itself if everyone gave up smoking - they would lose so much tax money.

But I still smoke - it certainly isn't cool, it is a stupid choice to make if you don't already smoke.

It also a stupid thing if you already smoke, but that is different to starting smoking while you still have a choice about it.

As for the Greeks, I think it is to do with fish oil and Olive oil rather than the rubbish fats we use/eat.

Sorry BH - just re-read your post and I have pretty much repeated what you said about social/societal acceptance.

It's weird, and I'm really anti-smoking, but I've got a photograph of me that I consider very, very cool, but it's missing a cigarette in my hand to finish it off. Strange!