This morning on the BBC news there was a snippet interview with a Doctor about the benefits of hiding cigarette displays from children's view.(It's all about the cheeeldren!)
It made me reminisc about my first cigarette. I came from a family in which no one smoked. But one of my Mom's friends did. We used to go and stay at her house occasionally. I knicked one of her cigarettes from the pack in the lounge and skedaddilled along to the loo where I had one puff. It was ghastly. I must have been eight or nine. The memory of that stopped me smoking all the way through my school years till I had left home.
My first real cigarette was a Lexington (toasted!) that someone gave me to try in our student digs. I lay down on my bed to recover from that one.
The point is, I didn't lust after any cigarette packed in fancy boxes or displayed in shops. I can't remember even noticing them.
My upbringing was EXTRA moral - judgmental, fun-less and disapproving of smoking, drinking and sex. I could have told them, THAT was the reason, eventually, all these practises seemed MOST attractive to me!
Today on the Telly, the lady doctor let slip, that child smoking is on the rise....well I'd read that too actually. So the solution is to hide cigarettes away behind closed displays. This makes something people do - millions of people still smoke - secret, mysterious, fascinating! Will it stop our cheeeldren smoking? Naaaa. I think they'll smoke more.
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