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

If you don't choose to light up, at least lighten up (sorry).
I have read more intolerance from non smokers than smokers on this thread and agree with everything Ben has said. I am a non smoker but some of us are open minded and take on board other people's views. We are not all the same !
I can't believe how smoking is always brought up as a drag (sorry again)on NHS public money. If you were to go to the accident and emergency ward of any hospital at any one time and survey the casualties, how many would be more or less self inflicted? (alcohol, sport,plain stupidity) This is an NHS service that employs so many staff around the clock every day of the year. And they are not paying all the tax that smokers fork out.
stay

Mina,

aren´t you taking it a bit way to far there?

The law doesn´t fully protect your kids? Yes, it does. It is just hard to enforce. The person selling the smokes to kids should be mature and responsible enough to not do it.

Or do you want to make it illegal for your kids to buy fags? Groovy, then you will end up with a smoking ex-inmate. Now, thats a career...

And one more thing:

(I know I am going to be bashed all over the place for this)

Are you sure that you should make the smoking-choice for your children? Aren´t you taking away the freedom and rights to make their own choices and mistakes?

*OUCH*

This is what most of the smokers were talking about on here, anyway...

Ouzo

I've always wanted smoking in public places banned, I've said that on this website before. I protect my son by teaching him the green cross code, but at the end of the day, I can't stop him if he decides to run across them when he's old enough to be out on his own. It's the same with smoking, but I'd like to think that he's safe from smoking until he's old enough to make a proper decision, not just do it because it's a bit naughty, and all his mates do.

Mina - how would you deal with it if you discover that your son has started smoking - obviously not now, he's only little, but when he's 15, say?

I started when I was 16(ish), but I didn't 'come out' to my mother until I was 18. I don't think she suspected previously. She disapproved, but as she smoked herself it carried little weight with me. To be frank, I can think of nothing she might have said or done would have made me give up at the time.

I'm not sure there is ever an age at which one can make a proper decision to start smoking - of all the people I know who smoke or have smoked in the past I have yet to meet anybody who thinks the decision to start was the right one. I used to enjoy smoking, but I always regretted starting - and still do - what sensible or rational reason can any non-smoker have for voluntarily electing to take up smoking?

I smoked 20+ ciggies a day for nearly 30 years, also a pipe, the occasional cigar (still like a very occasional cigar), and not a little of other herbal combustibles - I challenge any of the smokers or ex-smokers (or non-smokers - I'm not discriminating) on this thread to come up with a good reason to start smoking tobacco. Not for continuing to smoke - I know all about that - but for STARTING.

Captain Kebab - not a ciggy has touched his lips since January 1 1999, except for that one after the England-Argentina game.

@Mina

So it was me who misunderstood your posting. Sorry anout that. I can fully understand what you aree saying and, in fact, hope the same for my kids (if I ever have any). NEver heard of the green cross, though...

@Captain Kebab

Good point. I started at sort of 17ish. I got very bad marks in school, had heaps of trouble with my family. One of my smoking mates said, that smoking would help me relaxing. So I tried one. No coughing whatsoever, allthough I inhaled from the first drag I took. Then I had second one. The rest is history....

Not really a good reason, is it?

Ouzo

I started when I was 15 - why ? Because this pretty green-eyed nurse said it was OK and I was in hospital for 8 weeks. At 18 I gave up for 18 months, then started on herbal products and started again. At 45 I had a heart attack, the only reason I'm still typing is that I recognised the symptoms, and so was in hospital when I had the second one. THEN I gave up!

So no fags since August 28th 1999

I don't smoke, and can't think of anything that'd make me start now. But on a night out last year, (after a few drinks) a non-smoking friend of mine decided to smoke a cigarette "to see what it was like". He coughed a bit but otherwise didn't seem seem too unhappy afterwards. He was 22 and had never smoked before, and as far as I know hasn't smoked since, but I don't think it would have taken many more fags to turn into a regular habit.

Again, curiosity's not a brilliant reason to start, but given all we know about the health risks any circumstances would have to be pretty spectacular to seem acceptable

Ah but curiosity is one of the corner stones of being a human being. Without it and without it's cousin, risk taking behaviour, we as a species would still be swinging from the trees of Africa.

I agree that curiosity is in our nature but there's curiosity to see what something's like (smoking that first cigarette) and then effectively forcing an addiction which is what taking up smoking is. One cigarette isn't going to make you an addict, peers will help you do that as demonstrated by Ouzo's "it'll help you relax".

