Time to weigh in on the smoking issue.
(apologies to those who have already seen this posted elsewhere on the forum)
When I was a kid, our family would often take road trips - five kids in the back and both parents in the front smoking to their heart's content with the windows up. At home during winter, seven of us would be shut up in the living room (watching Dragnet or The Man From Uncle or something - punctuated by those ads with the Marlboro man riding his horse across the hills (was that Wyoming?), heater on, parents smoking like locomotives. In fact, in those days we would run to the local corner store to buy the cigarettes FOR them (at 33c a pack).
As a fifteen yo I was even hired by somebody to ride a penny-farthing bike around the local speedway between races and throw free packs of cigs to the crowd. Lol.
Needless to say, I became a smoker myself - and have now been one for 38 years (I did give up for three years in my twenties but went to a party at a Navy base, was offered a cigar and got up the next morning a smoker again .... darn sailors).
But see, those times were different. The mindset was not the same and the dangers were less known.
Now, in my country, stores are not even permitted to display cigarettes, are not permitted to sell them to persons under 18yo, and are required to ask for ID of anyone who appears under 25yo. It is now also illegal to smoke within four metres of the entrance of any building or any other signed area, in any area more than 25% enclosed, within ten metres of a playground or school boundary, in a vehicle carrying persons under 16yo or on a beach.
Sometime this year or next, all cigarettes will be packaged in plain packs with a gory warning only and no branding whatsoever.
Sadly, I still see a lot of kids smoking and wonder if I were a kid in THIS day and age, would I still take it up?
More to the point, can I quit? I wish.
My optometrist says I will be blind by the time I'm seventy due to severe macular degeneration which can be directly attributed to smoking over such a long period. I told him that won't matter because I'll have died of a heart attack by then anyhow.
The moral? I am personally weak-willed but times have changed drastically ..... there's a lot of help and aids available out there, so IF YOU ARE YOUNGER AND MORE SENSIBLE THAN ME, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE - PLEASE GIVE UP NOW ... I'll be happy to ride a funny looking bike over to your place and take them away from you.
