Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

On Monday I was at an international meeting in London with some youngsters (+/- 30) from various countries. Out of 9 of us, the three German lads and one South African smoked a cigarette every hour or so, out on the balcony.

Since the Monday before, I've been going to visit my mum in hospital in Bath every day - she fell in our kitchen and broke her femur. From the distinctive baccy odour of them I would estimate around half of the medical staff (nurses, orderlies etc, not doctors) are smokers.

Just a couple of weeks earlier my wife was "shadowing" in the same hospital - prepared to start work there in August. Her first stint will be in the ward dealing with respiratory patients, who are in a lot worse shape than many other types. Virtually all of them are smokers.

And thinking a lot further back, my Dad smoked 60 untipped a day all the years I was living at my parent's house. The whole place was shrouded in smoke all the time. He continued smoking after his first heart attack at 60 something, and pretended to stop after his second a few years later. (He used to "go for a walk" and come back reeking of cigarettes and mint). As a kid I swore I would never smoke but I started around age 18-19 and continued to my mid-30s - never more than 4-5 a day usually, but even so....

Of course rates of cigarette smoking have gone down a lot, but my recent experiences show that there are still plenty of people smoking. I could go all high-moral-tone, but I must recognise that I too smoked for 20 years or so despite having had graphic evidence of its ill effects. I wasn't smoking to impress people - I mostly smoked alone at home, towards the end of the day. Even while I was smoking, I could feel it harming me, yet I continued. What the heck was I doing?

And now, despite being pretty optimistic about most things, I wonder what real chances there are of people changing their behaviour for the better (energy use, eating better etc.) when so many of us carry on with an activity that's expensive, socially discouraged and is virtually guaranteed to cause severe health problems?