Knowing as we do today how bad for you smoking is, it does amaze me to see people still taking it up. I know that it's addictive and I know it's hard to give up, but to take it up that's the weird thing. Some blame has to lie in past ignorance of the "Smoking is Good For You - As recommended by Doctors" variety but for those starting today peer pressure and the perceived coolness must be the only reason.

Perhaps the health warnings shouldn't be "Cigarettes can seriously damage your health" but "You are not big and you are not clever, you don't look cool and you will regret ever opening this pack"

Going back to a point made earlier about help from the govt and the lack of it, why only show NHS quit line ads in the evening? In my opinion there should be adverts during kids TV warning them off smoking in the first place. I know they cannot say you must not smoke - that brings us back to the point about say no and they'll do it anyway - but at least show something that says "you'll regret it and you'll stink and it really isn't cool anymore" Perhaps asking teen idols that smoke to either quit for charity or make an appeal to kids to never start in the first place. One thing is for sure - nobody is going to listen to a non-smoker, and certainly not a preaching anti-smoker...what do they know about it?

I regret smoking - if David Essex (showing my age) had looked into a camera when I was 12 and said "Euuugh - you really stink and look stupid" it *might* have stopped me. Who knows?

But I remember ads like that when i was a kid (I know we're about the same age) -there was one where a young girl blew smoke into the face of some bloke she fancied and he told her she stank or something.

Didn't stop me starting when I was about 18 (a late bloomer obviously). I can't remember the reason now, there probably wasn't one - it was a celebratory fag when I got my A-Level results.

Mental. I gave up (mostly) when I started seeing my boyf, who wouldn't kiss me if I'd been smoking - great incentive!

Ouzo, the Green Cross code is the rules for crossing the road - ie look both ways, don't cross near parked cars etc.

Captain Kebab - if I found out that he's started smoking, what would I do? I don't know. Cry, probably try emotional blackmail to get him to stop, and make damn sure that he doesn't smoke near me, and certainly not in the house, even when he gets to 16. Maybe a little extreme, and he is entitled to make his own decisions even if (IMO) they are bad ones. But it doesn't mean that I have to watch him do it.

Crying Mina? Wouldn't that be a bit extreme, and just make you look a bit err... silly to your son? I would have thought a cold, calm explaination of *why* you were so disappointed to your son would make more sense. You know "I thought you were wick enough to know that's stupid", "thought you had more gumption than to give into pressure from your mates", that sort of thing? So they feel like a prat?

I think in this case crying would be an immediate emotional response, *not* a way of getting him to stop.

Ahh. IC, my mistake

BS is right, crying would be something I think I couldn't help. I've spent a lot of time making sure he isn't around smoke (he was asthmatic as a baby, although that seems to have gone away now). And it would feel like he was throwing it in my face. I'm hoping that the 'life lessons' that he gets from me every now and then will put him off. ADHD kids don't tend to make close friends easily, so I think he'll be safe from direct peer pressure.

Actually, I would thought he'd be much *more* susceptible susceptible to it. Peer pressure (as a teenager at least) doesn't tend to come from a close circle of friends- they already know who you and and what you do. It usually comes from a much wider basis- the kids you don't know very well, but perhaps would like to fit in with. Either the perceived 'cool', successful kids, or the percieved 'hard' kids. That's how I remember it anyway.

If you son is likely to be without that close circle to back him up, then I would think that he's going to be looking to those 'external' groups all the more.

For the record, I have no idea why I started smoking- in the sense that I really can't remember. Went away camping with some mates for an obscenely drunken and dangerous weekend playing with Land Rovers. Woke up Sunday morning, face down in the mud under a Series 3, with a packet of Royals in my shirt pocket. The majority of the weekend is a bit of a mystery- the origins of the fags are still totally unknown to me, four years later.

<ale.

I don't ever remember being offered fags at all by school friends, and I wasn't allowed out at night to meet them after school. And I knew all the dangers of smoking before I was 14, so never thought to try it on my own.

He's much like me in terms of friends etc, so maybe he'll not be interested in 'joining in' either by that age.

I sound really stressed about it, but I'm not that worried ... yet.

I'm more worried about the day he comes and finally admits his sexuality to me. 'Mum, I can't live a lie anymore - I'm straight.'

. Well that's brightened a pretty crappy day at work, and for that!