by Rosemary Redfern

Created on: June 30, 2010

For a long time information has been published about the dangers of smoking. The information about what is contained in smoke and it’s effects on the body are available to anyone interested. 

With this knowledge available why should anyone consider smoking?  Mainly because it is thought to look sophisticated to have a cigarette in your hand with a curl of blue smoke rising from it. It offers the suggestion that you are one of the ‘in’ crowd, an accepted person who knows what is fashionable and how to present yourself as such. It suggests invulnerability.

The reality that smoking is an extremely addictive activity is sidelined.  To become dependent on smoke is sad and yet the effects it has on the body and skin are ignored.  So many (caucasian) smokers have a yellow tint to their skin which, with time, becomes lined and leathery.  In an age which venerates youthfulness and energy this is a surprising price to be prepared to pay.  But then, part of the effects of smoking is that it diminishes the sense of taste so that it enables a reduced diet and so a slimmer figure. But what is the point of a slim figure if the body cannot get enough oxygen and damage to the cardiovascular system is continuous?  Images of elderly smokers now struggling for breath attached to oxygen tanks by tubes they cannot abandon is hardly edifying. 

The health scare element obviously does not carry weight with many and they are prepared to insist on their right to poison themselves and anybody else in their vicinity. This attitude is spoiling eating outside at restaurants because outside is the only public place smokers can indulge.  The gaggles of huddled smokers outside their places of work in the winter are figures to be pitied as much as heroin addicts. 

One of the curious myths about smoking is that is relieves stress. Perhaps that is an excuse to resume an addiction, which was a struggle to give up, when the going gets tough.  Yet it only adds to the problems causing the stress.

For many of us who grew up when nearly everyone smoked there are memories of walls stained and dirty as the result of smoke filled rooms.  Sometimes it was difficult to see across a living room and every piece of furniture and fabric, clothes and the breathe of the smokers smelt of stale tobacco; fingers were often stained with nicotine. Ash trays filled with stubs added to the ugliness and aroma.  

There can be no excuse for smoking tobacco, not even the sweetly scented pipe tobaccos. The effects in dirt, ill health, intrusion in the space of others and smell are cause enough to avoid this habit. 

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