NOTHING LIKE IMMINENT DEATH TO STOP YOU DYING FOR A FAG

MY GREAT-UNCLE used to run an illegal cigarette manufacturing operation
during the Second World War, in the back room of the little confectionery
shop he owned in Denny, Stirlingshire. My father describes the thrill of
seeing the fag-machine operating, massive, shaking and clattering as it
spewed out its little white cylinders by the hundred. Cylinders, tubes,
magic bullets of comfort and relaxation at the time, not of death.

It seems everyone smoked during the war. Soldiers had cigarettes issued as
part of their necessary rations. Without a packet of Dunhill, Strand
("You're never alone with a Strand") or Capstan you were incomplete. Not a
real man; not a sophisticated woman. It was even, some doctors said, good
for you, guarding against TB. Of course it did.

Dad never smoked, the influence of fundamentalist religion ("Would you
defile the temple of the Holy Spirit?") too strong to allow such
sinfulness. Inevitably, I did, though, eventually, taking up the filthy
habit at the age of 28 to impress a girlfriend whose perfume of carbonised
Golden Virginia and Opium (the fragrance, not the, ah, herbal extract) I
somehow found headily irresistible. I was youngish, and very keen to appear
younger, determined to sneer in the face of death. Besides, I'd always
wanted to do that Bogart flick with a Zippo lighter.

And it wasn't enough to use the thing for lighting the gas cooker.

It took a great deal of effort to become a smoker. At first I didn't
inhale, and when I did, at last, take in a lungful of carcinogenictar, it
was accidentally, from a Romeo Y Julieta cigar. An un-Lewinskied one, by
the way. The public vomiting which resulted did not add to my air of
urbanity. And then, finally, Golden Virginia herself turned to me, coughed
wrackingly and said, in shocked surprise after I'd blagged a tab from her:
"You're a smoker!" I'd never felt so proud.

And then, all I had to do was give up. That took 13 years, with the final
36 months mostly involving perpetual filching of fags from friendly
puffers. How did I stop? In January, I had two cups of espresso and three
Silk Cut over a lunchtime, and ended up in hospital with a suspected heart
attack. Mild angina, they said. Or an aortic spasm, whatever that is.
Personally, I was - am - certain I was dying.

Fortunately for me, it is now very difficult to smoke publicly in this
country, though I have spent the last six weeks in a bastion of heavy-duty
secondhand lung reek which, to my astonishment, I found truly offensive. As
a convert to non-smoking, I found myself threatening civil litigation,
coughing melodramatically, and pretending to throw up. Nothing worked. I
threw open windows in the face of hurricanes and in the end left just
before I caved in and had a Marlboro Light or 200.

Over in South Africa, health minister Dr Nkosazana Zuma's battle to bring
in tough anti-smoking laws identical to those in Britain has provoked
violent opposition, legal action, a tobacco-industry sponsored television
campaign and the threat of strikes. She is, unlike Tony Blur, also
proposing to kill sports sponsorship by the fag-reek lobby stone dead. In a
sport-mad, tobacco-rich country such as South Africa, where the massive
buying power of the "black rand" remains to be full exploited, this has
brought out the Cancer Sellers' big guns. Still, Dr Zuma looks like
winning. At least the weather over there's more suited to those outdoor
huddles of nicoteenies around office fire exits.

No law will make a smoker stop, though. Even the patent craziness of what
smoking is, fully realised (create a fatal addiction by doing something
which is unpleasant often enough for it become not unpleasant; repetition
of the act is never pleasurable in itself, but only alleviates the symptoms
of a self-created craving) will not induce cessation.

Personally, I recommend angina attacks or aortic spasms for all. There's
nothing like imminent death to put you off dying. Mind you, I still have to
watch myself with attractive women who smoke Golden Virginia roll-ups ...
must be the Viagra kicking in. I'm just waiting for the day when cigarettes
are banned completely, in private as well as public, and, as in Garrison
Keillor's brilliant story, the last smokers are hunted down from their
mountain hideouts. Then I will salvage my great uncle's machine, and put it
back into production, free from addiction myself, but mercilessly
exploiting the weakness of others.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski