Care for a smoke?

Belonging to a Sikh household, among my peers I was the one who detested smoking most I think; probably because since none of our acquaintances smoked, I never had to face anyone smoking except strangers at railway stations, bus stops, and such other public places(where actually smoking is banned). I hated the smell and used to get furious at the forced passive smoking, so in such situations, I always made it a point to give a huge glare to the culprit. I had this notion that anyone who smoked was either a rich spoilt brat or a poor addict; whoever it was, always managed to induce a dislike in me for them and their weakness, hence the glare.

But gradually things changed. I moved on to college, where almost every 4^th person smokes. No one considers it a big deal anymore. In fact in dram practices, we have had cigarette breaks at 4 in the night for people who are not able to work without their standard puff. I found all this weird in the beginning but gradually accepted that people do smoke, and that too without any sense of guilt which I (as a kid) thought they would have.

I really respect people who stay away from this slow poisoning habit or who have quit it; that shows a will power which is admirable. Though I don’t give angry glares to people who smoke anymore (now I even have good friends who unfortunately smoke), I still continue to detest the habit. Or maybe I just fail to understand the reasons for smoking. All I can see is that probably something which started as an experiment went on to become a habit, and then supposedly a tension reliever to which they got addicted. For a non-smoker, it is difficult to comprehend why killing yourself slowly is such a fad. People who smoke and by chance happen to come onto this blog , please do enlighten me.

Anyways, the reason I started thinking all this recently was because I happened to come across a good idea I wanted to put up. On cigarette packets in India we have a statutory warning “smoking is injurious to health”. On my recent holiday to Singapore, I saw that on their cigarette packets, along with the same statutory warning, they have images which show what smoking does to you. The images(spoilt teeth, tongue, disfigured neck) are quite gross and I think they may be able to remove the glamour part (which I think lot of people associate smoking with) from cigarette packets. Maybe this would at least encourage beginners to stay away from this poison. I don’t know whom to suggest the idea to, so just putting it up here; so that it may circulate, and maybe, reach the right head so we can have something like this in India too.

On a lighter note, couldn't resist putting these up..

“People always come up to me and say that my smoking is bothering them... Well, it's killing me!”

“I tried to stop smoking cigarettes by telling myself I just didn't want to smoke, but I didn't believe myself”

“I'm not really a heavy smoker any more. I only get through two lighters a day now.”

“smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”