“Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette…”

Some while ago, The Independent reported Oxford professor of medical statistics & epidemiology Sir Richard Peto as stating at a cancer conference in Birmingham that 1 billion people will die from smoking-related diseases this century unless drastic steps are taken.  The highest death toll will be in the developing countries. 

When I was at college I took great pride in my smoking.  Not for me the bog standard student’s fag, a Player’s Number 6. I favoured in any given week Sullivan Powell full strength, Balkan Sobranie, yellow packet Gauloises, untipped classics Player’s Gold Flake, rollies in liquorice paper, &, until the 1967 Arab/Israeli War, a very classy flat Egyptian cigarette called Simon Artz.  Subsequently I smoked a pipe, affecting for a while a beautifully carved Meerschaum that I’d bought in Cyprus.

In later years I smoked cigars - mainly Villigers, but, when I could get them, Swisher’s Sweets or Fleur de Savanne.  Then a surgeon, investigating a night time breathing difficulty, found a small papaloma inside my throat.  He recommended that I have it removed at the earliest opportunity.  For a week I was convinced that I had cancer & by the time an ENT specialist removed it & found it to be benign I had given up smoking completely.

Now the practice seems alien & perverse to me.  I don’t feel any of that priggish righteousness that so infects the professional non-smoker. I don’t cross busy streets to strike cigarettes from the mouths of those still afflicted. But the notion of lighting up & sucking it down strikes me as every bit as crazy & inexplicable as it did to Bob Newhart’s Elizabethan greeting the return of Sir Walter Raleigh. 

God knows, life is perilous enough from the moment one steps from one’s front door. And talking of front doors - mine is no. 5 in a row of four terraced cottages. Early last year & 3 weeks ago the respective husbands at nos. 1 & 3 died of smoking-related cancer. So, much as I occasionally miss a post-prandial cigar, I’ll take my chances from day to day & happily except myself from that doomed 1 billion.

.o0o.

My smoking might be bothering you, but it's killing me.
Colette

Tobacco, divine, rare, super excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers' stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. . . but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.
Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Tobacco drieth the brain, dimmeth the sight, vitiateth the smell, hurteth the stomach, destroyeth the concoction, disturbeth the humors and spirits, corrupteth the breath, induceth a trembling of the limbs, exsiccateth the windpipe, lungs, and liver, annoyeth the milt, scorcheth the heart, and causeth the blood to be adjusted.
Tobias Venner, (1577-1660) Via Recta ad Vitam Longam

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time..
Mark Twain

I have seen many a man turn his gold into smoke, but you are the first who has turned smoke into gold.
Queen Elizabeth I

It is more profitable for your Congressman to support the tobacco industry than your life.
Jackie Mason

Yeah, babe, you just watch. When I die they'll all blame the fried egg sandwiches and the fags ... and it'll have been all the fucking wholemeal toast and fresh vegetables.'
Kathy Burke, English actress

Remember, if you smoke after sex you're doing it too fast.
Woody Allen