Smoking Is Cool

Way back when I started smoking this was the reason for most kids.
I can honestly say I regret it and wish I had never started.

But when I was a kid it made you tough and cool to do so.

Nowadays smoking is heavily frowned upon, I almost feel like an outsider a lot of the time.

So if it's so bad and society no longer accepts it..........why do so many kids smoke?

It's pretty retarded, anyone thinking of smoking..........don't. Or anyone who has just started.........STOP!
Total and untter waste of health, time and money.

I recently found out my boy smokes, while somewhat hypocritical of me I gave him greif about it, telling him all the horror stories.

My mother in law said I don't really have any room to talk about it since I smoke.
But the way I look at it I'm speaking from experience and telling him it's a stupidly retarded idiotic thing to do.

My health is so low because of it, I get out of breath walking up stairs and I am far to terrified to calculate how much money I've spent on.......burning stuff.

This had no effect lol

The funny thing is, he says all his friends don't like him doing it and he doesn't really enjoy it........to that I could not think of anything to say.

Kids are odd lol

 

ive heard that teen smoking is down alot since i was a teen. yes, smoking was cool, and i was dumb enough to get hooked. I hope my kids don't get into it when they get older, cause i would give them grief about it, even tho i smoke. hopefully i will quit before they get old enough to do it.

 

“It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times.” Mark Twain

Unfortunately, I also fall into Twain's camp.

http://bestsmileys.com/smoking/8.gif

 

Cigarette companies are still very much in the political loop, spending big bucks on certain candidates. They are still at work behind the scenes.

When I started in the 50's there were even ashtrays in doctors offices.

Here's some ads http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=cigarette+ads&fr=att-portal&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8


PS two years ago now I had the upper protions of both lungs removed.
Not Cool

 

I worked as a theatre operating tech for a while and saw the lungs of people who smoked and people who didn’t, stupidly, I still carried on smoking, and paid the price. Bad chest, and blocked coronary arteries.

 

About 22yr ago my son and daughter came home from school, and pleaded with me to stop smoking, like life depended on it with little notes they had written at school saying " Dad please stop smoking as you could die " so i did, now my sons 28 and my daughters 25 and they both smoke WTF, i used to love a smoke and a cuppa, but must admit it's the best thing i could have ever done , i feel a whole lot healthier now, and i am by no means an anti smoker, as i know how much i enjoyed it when i used to smoke !

 

Get yourself a real big bag of post-its

 

Funny thing Laura, the only of my kids who smokes is the physical trainer rolleyes

 

Found out last month the boy is smoking. He is 13.
I can't bring myself to chastise him but I have advised him to jack it in. It ain't that I condone it, more that I was smoking at 13 and I'll feel like a hypocrite. Coming up to first anniversary of jacking myself.
Tabs no more.

 

OUCH, JOTS, maybe you can talk to him? No, it isn't cool at all. The ultimate price is to be paid in the end. He is young enough, he should understand it isn't cool... Not to mention, expensive, in more ways than one.

I hope for both your sakes, he can stop before it is too late..

 

Funny my kids said JAck iy in and now my name ins rusty JACK :-D

 

Smoking will always be cool with a section of kids it doesn't matter how much you advertise the problems with it,in fact the dangers and the laws against smoking in public places and at school are the appeal.

Smoking symbolises a disregard for health and life but mostly the rules which is the antithesis of the school machine which is live long and follow the rules.

So in that respect it will never change IMO,smart people who follow the rules are not cool :-D

 

Kids are always looking to establish their own identity and cigs is an easy but quite uncomfortable process, you know dry heaves, dizziness and racing heart etc. The question is is how to make smoking 'not cool'. A girl could say 'kissing you is like licking an ashtray'. :-D I think the best is to lead by example though other than that I think teaching them self worth is good as long as one does not shove it in their face. We need teenage whisperers!

 

Is it cool with kids though? Kids like to do things adults think are 'uncool', or at least, that's how my friends always were. As much as smoking has gained a lot of negative attention with adults, I don't think kids' perspectives have changed much about it -- just because some PSA shows a bunch of kids saying smoking isn't cool, it doesn't accurately represent the true attitude kids have towards smoking. At least, that's what I have noticed.
Why do kids pick up smoking? Maybe because a parent does, maybe because they found a cigarette and were curious (that never got me to smoke and I've tried twice in my whole life and didn't care for it), or maybe because the kids they hang around with kids that smoke. No matter what, kids, even more so than adults, don't take the risks seriously since there is no immediate side effect, just like overeating or eating unhealthily. Or even drinking too much caffeine or... for that matter, doing too much of anything. As long as the consequences aren't immediate, children don't see them. Of course, not all kids are the same, and some may have a different view on life than others and might be more preoccupied with the future than with being a kid.

