[Sudipto-S-Team]

Vasudev
A few quick points -
1. I don't need to read any research report to know how dangerously addictive nicotine is. I regret, I am very painfully aware of that through my own experience of close to 30 years.
2. I am absolutely not against stopping new smokers. Why on earth would I say that? I wish someone had shown me these images in 1978 when I picked up smoking. They would definitely have helped me decide against lighting up.
I am saying - stopping new smokers is not the objective of this thread (that doesn't automatically mean I am saying new comers should not be stopped). And it is something totally different from helping smokers quit. These two are as different as chalk and cheese. Only smokers would understand this.
Condoms can prevent AIDS but once a patient has full blown AIDS he needs serious medical help and not condoms. I hope the points goes in.
3. Pictorial warnings on packs was not being discussed here. This is a new twist to the discussion. However, I do agree that an attractive packet of cigarette works as a major pull for many of us smokers or even ex-smokers. I quit smoking before pictorial warnings came in in India and can't really comment on their impact on the mind. However, the loss of gloss of the pack would be a major dampener for me.
4. I don't know any individual smoker who has quit after seeing those creative art work of the ill effects of smoking. The Marlboro Man died of lung cancer close to twenty years now. Photographs of him suffering on the death bed are there for everyone to see. Has it stopped any significant number of people from smoking? I think the turnover of any cigarette company in these last twenty years has more than doubled.
5. I think these creative anti-smoking pictures actually trivialise the fight that each smoker fights in the isolation of his mind.

[shankar.balan]

I m a pretty heavy smoker and have been for the last 20 odd years. I look quite normal and feel pretty fit too - can easily do 6km on my bicycle in the morning without severe huffing and puffing.
But I am beginning to feel a bit unwell and am coughing all the time. The worst is that it is a silent killer - blood pressure and heart problems are bound to come up sometime.
In my opinion, the only way is to quit and to quit, one simply has to say no more one fine day and just STOP! There is no "cutting down" and all that - it doesnt work. Ive tried.
I want to quit cigs and am trying to find the will within to do so. I hope to succeed soon and hope to share success on this thread soon.
I dont want to preach, but my sincere suggestion is, that if you havent started smoking, then please dont start, ever! Not worth it at all. Take my word for it.
cheers

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by Sudipto-S-Team

4. I don't know any individual smoker who has quit after seeing those creative art work of the ill effects of smoking. The Marlboro Man died of lung cancer close to twenty years now. Photographs of him suffering on the death bed are there for everyone to see. Has it stopped any significant number of people from smoking? I think the turnover of any cigarette company in these last twenty years has more than doubled.

Read the article again. Perhaps the Marlboro Man was from the US, where text warnings prevail. As the article says `For example, the US has had a small text-based warning on one side of the pack since 1984'.

As to why the tobacco companies target the youth, that is related to the highly addictive nature of nicotine, and the fact that very few people take up smoking into their late-20s (ie, consumers have to be hooked early, and once hooked, very few escape). Read this tobacco industry document:


How they are caught. By showing youth idols smoking (remember Shahrukh's statements). One important document is also attached here (referring to Stallone smoking in films in the 1980s when he was in his post-Rocky success era).

[Sudipto-S-Team]

Vasudeva
I couldn't agree more with you on the youth angle. I got hooked to the idea of smoking from early childhood and at a very young age I had set myself a target age of when I would pick up smoking - the day I got promoted to class VIII. For whatever reason I thought that was a coming of age year. And sure enough that's precisely what I did.
I still remember the ad that used to fascinate me - Jackie Shroff driving a hoodless jeep through a tea garden, wearing sunglasses and smoking a Charminar. I even sported a moustache like him when I was adult enough to sport it.
Now they seem silly but that's how youngsters are hooked. I have no doubt about that. In fact I still think stopping cigarette advertisement is the best thing that has been done to discourage new smokers from joining the ranks.

