I’m a smoker, me

I smoked my first cigarette at 15, 52 years ago. By the age of 18 I was on 10 a day. Then after I started getting paid, the figure rose inexorably to 20. As the years passed I realised fags were not becoming more expensive over time - they were actually, adjusting for inflation, becoming cheaper. Right up to the 90s this was the case until the government started slapping punitive taxes on them.

In the 70s I visited America and noticed people were only smoking the first half of their fags (don’t call them that over there, by the way), and later when I heard that the lower death rates of lung cancer deaths over there were partly ascribable to this habit, I adopted it myself.

Like many young people of my era, I felt it looked ‘cool’ to smoke, and soon noticed girls who indulged might be more likely to put out. “If they smoke, they poke”. Before long of course I was addicted to nicotine, cool or not. Nicotine is said to be more addictive than heroin; certainly success rates for giving up those respective habits support this thesis. Adverts for cigarettes were necessary only to keep addicts ‘on-brand’ and not to defect to a rival.

Last year, when I was facing the grim possibility of serving life in prison for crimes I did not commit, my levels went up to over 200 a week. This is understandable. I have long felt that smoking a fag makes you 4% happier, and I found myself trying to be 4% happier at least 3 times an hour. Now that terrible threat has been lifted my rate has fallen to 13 a day - a level I have not managed for nearly 40 years.

Naturally I couldn’t resist watching a Timewatch docu last night about the subject and learned a few things I didn’t know, such as the fact that in early 20th century America the manufacturers noticed they were missing out on half the adult market, because it was not deemed ladylike for women to smoke, especially in the street. A clever advertising exec launched a campaign which suggested that for a woman to smoke was a demonstration of liberation and individuality. Within 10 years girls were puffing away as much as the guys.

I hope to give it up one day, as, despite all attempts by the manufacturers to convince us otherwise, they shorten life- and now I have a good reason to prolong my own...