But since he says that his friends don't like him doing it and he doesn't enjoy it, maybe the question is, why did he start?
I can't understand it myself. I never got a habit, but if I try and imagine what would cause me to smoke at that age, I would have a couple.
Maybe I'm doing it for attention, or to make someone mad, get back at someone, or maybe at some point I thought it was cool and I tried it enough times to get addicted. Who knows though.
It doesn't matter if you smoke, on the contrary, a smoker is the only person that knows what smoking does to a person. You can't be hypocritical for wanting to protect your son from your mistakes. That's what parents are for. Every generation learns from the mistakes of the last (or at least we should) otherwise there would be no progress in the world.
I hope he does quit smoking though. I have seen first hand what happens to a chronic smoker. My grandfather died in his 40s from throat and mouth cancer because he smoked constantly. He was a good man, too bad that his wife (not my grandmother, she died when my mother was a child), and all of his smoking children didn't think that smoking was bad.

 

Good points, Laura, I also think the price of a pack of cigs. have deterred a lot here in the U.S. Here in Mich, you can pay around $8 for "one" pack. :eek I think that helped to drop the teen smoking, some. :wave

 

I hear ya, the carton prices are just shocking... 59.99 a carton...:eek It takes $$$, and in today's economy, it is scary... :eek

 

Don't you guys have lots of no smoking zones as appose to no smoking in public buildings? We have no smoking indoors now but still very few no smoking zones,I've seen a few no smoking zones on hospital grounds but no one follows the rules and smokes in smoking area they just smoke in the door ways.

Are US schools no smoking 'zones' now?If so that would pretty much stamp out :-D 'I couldn't help it' smoking in schools.

 

I think I know why kids arn't smoking cigarettes as much these days because they're all smoking crack,its cheaper and you can buy it without ID.

Plus I've never see a no crack sign :-D

 

LOL, it is almost May, you know I am going to revive my old thread.... :-D

 

For quite a while my son has been on my wife and I to quit (he's 10). So, we finally set a date about 3 weeks ago to quit on the 4th of March. I went to bed on the 3rd, said I'm done, and haven't had a smoke since. My wife is down to about 8 a day comparedt to 20, so in time she should be to zero.

I just don't know what the state of Michigan will do if there are more people that quit. Our gov. Granholm forced an increase on the cig. tax a few years ago (gave the ultimatum of either raise cig. tax or schools WILL lose money) and then again not to long ago raised the tax again for a total of $2.00 a pack PLUS the 6% sales tax on top of it (paying tax on a tax), so at approx. $6.00 a pack, there is $2.36 in taxes per pack that I am not paying anymore. Won't touch the tax on alcohol, but I'm sure our government will find something else to tax us on to make up for the lost taxes or increase the cig. tax again to make up for it.

 

@Rikky roflmaoroflmao
You never see adverts either Rikky, saying "crack can damage your health" :-D
@LauraR I don't think there's anywhere, where you can smoke indoors in the UK now, you can't even smoke in a works vehicle anymore incase of endangering someone to secondary smoke inhilation !

 

I don't know, I kinda have a hard time empathizing with the "because it's cool" thing because I was never like that. I tried smoking once or twice in high school just to see what it was like, but it didn't do anything for me. Growing up, I thought I'd never drink or smoke, but then I went to college...

 

Show him pictures of what it will do to his teeth. Rub in that he will stink, horribly.

Dumb teen girls will unfortunately still want to date him because he's "dangerous" and "rebellious", so that argument won't work... rolleyes

 

Funny thing is, I started about 23 years ago when I was 15, because I thought I was going to impress some girl... sad part is, I can't even remember her name now.

Back then, smokes were $2 a pack for Newports (what I started with) and cheaper for 'off brands'. Here in NY, packs cost anywhere from $6 to $8 a pack depending on the brand. I used to smoke 3packs a day plus. I have tried the pills, the patches and even cold turkey (I had cigs forced on me when I did that because I turned into such a bast3rd). I'm down to where a pack lasts me 2-4 days depending on what's going on.

The truly sad part is that I go to the local Indian Nation (reservation for the rest of youse... LOL) and I buy the loose tobacco and empty tubes and roll my own. The plus to this is that I put about 1/2 to 2/3 the tobacco in there that is normally in a cig, and don't smoke more cigs, so that I'm actually smoking less.. I know, I haven't quit, but I keep going in that direction.

It's not easy, and for some reason, I just haven't been able to make that final split from them yet. Granted, I remember when I was first an Emergency Medical Tech, we'd bring a patient into the ER and then go to the Nurse's station to light up. Now, in Syracuse anyways, you can't even smoke on hospital property (funny seeing clusters of nurses down on the corner smoking).

