Smoking

During a commercial break, a public service announcement flashed across the TV screen: "Twenty questions to determine if you are an alcoholic." A minute later I rushed out to the porch where my dad was sitting with a can of beer. "Daddy! You're an alcoholic! You do seven out of the twenty things, and you only need three to pass!" I was twelve years old. My father looked at me and said, "Do we live in a nice house?" We did. "Do I go to work every day?" He did. "Am I a lawyer?" He was. That was that. Alcoholics live in cardboard boxes and beg for a living. The TV must be wrong. Every night at 5pm, Dad would come home, tense from his day at work.

I just quit smoking. I remember the day I started so clearly, though it was 18 years ago (aaagh!). Kay Turner, the coolest girl at Youth Club was making friends with me, I felt so honored, and when she offered me that first cigarette (Consulate, Menthol - yuk!) - there was no way I was going to turn her down. So that's my sad reason for starting a life long habit - to look cool. I remember how I must have looked, getting through packets of them when I never really needed to. How I have wished over recent years (especially since my mother died from cancer) that I had never got hooked, like some lucky people.

Q I have a 15-year-old son who smokes. Not much but it's only the start. We don't know how to make him understand the situation. His two grandfathers and one grandmother died from heavy smoking and he knows it. We (parents) were also smokers in the past but not now and he doesn't get it. Please help us. - Marcia

Nicotine is the stimulant found in all tobacco products such as: cigarettes, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, and cigars. Cigarettes contain at least 43 distinct cancer-causing chemicals. Smoking is directly responsible for 87 percent of lung cancer cases and causes most cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smoking is also a major factor in coronary heart disease and stroke; and has been linked to a variety of other conditions and disorders, including slowed healing of wounds, infertility, and peptic ulcer disease.

We all know that smoking is bad for us (Duh!). I mean the label on any cigarette package practically says "Smoking this product will kill you". But the question is not "Is smoking dangerous?" but "Is smoking cool?" OK, so you agree that killing yourself is very uncool, but some of us still think that it LOOKS cool to smoke.Now, in my other articles (YOU HAVE READ MY OTHER ARTICLES?) we figured that looking cool is different than being cool. Well, since BEING cool is what we're after here, I'm now gonna tell you why you can't smoke and be cool at the same time.