I have given a lot of thought as to whether I should stop smoking or not, including why is it that we start in the first place? I realized on reflection that in almost every culture there is some sort of public declaration of one's coming of age. The primitives in Africa and South America perform elaborate rites to mark the passage from adolescence to adulthood. In the Western World, our "ritual" consists of the freedom to smoke in public.
The kids practice, of course. They sneak cigarettes in bathrooms, in the school yard, outside their own neighbourhoods. They work hard at learning to inhale without coughing or becoming ill. The girls practice tapping away the ashes; and at first they tap so diligently and so continually that their cigarettes look more like pretzels than fine, clean, sparkling white super-filter royal-lengthened creations of superior tobacco.
And then comes, 'The Day'-when somehow it is all right to smoke in public! When I left full time education and 'Started Work' I could hardly take three steps out of the front door of my house without "lighting up." (Funny thing -but that habit persisted until the day I finally quit smoking!)
I remember the girls I dated in those days. The most longed-for gift in their circle was a cigarette case-and-lighter "set." Put three girls at the same table, and they would be sure to compare their sets before discussing which brand of cigarettes each smoked, and why. (Chances are they all smoked the same brand, the one that then seemed to be the choice of the sophisticated, the knowledgeable, and the fashionable.) In place of chewing gum relaxing with a cigarette became the 'norm' before the nicotine craving depression of real maturity. Did it matter that kisses given were like kissing a dirty ashtray.
What else in the Western World is so inexpensive a symbol of "maturity"? A car costs several thousand -but a pack of cigarettes can still be bought for £0.21 ($0.31) for each cigarette. What else provides such easy conversation? Who among us can't explain now-or couldn't explain then, in our teens-that 'X' brand are the cigarettes we like best because they're easy on the throat, because they're packed so well, because we like their shape and size and fresher taste? Unfortunately we are not seeing the same decline in young people smoking as we do amongst the adults.
Moreover, what else is so ideally fitted to informal sociability? The Indians extended the peace- pipe; we say "Have a cigarette." We don't hesitate (well, many of us don't) to ask a stranger for a light (and imagine how many friendships have begun that way). When conversation lags, and boredom might result, the gap can be filled with a cigarette and all the chatter and gestures that go with it. Cigarettes are social first aid for the teen-ager, and their usefulness lingers on. After oxygen, water and food, in that order, tobacco is the fourth item of human consumption (no pun intended).
How strange it is that with the knowledge we have that cigarettes kill, we still thank a stranger or friend who offers a cigarette to us, even though we know they are really offering us cancer, heart disease or emphysema.
In spite of education I and all my peer group never stopped to consider the horrors that may lie ahead, choking on tar contaminated lungs, dying from invasive cancers, having hearts that gave in to thrombosis, horrible, horrible, deaths brought on by believing that a cigarette made us mature.
I continued to smoke. And as you know, I wasn't alone.
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