So how many smoke?


Well I do. Have done for some time. Now don't start telling me just how bad it is. I know. Why have I asked? Now there a lot more non smoker's than smoker's. OK so it was a Government drive to get people to stop, or smoke less. On the understanding that we would not be a drain on the Health service. So has that happened? Not taking in to account the loss of tax revenue.
John933

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To buy petrol in Europe. Pull up at station. Wait. Get out a 20 Euro note, then ask someone to fill up the bike. Give person money. Ride away. Simple.

How I don't smoke I'll never know. Both my parents smoked heavily (and it did for them both, although in their mid / late 80's) and just about everyone that could be some sort of role model when I was growing up (older friends, attractive girls, film stars, sports people (remember Barry Sheene having a hole drilled in the chin bar of his helmet so he could smoke on the start line), they all smoked. You couldn't get on a bus or a train without inhaling second hand smoke and there was a unofficial cigarette currency running alongside real money at school.

So why am I not wheezing my way up stairs and forgetting people's names these days (like a work friend five years younger than me who has smoked a pipe all his life). Well partly it's because I was perverse enough to not want to do what everyone else did, partly it's because I didn't want to be shackled to being forced to have to buy the things (ok if I could pick and choose when but not if I was forced to by addiction), but mainly due to the effect of one of the shock horror early anti smoking tv programmes which compared the autopsy state of a smokers lungs with a non smokers. At twelve there was no way I wanted to end up with the black tar ridden ones.

So I've never smoked and these days, other than the person mentioned above, I don't know many who do. Because smoking was so common when I was growing up I have no prejudice against people who smoke now but privately think it a shortsighted thing to do.

The government's stance has always been very two faced; disapproving on health grounds but not enough to forego the tax revenue it raises although I admit there are issues of personal liberty in there, particularly when it involves something like tobacco with addictive qualities that many would be unable to give up overnight. Perhaps the softly softly, chip away at the edges (and keep voting for us) approach was about as much as they could do. As for the health service, well maybe that's for another post.

Pipe and cigar fan here. It's much nicer to fire up something that tastes nice four or five times a year (usually when the port or single malt is out ) and hence really enjoy it. Bonus is that cigarettes now make me feel sick so my twenty years off those will continue.

Andy

If every person quit in the morning who`s going to pick up the lost revenue tab? smokers have paid for there hospital bed more so than a non smoker in taxes but are shunned upon at hospital because they are "scum smokers"

Government's also know smokers will often die long before they claim there aged pension so again another win for them, they cannot afford to pay pensions out now, imagine if smokers all gave it up & lived for decades longer, how would they finance that in the future, they couldn't.

Government's are all bloody hypocrites & is is the reason they still allow the sale & collect a nice big tax cheque for it.

I ponsed a fag from Barry Sheene at Silverstone in the mid 70`s aged 12

Mezo.

When people say they smoked and reached 90, etc, I feel sorry that they that they had to deal with an addiction for their whole lives. I was addicted to nicotine for like 10 years and its probably the only thing in my thirty years on this planet that I truly regret. I suffered a fairly emotionally traumatic event that compelled me to reevaluate my relationships to stuff and reading How to Stop Smoking the Easy Way by Alan Carr just finished things off! If Alan Carr were alive today he'd probably support UKIP and like Jeremy Clarkson, but he'd still deserve some sort of Nobel prize IMO! If smokers here want to stop I'd highly recommend his book. Don't worry you can even smoke whilst you read it!

I smoked for almost 25 years - 2+ packs per day.

Quit cold turkey in Jan '88 and convinced the wife that the money I had spent on smoking would go a long way towards a new motorcycle payment.

Still have the bike - an '86 Yamaha SRX-6 :-)

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Michael Jordan
Sterling, Virginia
USofA

No cigarettes ever for me. I hated the smell when I was growing up, especially when both my parents smoked in the car on driving trips. And when one of my mom's lungs collapsed at the ripe age of 41 in the 70's it was enough to prompt them both to quit cold turkey.

She recovered, and they never smoked again and are still healthy in their 80's, and my dad still deer hunts almost every day of the season. I don't think he would be doing that if he had continued to smoke. I'm so glad they quit.

As for why fewer people now smoke, there's a lot less positive advertising that promotes smoking. The health risks are much more widely known, at least in the USA, Canada and Europe. So a combination of awareness and marketing.

But if you check the cigarette usage on developing countries, you'll find that cigarette makers have just shifted their focus to addicting the populations in those markets. The dangers of smoking have always been known as have been the addictive qualities of smoking. The cigarette companies just simply don't care about the negative impacts their products have on people - it's all about the profit and increasing the consumption of product regardless of its destructive nature.

As to reduced health care costs of reduced tobacco use, the numbers have been higher than predicted. Since 2008 in California alone, there has been an estimated 36,000 fewer extended hospitalizations, and savings of an estimated $20 billion or more since instituting programs to reduce teen smoking.

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Roborider
Rob Osborne
Vail (Tucson), Arizona USA

Tobacco give you almost nothing, i start smoking in my 11, tried to stop few times and 3.5 years ago i got freedom.
May be one day i will stop smoking weed (marijuana) also, but it's give me a lot more than tobacco, so i dont sure

A long time ago when I joined the army they gave out free cigs with the welcome pack of soap etc. I never started but I have been known to buy a pack when in a crowd that can't afford the nicer store boughts. Even if I don't smoke there is a camaraderie of sharing a pack of smokes. I also don't turn down the offer of a cigarette, just stick it behind the ear for later.