[cooldude1988765]

Originally Posted by Sudipto-S-Team

3. Pictorial warnings on packs was not being discussed here. This is a new twist to the discussion. However, I do agree that an attractive packet of cigarette works as a major pull for many of us smokers or even ex-smokers. I quit smoking before pictorial warnings came in in India and can't really comment on their impact on the mind. However, the loss of gloss of the pack would be a major dampener for me.

This really does not work in India for most of the smokers as they usually just buy 1 or 2 cigarettes.

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

actually, it will be nice to know how each of us got introduced and then addicted to it.

feel free not to reply if you don't want to reveal.

at least youngsters will learn something out of these experiences.

I had asked this in 2006, and I am still interested. Especially since I have so many youngsters in family now.

[beejay]

I started smoking while I was in School.Have been smoking since. Tried in vain to quit many a time, never been able to.
I read every post here religiously hoping something concrete will make me kick the butt. However no amount of preaching, lecture, pictorial warnings are of any help. The urge always comes above everything else.
I jog for 5 kms everyday for the past 5 years and do shambovi maha mudra- isha yoga for the past one year. Trust me nothing helps.
Whats your take on nicotine patches?

[spadival]

No matter whether I disagree with him about the original purpose of the thread, Sudipto may have a point about a non-smoker's advise coming across as a smug "I told you so", even if thats not the intent.

I think we should not debate(inconclusive or otherwise) over usefulness of a particular advise or method etc. I am sure people here are discerning enough and there is no need to point out what works or does not work.

So, where were we on the original topic?

[Surprise]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

I had asked this in 2006, and I am still interested. Especially since I have so many youngsters in family now.

While doing my 8th grade, I along with couple of my other friends, went to a movie to get away from the boring classes. We have enough time to kill after the movie, so we were sitting (hiding) in a tea shop giving business at regular intervals to ensure that the owner does not chase us out.

During the discussions, one guy had revealed that he once tasted the cigarette thrown by his father without putting off (parents note this down). That discussion slowly drifted into we trying it out. We bought one and smoked it off in rounds . That's the first smoke. Never continued that, but used to have the occasional smoke when we do the outings.

After couple of years, I moved to different educational institute which demands a 30 kms travel .

Meet guys at bus stand/ Never get into the bus when its stationed, but push the bus & hang on to the steps only after the speeds touch 10-20 kms/foot board travel/change buses 'n' routes as you wish (no ticking on passes)/Movies/Beaches/Rarely attend classes - How can we be without a cigarette? (no idea on the impacts then) During those days a non-smoking person is considered an "innocent" (Palam) (age group). We do not wanted to be labeled like that & used to have cigarettes. Quickly I got addicted to it & used to have it even during weekend too. I associated myself with smokers & never felt it wrong for the next 12-13 yrs........from there fought hard for 5-6 yrs with multiple failed efforts.

[Sudipto-S-Team]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

I had asked this in 2006, and I am still interested. Especially since I have so many youngsters in family now.

