What surprises me most is how little smokers know about their own smoking habit. For a start, there is nothing positive to be gained from smoking. The one single reason that anybody smokes is to temporarily stop the craving for nicotine. There is absolutely no other reason and those smokers who think they actually like smoking, have convinced (read brainwashed) themselves into believing that they enjoy inhaling toxic fumes; they don’t, as they have to override their immune systems in order to inhale that poisonous tobacco smoke. Any smoker who is convinced that he/she actually likes smoking will also have great difficulties stopping as he/she will have the feeling that something precious will be taken away from them.

 There are no highs from smoking, there is no pleasure derived from smoking. The taste is bad, if not horrific, the smell is noxious, smokers tend to be more stressed than non-smokers and when they even think they cannot smoke, they immediately go into panic mode.

 The calming effects from lighting a cigarette are created by the deep breaths taken when inhaling the smoke (not by the smoke itself) and by the temporary lift of craving for nicotine. It is the same kind of pleasure one gets from banging one's head against a wall for a while and then stopping. That also feels good, but in fact it is no different from before the head banging started. It is only perception! So in essence, every smoker (no exception) smokes only to “feel normal” temporarily (i.e. without craving for nicotine)!

 I have not mentioned or discussed health yet. There are many places where the smoker can get both frightened and so nervous that the first thing he/she wants to do is grab a cigarette and then forget about all the harm it can do to the body as quickly as possible. Medical associations are particularly good a coming up with the most fearful of diseases, as that is their job. Unfortunately, frightening smokers into submission does not work and never will. The brain does not work that way! Addiction tends to generally prevail over common sense simply by running away. Let me put the health issue in a different context: smokers are victims of the most efficient killing machine the world has ever known. The tobacco industry has been instrumental in producing and marketing a series of tobacco products that killed 100 million people in the last 20 years alone, which is more than a century of wars including 2 world wars and a holocaust together.

It is an absolute abomination that such an industry can exist and can thrive in our society; an industry that sustains itself by buying political influence against smoking prohibition and aiming their marketing at children who are persuaded to believe that smoking is hip, rebellious and even a fashion statement. 3 to 4 billion per year is spent on marketing to persuade our kids to light up. 1/3rd of those children who succumb, will eventually tragically die from a smoking related disease.

 The tobacco industry is very good at creating and feeding bogus information about civil rights and a personal freedom related to smoking. Those are hollow phrases, an intellectual travesty, mindlessly repeated with misguided indignation based on the perception of state "nannyism" and in essence only an excuse to justify smoking and perpetuate smoking addiction. References to libertarianism and civil rights are a very effective “smokescreen” created for the sole purpose of persuading people to continue spending money on tobacco products and to further enrich Big Tobacco and its shareholders.

 What it really means to smoke is to be robbed, cheated, poisoned, manipulated, lied to, ignored and be left out in the cold, not to mention being deliberately and unscrupulously invaded with highly toxic substances that are especially created to keep the smoker addicted, paid for by the smoker and adding up to several hundred thousands over a smoker’s lifetime.

 Most smokers want to quit but can't because nicotine is highly addictive; it is a blatant lie if the tobacco supporters try to ignore that fact. Nicotine addiction is fierce. There is the continuous notion by the smoker of not being able to cope without smoking, which is like fear of pain which, in essence, is fear of death and one of the main reasons why smokers perpetuate their habit.

 The pharmaceutical companies are also in on the act. NRT (chewing gum, nicotine patches, lozenges etc.) are just a way for Big Pharma to peddle their nicotine to the already addicted. Pharmaceutical nicotine doesn't make anybody stop. Weaning a smoker slowly off NRT is as impossible as weaning him/her slowly of cigarettes, it won’t work as nicotine addiction can only be halted via total abstention.  A recent study at Birmingham University shows that less than 2 percent of smokers who use NRT actually abstain long term and those 2% would have likely achieved cessation doing cold turkey anyway. I wouldn't call that very effective, if at all. To give somebody more nicotine (the stuff he/she is already addicted to and wants to quit from) has, to my mind, always seem absolutely ridiculous and a ploy to make money out of those who are easily led. In my view, in most cases when NRT is taken in isolation (without support or counselling), it actually prolongs the smoking addiction. Some of the drugs the pharmaceutical industry produce, reduce the craving for nicotine but at a price, the side effects cause severe depression and suicidal tendencies. Good idea that, let’s give up smoking by jumping off a building - pardon my sarcasm!

 It is time for smokers to realise how incredibly badly they are manipulated into smoking. It is time to fight back and stop being a vulnerable hostage of the tobacco industry. I you happen to be a smoker, please don’t accept the lies, stop deluding yourself and stop allowing your life to be both dictated and ruined by tobacco products that do nothing for you and that you can easily do without. Every ex-smoker lives without nicotine quite successfully and without any harm or craving! My advice to smokers is: Whatever you do, please don't ever quit trying to quit, and if you plan to quit smoking one day, today is a really good day!

John Wesdorp