Why Do People Start Smoking?

In this the year of 2008 can anybody out there give me one good, legitimate excuse to start smoking, just one is all I'm looking for....... anybody? Didn't think so, because lets be honest with ourselves, there is no excuse. So why do people start smoking?

So what was my good, legitimate reason for starting?

Well the year was 2003, I had recently moved out of home and now had the freedom to make my all my own decisions, including whether or not to smoke. I chose to smoke. Anyway, what choice did I really have, my flatmate's and nearly all of my friends smoked. Being around smoking all the time I was bound to start eventually. There was also the fact I was learning about all the stresses of the real world including having responsibilities such as my first full time job and having to pay all my bills. Smoking helped deal with these. I was a smoker for four years, although luckily now I have seen the light.

Well, those were my excuses. Are any of them good and legitimate? Absolutely not. Why are they not legitimate? Because it is now the 21st century and before I started I knew all the dangers involved and I knew how highly addictive nicotine is. Yes, I was young but youth is not a good, legitimate excuse to start. The youth of today are more highly educated on the dangers of smoking than at any other time in or history. There are some in society who do have good, legitimate reasons to have started smoking and they are our oldest generations, the ones we call Grandma and Grandpa.

Back when they were young, smoking was encouraged to the point where if you didn't smoke you were considered a bit of an outcast. Smoking advertising was literally everywhere, even cartoon characters were used to advertise the so called "benefits" of smoking. Check out this television ad on You Tube featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. There they are sucking away on cancer sticks, sitting, laughing and talking about the joys of smoking while their wives are in the background slaving away mowing the lawns. Unbelievable.

I also remember being told the story about how my best mates grandpa started up smoking. He was a teenager in the 1920's and he had a bad cough so his mum sent him to the doctor. He walked into the doctors office to find the doctor puffing away on tobacco. Well what did you reckon this highly trusted, highly educated member of society suggested for the cough? His subscription was to start smoking tobacco with no filters immediately, as that will get rid of the nasty cough! So of course, like a good boy would, he followed the doctors orders. From then on he smoked no filter cigarettes until the day he died, not surprisingly of lung cancer.

Now thats a good, legitimate excuse to have started smoking.

If you know your excuses for starting smoking are like mine, not really excuses at all, it is time to quit. Now I've quit, I realise I had no excuse to start, but I had many excuses to stop.