by Ashfaq Bakali

Created on: May 05, 2008   Last Updated: May 06, 2008

On my way one morning I drove past a local Secondary School. As usual and as expected, I saw hordes of young boys and girls on their way to school. Flirting and teasing their way ahead, my attention was drawn to a particularly handsome lad walking blithely down the street, inhaling life and laughter, and that lethal smoke. he was puffing on his way to school with his friends who were all vibrant and took turns on the fag. Their parents as yet would not know about their new-found pleasure pursuit, and his in turn will only stimulate and encourage their new activity.

That handsome kid was ignorant of the consequences he will confront later in life because while viewing his favorite program or film on telly, his favorite star or actor or singer portrays the happy-go-lucky lifestyle with a cigarette tucked neatly between his fingers and he very smartly puffs the cigarette without giving any hint to the other side of the coin. These heroes of films are portrayed as the dashing dare-devils who can decimate the villains with their actions and smartness they tend to appear cool adorning the cigarette between their lips.

Last month I attended a funeral of one of my relatives. He had died of lung cancer at the age of 46. I knew him to be a chain smoker, puffing cigarette after cigarette, as they say on the telly, 'for the taste alone'. He had eventually puffed his way to death. His untimely death not just shock but rocked his whole family; the wife and his four children, what to talk about his age and ailing parents. I also learned that during the last month of her husband's life, when he was gasping for every breath his wife rearely slept. She nursed the Traveling Salesman until he succumbed to his disease and was left behind with a life compounded with miseries.

How long does it take for cigarettes to harm you? The answer is 3 seconds. Or less. The fact is that the instant you inhale cigarette smoke, that rich country flavour goes to work on your heart, your lungs, your whole body. It starts your heart pounding an extra 15 to 25 beats per minute, raises your blood pressure by 10 to 20 points. In your lungs, it chokes the airways and produces cancer-causing chemicals and deposits those poisons in your stomach, kidneys, bladder. All of this happens with every cigarette you smoke; no smoker is immune.

There is no age limit on the effect, either. A teenage novice smoker may feel winded under mild stress, even if he smokes only five or six cigarettes per day. Every smoker who

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