Blocked ears

[FairyCrystal]

Peculiar smokers got mentioned.

I've been a smoker since I was 14 and trying to become a non-smoker.
That's how I discovered how incredibly difficult it is to do that. It's a serious addiction and in that sense totally absurd that it was ever allowed to enter our society.

Before judging smokers you got to take into account the fact that it was introduced as being cool & macho to smoke (at first mostly men smoked).
Later on women picked up the habit too.
It was encouraged with advertising and social conditioning to become a smoker.

When going to watch a movie in theatre you had commercials before the movie started and the best, most expensive and longest ones were from a specific tobacco brand. Showing glorious landscape in the US, a to-die for sexy man on a horse in cowboy boots and tight jeans, pausing to roll a cigarette (of said brand).
Everyone Ooh-ing and Aah-ing and drooling over the sight of the hunk of a man, at the same time subconsciously registering the message:
Smoking is cool! Smoking makes you attractive!

This went on for decades, it's what a couple of generations grew up with. It wasn't abhorred, nor regarded unhealthy. You were encouraged to do it and you were deemed odd, anti-social, unattractive if you didn't.

At both elementary and secondary school teachers smoked in the classrooms. I clearly remember when this became illegal, I was 15 at the time.
But it had been normal, no one questioned it.

When going on long airplane flights to Indonesia around 1985... you could smoke on the plane. There were ashtrays in the arm rests, and often people gathered in the back to smoke whilst having a chat with others as well.
People smoked everywhere, it was normal. No one questioned it.

Later on they anti-smoking dynamic began and they created special places at the work where you could smoke. Usually a smaller room, away from non-smokers so they could stay healthy.
But... almost everyone took their break in the smokers room!! There were loads of non-smokers in there as it was the best place to socialise, have a chat, enjoy your break, hang out with colleagues.

It escalated from there to where smokers have almost become outcasts.
But if you understand how this society of smokers came to be, then maybe you wouldn't be so judgemental of smokers.
In a way you can say that government created addicts, encouraged it even. Why I don't know. Because of the money they made of it?

Then to call smokers hypocritical... Many like me grew up with smoking being the done thing, being cool, attractive, sexy even.
I remember images of a seductive woman like Marilyn Monroe (not necessarily her but like her) smoking a thin long cigarette, holding it between manicured fingers, casting a sultry glance, putting the cig between full beautifully coloured lips and blowing out smoke, making it feel like a sexual act.
What young girl or woman wouldn't want to be like that?!?! Everyone!

Now that we've been made into long-term addicts we're judged.
It's so hard to get over that addiction! I've been trying for over 2 years now, with patches, and every time I fail.
Some people -esp non-smokers- think too lightly about quitting, I did too. It's so difficult! It's only recently that I've come to realise it's at the same level of letting go of hard drugs. Speed or maybe even heroine?
A form of hard drugs that's been encouraged, promoted, beautified, and sexi-fied for about a century!!

To finish.... why can't people who do something that was normal for almost a hundred years not be concerned about their health?
It may seem contradictory now, but as I illustrated smoking was never deemed unhealthy...