Cigarette packaging

I used to think of the next cigarette as I was smoking the first one! I miss the social side of it; met some lovely people when the ban started in Ireland and we'd stand outside pubs chatting to all the other smokers.

I enjoyed every cigarette I ever smoked. I never went through a phase of wishing I didn't smoke. I gave up to protect my baby.

If they produced a cigarette that didn't kill and didn't smell quite so horrible (didn't notice the smell when I smoked) I'd be hard pressed not to try them. Even now, after 28 years, I sometimes could kill for a smoke.

When you're a smoker you have a mental block in your head about what it's doing to you. I think the smoking ban in pubs will have made a big difference here; I wonder what the stats are for the number of people smoking now compared to before the ban? I always associated pubs with cigarettes and wanted one as soon as I walked through the door [even if I was going through a non smoking phase]. It's a relief now that I can't smoke there anyway [not that I go into pubs very often]. I feel so embarrassed about the times when I have smoked whilst with non smoking friends..they must have found it horrible.

If advertising just helps a few people to stop and think what can happen to them then I do think it is worthwhile in the end.

Packaging wouldn't have made any difference to me as my first cigarettes were sold singly from under the counter while I was in school uniform! As you said vq it was important to be in with the in crowd. I gave up smoking after a really bad bought of flu left me feeling to ill to smoke for several weeks and I just though "I don't need to do that any more!"

Pictures wouldn't have stopped me when I was a teenager. I already knew what cigarettes could do but my peer group smoked and that was more important. Anyway when you're a teenager you're immortal. If something has a 1 in 3 chance of hurting you then there is a 2 in 3 chance that it won't and you're bound to be part of the 2. Even when I stopped smoking it wasn't for my health but because I was pregnant.