Smoking.

I myself am not a smoker, i have never tried one before. I am not bothered by standing around people who smoke, yet for others this is a real problem which has now helped to push smokers out in to the cold wherever they go. I think it is wrong to say to smokers that they must stand outside and smoke when people go into pubs for a nice meal and then you can get people drinking silly yet they are not forced to go out, people just ignore them.

Smoking i have found by many people i know which have smoked before is done as either a method of relaxing, or many people my age are "social smokers" in which they smoke predominantly when out socialising with friends. Smokers are currently told to stop smoking with free quit kits advertised through the NHS on TV or patches and gum to stop the urge to smoke, so why dont people stop if it really is going to damage their health? I think the answer to this question is because it is peoples thing that they like to do, why shouldn't they smoke if they want to, they pay for it, yes it has the potential to their health and cut down their life span but many people fall ill at any age from many things, you can live a clean free life, where you exercise and eat healthy but it does not mean that you will be healthy. An example of how cigarettes doesnt always mean your life will be limited is by looking at Compton Mackenzie who lived to the age of 89years old and he had his first cigarette at the age of 4.

Many smokers can live till an old age, many of our grandparents smoke now still because they used to do it before all the peer pressure from the governments to quit, but yet we dont see the government withdrawing on the number of cigarettes sold within the UK all they do is put extra VAT on to try and "discourage" people but cigarettes and alcohol are two big money makers for the government and an extra 20p a pack or so isnt really going to have an effect on smokers.

Many people start to smoke in their teens, i am about one of the only people i know who has never even tried a cigarette before, but i have been tempted to start smoking when i was younger. I rememeber this one week i just wanted to go over to the Tesco near mine and buy some and i honeslty don't know why, the only reason i came to was because i was stressed from A-levels and that smoking was supposed to help relax people. I'm glad i never brought cigarettes that day because i think i would have become a regular smoker of them. Your friends smoking is what i think a big reason why many teenagers smoke, and the way in which smoking is portrayed within movies and TV actors who smoke, this is done to give the actor a characteristic, in many ways smoking on TV is done by people who think they are abit better than others and want to give that impression that your not to mess with them, like harder more brutal characters who have a 'mean streak' may smoke to give them that more of an edge. This gives the wrong idea to young people.

This website below goes into the reasons why young teenagers/adults smoke and picks up on some of the reasons in which i have mentioned throughout.

http://www.helpwithsmoking.com/why-people-smoke.php