Re Steve's point that one is a fool ever to start: in my youth it was a social expectation to smoke; not that non-smokers were actually discriminated against, but it was thought maybe just a a bit eccentric, & a bit wimpish, not to. Hence the hell so many of us had to give up ~~ because we didn't know. But today's young people do know what it does to them; & some will still do it. Nothing so distresses me as to see a young person smoking. Now, they really are idiots.

I am sure I have retailed here before the story of my father: once towards the end of his life in the 1970s, well after the tobacco-cancer·&c link was well established, going on once about young people & rock music. "I saw some interviewed on television; and, when it was pointed out to them that if they went on playing their music at the volume they all do they would finish up deaf, do you know what they said? They said they didn't care!" he concluded in tones of absolute horror -- and took a great long drag on his cigarette...

~M~