What follows is a mild, tongue-in-cheek satirical view of cigarette smoking that attempts to demonstrate the influence wielded by ones family, friends and the tobacco companies. It is written in the form of a annonymous confession.

  I used to smoke cigarettes and had done so since turning sixteen before finally managing to stop smoking at the age of ..., I am now ... years old! This is a declaration of my past folly, hidden in part from my view until now. For either I could not or would not see the truth of my situation. I know much better now having penetrated somewhat more deeply into the matter.

  The story begins, during my childhood, in my hometown near the city of London ( known locally, for reasons other than cigarettes, as the Big Smoke)...
  It was shortly after the time that I was born, that I became aware of and was fascinated by the empty Will's Gold Flake cigarette tins strewn all over the garage. Soon I had linked these containers to the behaviour of the adults that surrounded me, and realised that the pervasive fug inside the house, was caused by the contents of these and other similar cigarette containers, being lit and smoked by elder family members and visitors. During the times of greatest social concentration and thus the greatest fug, I would be forced to listen to the incessant chatter, which at first made little sense, but in retrospect seemed mostly to be about which brand or manufacturer of cigarettes was the best, for this or that improbable feature related reason...

  I eventually got to know everyone by the brands they smoked.... Dad was a devoted smoker. He smoked a pipe, cigars and cigarettes. His favourite brands were Piccadilly, Senior Service, Players, and Golden Virginia Hand Rolling Tobacco and just about any other brand that came his way. Emphysema eventually got him. Mum, a reluctant smoker, smoked Players Mild and later Matineé. She eventually stopped when I was thirteen. Grandma puffed on Airline Players, Airline Benson and Hedges, Kensitas etc. She was another of the worlds great omnismokers, but later in life she seemed happiest with a Turf hanging from between her lips. She would give me the empty packets to play with and I would collect the pictures from their backs. Grandpa was never far from his Abdulla Number 7's, he kept Perfectos Finos around to impress his business associates and friends. His vanity also caused him to smoke a German brand called HB. Aunt X. just kept smoking her Craven 'A's until something else killed her. Aunt Y. always smoked a DuMaurier lodged firmly in a Dunhill cigarette holder.
  And so it went, every adult I knew seemed to smoke and be always smoking or talking about it.

  But it didn't end there. In the world at large I soon encountered, the aladdins cave of the tobacconists store, and on the street, in magazines, on hoardings and later on T.V. a barrage of memorable advertisements for cigarettes, replete with catchy lines such as "Players Please" or "You are never alone with a Strand" and again "The smoke of distinction", or "Senior Service Satisfy", "Take a tip - take a Bristol", "State Express 555, The Best Cigarettes in the World", and on and on. All of which bred in me a confidence and belief in cigarettes as an established product, and like the church, here to stay, safe and comforting.

  When young, tobacco smoke bothered me, I should have taken this as a sign that my body was trying to tell me something but didn't. I would always find my self caught between my fascination with the affairs of the adult world and the need to breathe. When travelling on trains with my family, I would escape to the sweet air only to be found in the non-smoking compartments. Nonetheless I decided at an early age to become a smoker when adult, since smoking at that time not only appeared to be safe but was an alluring and neccessary rite of passage.

  Later when I started smoking, it was not just the act and addiction but seemingly even more important was the "image and status" conferred by the brand name and its pack design upon the smoker, backed up by how well one had mastered the art of smoking, an art akin to prestidigitation. Every action had to be smoothe, the pack had to magically appear and disappear in ones hand. The extraction, tamping and placing in the mouth of the cigarette had to be stylish. A separate set of tricks had to be learned for using the cigarette lighter and so on...
  A lengthy period of self training was needed before one could confidently puff away on the lit cigarette in public, secure in the knowledge that one had not breached some arcane smoking etiquette. However, Just like the Emperor in Hans Christian Andersons story, the vainglorious cigarette smokers of London also had no clothes, not even a shred or a strand, with which to cover the emptiness of all this posturing. And so it has been since Elizabethan times when Sir Walter Raleigh and Company brought the weed to Englands shores, making blowing smoke a fashionable exercise
  This ever resurrecting hand-me-down self-deception, intensively cultivated by the tobacco companies and their disciples, was deeply impressed upon the psyche of my young life. I grew up with the delusion that I was a nobody if I did not smoke cigarettes, and to be "a real somebody", as they would put it, I must, at all costs, be seen to be smoking exactly the right make of cigarette.

  In time I came to know that the madness had spread, from and to everywhere else in the world, where the same surreal game was contemporaneously being played out. It was revealing to discover that cigarettes in other countries were also given, strange, meaningless and completely unrelated names by their tobacco companies. Names such as "Lucky Strike", "Marlboro", "Gitanes", "Virginia Slims", "Celtique", "Rothmans", "True", "Embassy" and their world-famous "Camel", hundreds upon hundreds of exotic sounding brands, complete with their own catch phrase, specifically designed to appeal to a particular vanity, such as "Come to Marlboro Country", "Genuine taste" or wonder upon wonders... "It's a woman thing". Each brand manufactured in different sizes, lengths, styles and flavours, the packaging psychologically designed to match every conceivable type of mental and emotional posturing.

  Billions of currency units were and still are expended by these, what I now know to be, 'International Tobacco Corporations' as they continue to cultivate their addicted image-conscious clientele. Much gets spent in research to create the perfect cigarette and discover the ideal brand-name, that they hope, in their often fallible estimations, will grab market share from their competitors, recruit new smokers and thereby "sell" increasingly vast quantities of this addictive and highly dangerous-to-your-health-and-well-being product. In this market that they created and control, hiding behind smoke and mirrors, they seem to be playing a deadly game of roulette with the lives of their customers...   As even more billions pour daily into their coffers, their motto must surely be...

..."Nicotine Addiction Alloyed with Vanity is a Business Opportunity that would be a Terrible Shame to Waste"...

......To be continued.