SMOKING
I wish cigarettes would be banned from public consumption and even from being on sale via the usual channels: shops, vending machines, garages, pubs. I appreciate that this kind of intervention is veering on the excessive, but from my own point of view it would be for the best (for me). Every time I 'give up' - and I use this term loosely - it is in public places that I eventually succumb because the temptation of other people smoking around me proves too much. Yes, I know: weak, weak, weak.
In the UK we are now familiar with increasingly forthright warnings on packets - for example, "Smoking can cause a slow and painful death", "Smokers die younger", etc. The Canadian government has gone a step further and displayed pictures of oral cancers and diseased lungs on the front of packets. Last week, a bilingual friend told me that an approximate translation of Japanese health warnings would be "Try not to smoke too much". This is because the Japanese don't have the same concept of smoking as lethal, because their rates of lung cancer are so low. However, such a mild-mannered message seems comic where we are used to relentless negative press about smoking.
I wish cigarettes would be banned from public consumption and even from being on sale via the usual channels: shops, vending machines, garages, pubs. I appreciate that this kind of intervention is veering on the excessive, but from my own point of view it would be for the best (for me). Every time I 'give up' - and I use this term loosely - it is in public places that I eventually succumb because the temptation of other people smoking around me proves too much. Yes, I know: weak, weak, weak.
In the UK we are now familiar with increasingly forthright warnings on packets - for example, "Smoking can cause a slow and painful death", "Smokers die younger", etc. The Canadian government has gone a step further and displayed pictures of oral cancers and diseased lungs on the front of packets. Last week, a bilingual friend told me that an approximate translation of Japanese health warnings would be "Try not to smoke too much". This is because the Japanese don't have the same concept of smoking as lethal, because their rates of lung cancer are so low. However, such a mild-mannered message seems comic where we are used to relentless negative press about smoking.
