THEY'RE CLEVER ... BUT NOT SMART ENOUGH TO QUIT SMOKING

In his last TV interview before he died of cancer, the playwright
Dennis Potter brandished a cigarette and declared: ``The cigarette a
lovely tube of delight. Look at it.''

Potter was fond of reprimanding non-smokers in the smoking carriages
of trains. As he puffed away, the writer would tell passengers who
neglected to light up: ``You do realise that this is a smoking
compartment.''

After decades of dire public health warnings linking smoking with
cancer and countless other life-threatening horrors, it does not take
a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist to work out that smoking
tobacco is likely to bring forward your appointment with the grim reaper.

But smart people, including a surprisingly large number of doctors,
continue to puff away merrily, or not so merrily ... until they take
their terminal breath.

About 15pc of Irish doctors continue to smoke, according to the latest
surveys; and a good proportion of these puffing physicians probably
give us lectures about cigarettes.

Professors pull on fags outside lecture halls and top barristers, such
as the redoubtable Paddy McEntee SC, light up furiously on the steps
of the Four Courts. Why are these seemingly intelligent folk so
attached to their tobacco, despite all the warnings?

Worthy scaremongers who exhale vast clouds of anti-smoking propaganda
seem to be wasting their time with these people. With all their
knowledge they still find it impossible to stop.

Former Labour minister Emmet Stagg used to work in medical research in
Trinity College before he became a senior politician, but he has never
managed to kick the habit for longer than five months. He is a
60-a-day man.

``I worked as a medical technologist; so I know the effects of
smoking,'' he says with cigarette in hand. ``I am totally addicted. I
have to smoke just to feel normal just to feel how a non-smoker feels
normally.

``It is very difficult to envisage enjoying anything without smoking.
Even when I'm fishing I like to smoke.''

Emmet Stagg says he hates cigarettes; wishes he could save on the
cost; and advises young people not to take up smoking.

But he adds: ``When I do not smoke I feel miserable. Cigarettes are
the only cure for that misery.''

The Labour front bencher, says he took up smoking at a young age: ``I
used to steal the odd one from my brother. Then I would buy the odd
one myself. My children hate it and I feel that I am turning into a
social leper. You cannot even smoke in a barber shop these days.''

``I gave up once in 1986 and saved the money to buy an outboard motor
for my boat, but one of my brothers tempted me with cigarettes and I
went back on them.''

Albert Reynolds once said that giving up smoking was one of the best
things he ever did and Charles Haughey famously quit the fags when he
was Minister for Health.

The present Minister for Health Brian Cowan belongs to that affable
class of cigarette consumer, the ``social smoker.''

The political guardian of our health describes himself as an ``
occasional smoker''and his spokesperson says he is trying to cut back
at the moment.

Des O'Malley is another heavy political inhaler.

Politicians do not flaunt smoking as something that will boost their
image. The same cannot be said of film and pop stars, and the
socialites who illuminate the gossip columns. Increasingly they light

up in front of the cameras; whether you are Gerry Ryan or Liam
Gallagher, a fag or a cigar has become an essential fashion accessory.

The Irish anti-smoking lobby is irritated by the number of times Bono
of U2 appears in public with a cigarette.

When he holds a cheroot , he somehow looks like an unconvincing
smoker. Perhaps he does it out of nerves; or the pose may be a
hideously vain attempt by the Killiney warbler to look cool

``It is certainly not a good image'' says Dr Fenton Howell of the
campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

The Blair Government in Britain is so concerned that smoking is
becoming fashionable again that it has launched a campaign to
challenge the image that portrays cigarettes as sexy. In an initiative
called Put Smoking Out of Fashion, the Health Education Authority is
to recruit a number of big names through leading model agencies to try
to reverse the trend.

Smokers may be turned into social outcasts, exiled to the pavement and
the passageway, but the nannyish efforts of the health lobby to stop
us all puffing may prove counter-productive, particularly among young
people.

The less respectable smoking becomes, and the more it is portrayed as
a dangerous activity, the more attractive it becomes for teenagers.
Smoking is the easiest form of rebellion around, until you find
yourself spluttering in the cancer ward.

By the time, the young smoker has ceased worrying about being cool and
forgotten about peer pressure, he or she may find that it is too late
to give up: the addiction is so strong.

Public relations executive Mari O'Leary smokes two packets of
cigarettes a day. As a former model, she moves in the glamorous world
of fashion, where smoking seems to be as popular as ever.

``I was sixteen when I started. It was something to do. I think peer
pressure plays a big part when you are that age. You are trying to be
older than you are and you think it is sophisticated. I don't think it
is sophisticated now.''

``I would genuinely love to give them up now, but it is very hard to
crack. I first started smoking heavily when I was working as a model
and I think it was out of boredom. it is really an addiction now.''

``I smoke mostly in the office when I am on the phone or at the
computer, but I have tried to cut back at home since I have had children.''

The Irish Cancer Society admits that it has a problem in convincing
people who appear to be intelligent and well-informed. How do you
tackle the smokers who know everything they need to know?

``People feel that it is a comfort and they enjoy the warmth of the
heat and fire,'' says Avril Gillatt, Health Promotion Manager of the
Irish Cancer Society. `` But the idea that smoking reduces stress in
any way is false.''

Intelligent smokers know all about the likely health effects, but they
still manage to distance themselves from the consequences, according
to Avril Gillatt.

``It is very easy to say that it is not going to happen to me and that
it only happens to somebody else.''

Despite growing evidence that it is more harmful to women, one of the
results of growing equality between the sexes is a proportionate
increase in the number of women smokers.

Ann, a 41-year-old solicitor, knows that she is doing long-term
damage, but has surrendered herself to it.

``I need to smoke. It's been a strong arm for me since I was 17. But
it still makes me feel like a schoolgirl. I am also aware that I smoke
to avoid eating. It's a way of controlling my weight, but it doesn't
make me very happy. Smoking is selective amnesia - you block out the
risks.''

The Scottish writer Ann Leslie believes that many career women with
children smoke out of guilt: ``The woman who has a board meeting in
morning will feel guilty if she puts that first, and guilty if she
doesn't. She then has a cigarette, and feels so guilty about that
cigarette, that she then has to have another to cheer herself up.''

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"