Vivek, I missed your original question otherwise I would have answered your question. It's a very important question, if you really want to stop youngsters in the family to not take up. I have often tried to analyse this and it's a fascinating subject.
I will give you a point by point analysis of how I think it hooked me. I am sure it works in different ways in different individuals.
1. In my house when I was growing up the subject of smoking was a very important subject under discussion. My father had just given up smoking so that I don't pick it up (he quit when I was less than 2). He used to glorify both the giving up and the smoking days. He used to endlessly talk about his days as a smoker like what fashionable brands he smoked, how he smoked, how many he smoked etc. So from a very early age, even before I was 5, I used to find smoking a glorious thing to do. I used to actually regret that my father had given up smoking.
2. Society in those days glorified smoking. Smoking was associated with everything good and desirable. It was associated with macho, intellectual activities (all private detectives in famous detective stories smoke when they try to mentally unravel a mystery), literary activity, anti-establishment attitude - (Fidel Castro contributed to this in his own small way). Film makers like Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray (icons to us Bengalis growing up in the 70s) smoked quite publicly - media is full of photographs of that. Sportsmen who smoked were even more glorified. I still remember Brazilian star Zico used to puff on his cigars by going out of the field during football matches. Ian Botham was a hardcore smoker. Media used to glorify these icons for their smoking and we used to get fascinated.
3. Later in life I found all the macho heroes smoked. Directors use smoking as a silent way to establish a character. If you remember the epoch making macho film Deewar, Amitabh Bachhan smoked. And when he first resolved to teach the port mafia a lesson he was smoking a bidi. I regret, I am still fascinated by that scene and that scene would be perhaps incomplete unless that bidi was there.
I have never seen them but I am told Rajnikant has some very ingenuous ways of lighting up his cigarettes !! I am sure lot of youngsters who worship him took to smoking because of that.
4. Smoking was associated with the strongest image that appeals to a young boy - "coming of age". You come of age only if you smoke. That was a very strong image that was carefully created through advertising. Tough boys smoke, that's what you start believing. I remember that ad - "Charms is the spirit of freedom. Charms is the way you are." The Charms packet looked like blue denim and the ad showed a boy and girl walking hand in hand. These images get etched in a youngster's mind. Of course I was already a major smoker when Charms was launched.
5. The last ad that almost sealed the deal for me was Jackie Shroff driving a hoodless jeep through a tea garden and smoking Charminar. The ad said - "Relax. Have a Charminar".

So, to discourage youngsters, if at all you have to discuss or advice the children, please associate smoking with all that is negative about it without sounding like you are lecturing them. Tell them it is addictive and robs you the power to decide. Once it gets hold over you you don't decide any more. It decides when it wants you to smoke. You are just a powerless doll in Mr Nicotine's hands. Mr Nicotine leaves you only when your lungs cannot take it in any more and you are dead.
It makes me happy that today the society is far more conscious about the ill effects of smoking. Those silly ads are banned now. No one says smoking is glorious.
So it is far less likely that a youngster today is growing up with the ambition to smoke when he comes of age, like I did. When I finally gave up, my four year old daughter was the happiest. She said, now I can sleep close to you and listen to the stories because you don't smell so bad any more. It was really worth giving up, I thought.

[straightdrive]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

I had asked this in 2006, and I am still interested. Especially since I have so many youngsters in family now.

Originally Posted by Surprise

........During those days a non-smoking person is considered an "innocent" (Palam) (age group). We do not wanted to be labeled like that & used to have cigarettes......

Originally Posted by Sudipto-S-Team

.............4. Smoking was associated with the strongest image that appeals to a young boy - "coming of age". You come of age only if you smoke..........

In short, peer pressure. Which is why most smokers start between 14 and 20 - that's when they have the opportunity and are easily influenced by others.

No one at school smoked openly. I was totally anti-smoking then.

College - almost a third of the other guys were smokers. My first cigarette was within a couple of months, in spite of no one asking me if I wanted to try it.

[niks_devil666]

Well I read this thread and felt motivated to quit (smoking) right now .. Wish me luck

[Sudipto-S-Team]

Here's wishing you all the best Niks. Don't think too much about the quit. Just stop smoking. Be prepared to stick to your resolve - come what may. Remember there is always hope at the end of the tunnel. If you can stay quit for three days then you have made it.
Keep posting about your experience. Don't feel shy if you fail. There is always a next time.
Meanwhile you can read the articles in this website
WhyQuit - the Internet's leading cold turkey quit smoking resource It's easily the best and the most non-commercial website on the subject of quitting. Please remember there are lot of unscrupulous websites that offer to help you quit through various medicines, methods etc. Don't trust them. They are out to make money.
The best way is cold turkey. It's a statistically and scientifically proven fact.

[niks_devil666]

Yes sir ! I will post soon (hopefully after 2-3 weeks) . Thanks for the wishes and the link.

[Fordy]

Guys,

I have been smoking the last 10 years. As discussed, I have tried many times to quit and I was not successful. Anyone who has quit, culd you please tell me how the withdrawl symptoms be like? Somone told me that "You gain weight", "you get bored" et al.

Any advice would be helpful