It would not be correct to say that you have ‘never smoked’. Even the most abstemious person has inhaled the exhaled smoke from a third party smoker. It is impossible not to, even with the European anti-smoking laws in place. It used to be a lot worse for non-smokers. I took a plane trip to Australia in the 1990’s when the cabin was divided between smokers and non-smokers. The row of non-smoking seats which I occupied, was directly in front of the smokers. Every exhalation sent a cloud of despair and chemicals into my lungs. The theory was that fresh air enters the cabin from the cockpit end and goes out at the back. But even if you were not enjoying the clouds coming from behind in a boundary seat, most of a plane’s air is recycled.

Smoke can even come out of your ears

If Jesus was alive, and perhaps he is, he would say, ‘smokers on the left and non-smokers on the right.’ But even his best intentions would not help non-smokers delay that long haul flight to heaven that we all eventually take.

I went to a restaurant in Southern Spain recently and chose to sit on the terrace over looking the sea. My satisfaction in finding a comfortable table was soon replaced by despair. A man came to the table next to mine, sat down, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit up.

I did the only thing I could do was to pick up my drink and bags and clumsily move indoors. I am a committed non-smoker, but it is not easy and the smokers rarely realise why you are moving. Smokers are generally indifferent to those who are devoted non-passive smokers. When they are the exchange goes like this, as it did last year between myself and a smoker in a restaurant.

‘Oh, you are eating. Do you mind if I sit here and smoke?’

Since the man was polite enough to ask I gave him the answer he had probably never heard.

‘Yes, I do mind.’

Despite a pronounced injury causing him to limp, to his credit, he heard me and staggered away.

I wasn’t quite sure what the eating had to do with anything. Do some people object to the carcinogenic smoke changing the taste of food. Are they really so fixed on the idea of protecting flavour from smoke rather than staying in good health?

It is not that I am unsympathetic to nicotine addicts. Despite the fact that no one is forced to smoke and most people have been and are made aware of the risks of smoking, it is not common knowledge that nicotine is probably the most addictive drug known, meaning more than heroine and cocaine.

Those with low will power and or looking for an instant ‘high’ or ‘release’ or ‘relax’ or whatever it is…are likely to experiment first with the drugs society deems legal.

Picture credit: iStock

This despite the fact that for almost one hundred years, the toxicity of cigarettes has been known. Gone today are the Marlboro adverts featuring tough cowboys seated in tough Jeeps on tough roads with tough cowgirls peering quizzically at a nonchalantly balanced cigarette on the tough lower lip of the hero. In those days girls had not attended autopsy’s and viewed the hideously blackened lungs or the tough guys. Today those girls are our Doctors and they have little time for patients who self inflict disease, unless you have private health insurance of course.

There was a time when the National Health Service of the UK spent as much on trying to cure diseases caused by smoking as the chancellor of the exchequer reaped from taxes.

The coil of smoke from a lit cigarette is like the genii who haunted Aladdin. The spirit has escaped from the bottle or lamp and once out, is never going to return. If governments banned tobacco tomorrow the whole business would pass into the criminal underworld, blowing smoke rings around law enforcement as in the days of ‘prohibition’ in New York.

Education might appear to be a better way than legislating but what effect has that had? The citizens of Europe today have had ample information about the harm smoking tobacco causes. Even the packet is defiled with a gruesome medical photograph of the innards of a being with low will power. Still the addicted reach for the packet for the uplift which a chemical is telling them they need and still the governments collect the tax revenues from sales.

It is still the passive smokers like myself I feel sorry for. Should we really have to hold our breath as we walk behind a smoker in a crowded street. Who says that ‘public places’ are just fine for indulging in a habit you wouldn’t really want your very young children to know about, let alone inhale.