I have 2 rooms in my home where smoking is allowed, and both have air cleaners in them, otherwise we go outside, and with the nice weather coming, I think we're gonna go back to only smoking outside.

I've given up a lot of things over the years, but for some reason, the cigs still kick my butt every time I try.

When I do manage to quit, I'll let you all know how I did it, but it is tough. I actually enjoy smoking still... dunno why, but I do. Make no excuses, there is just something about a cig that I really enjoy... maybe it's addiction, maybe it's all in my head, but until I can figure it out, I can just try to keep cutting down.


~C

 

A friend of ours is having a hard time quitting, I told him to switch to heroin, I heard it's easier to kick. rolleyes

 

The sad part is, it's actually, medically true


~C

 

My wife and I quit around the age of twenty. Six of us quit at the same time so that made it easy. One girl started again and she finally quit a couple of years ago. Out of my three kids, my oldest daughter smokes. The other two never did. She just had dental surgery and isn't supposed to smoke for two weeks. She's gonna go one day at a time, (her words), and use this as a starting point.
I have to say I'm anti-smoking when it comes to cigs. I don't want to breathe any second hand. There's regs in BC banning smoking within 10ft of doors or open windows, but if there's breeze blowing the wrong way, you walk right into it anyway.
I don't like to see butts laying around either. The same people who won't drop a gum wrapper think nothing of tossing a butt.
I'm getting old and crotchety I guess.

 

Life seems to do that to ya doesn't it? Meaning myself too of course

 

lol That statement is far from correct, in fact the chemical addiction to nicotine only lasts for a few days on average, it's the habbit people have the most trouble with. Where Heroin is a much much heavier withdrawal that can last for weeks and can actually drive people to very insane acts.

I've known a few heroin addicts in my time and had some interesting conversations with them when they've been sober.
What gets me about it is most of them say the best part of the rush is when you throw up, something to do with the blood rush. Sorry but I hate throwing up so if thats the best part I think I'll give it a miss lol

@Mimsy... Telling kids facts about smoking does nothing at all, I say that as living proof. The only way kids will not take up smoking is if the punishment is harsh, something like, if you're caught smoking anywhere at all under the age of 19 (or whatever your nations age is) you will be given 150 hours of community service for the first offense, 300 for the second, 500 for the 3rd and so on. This would take a while to take effect but kids generally don't want to work lol so I think it would do the trick.

Eliminate kids from smoking and within time smoking will be eliminated altogether.

For those like me who smoke, most of us have tried to give up and failed, the reason for this IMO is most of us try to give up because we are TOLD to or because we think we OUGHT to, the only way to give up successfully is if you WANT to.

 

i quit smoking 2 fridays ago and i dont think ill go back this time. i actually had a couple cigs over the weekend, so i cheated a little. i never bought another pack though.

 

Good for you :clap We used to call that smoking OP's (other peoples) :-D

 

It seems there is too much money involved with banning them. It doesn't work with any other drug anyway, so I say only sell smokes where youth are not allowed. That would make it tough for kids. There would always be bootleg cigs but that would cut too much into the underager's weekend party money.

 

Actually, the "you will become smelly and ugly"-argument works surprisingly well on teenage girls. Or at least it used to.

One of my co-workers recently quit smoking. His doctor told him that was the only thing that would improve his asthma, so he was nice enough to give us fair warning that he was going to be very short-tempered for the next few weeks, and started cutting back. We of course told him that's perfectly fine, just let us know if we can help, and the two smokers on our team actually went so far as to never mention smoking around him, and stopped leaving their cigarette packs out. We non-smokers tried to help by supplying snacks and drinkable coffee (unlike what's served in the break room uke).

That co-worker hasn't smoked in a month now, and thinks it's something to be very proud of. Since it is, we all tell him to go ahead and brag whenever he feels like it, especially if it helps him to resist starting up the bad habit again.

 

Your not alone. It's so tied into my day to day activities it's sickening. But I will honestly say I enjoy smoking.

 

I put your post into Google translator but I couldn't figure out what language to translate :-D

Joking aside, your argument has just had more impact on me than most others, still smoking but thinking about it more

Playing video games without eyesight would be pretty difficult.

 

Luckily I never started. Though I do like a good cigar once in a great while. :major

 

Hm I started smoking on regular basis 8th grade. But I tried cigs several times before. I calculated how much Ive spent when I was in highschool as a senior and It wasn't good I could have bought a new 10,000 dollar car. I really want to quit ATM I am 90% I can quit if I had the chance. But being unemployed doesn't help and nothing to do. I told my GF Id quite cold turkey on my life if I found a job for 10 dollars an hour around here... To me that is Gold job (great job) in this area.. best you can get. But everything pays min. wage. And most jobs went to mexico for cheap labor.