Still Smoking

We had a “grads” Christmas party last week, and we’d invited along the summer interns mostly to make up the numbers. As soon as we settled in to start the night, a group pulled out cigarettes. And they kept going through the night. Now, I’d seen it often enough in Europe, and given the reputation of the continent, I could accept it. But my impression of Australia, and Australian ‘youth’, was that smoking was on the way out, a rarity at best.

I’m no innocent; smoking is prevalent enough in clubs that I know how much it happens. But the constant, almost chain smoking style of cigarette consumption was more than a little off putting. As a principled stance, I walked away as soon as it wasn’t blatantly rude - everyone’s free to choose, I say, even if I don’t like it - and stayed away for most of the night.

It puzzles me; these are intelligent people, and most of them are around my age (I’m still the youngest :D). We’ve had the education, the advertising, all the information we could ever need, and yet, these people still persist in doing so. The women were more into it than the guys - it seemed if anything to be an image thing.

I don’t know; I’m not entirely sure what my point is. Basically I was disappointed that people are still smoking by choice.