Don't burn up cash or your health

Yet I consider my mother-in-law...she has that classic smoker's disease, emphysema - yet never smoked.

EIGHTEEN dollars for a packet of 20 cigarettes, thanks (or no thanks) to New Year tobacco tax rises. You'd think, surely that's got to hit you in the pocket. Surely that has to be an incentive to give up.

Since I've never smoked, it's difficult to comment with much sincerity on nicotine addiction.

There was a time, perhaps a decade ago, when militant anti-smokers would get all righteous and huffy over second-hand smoke in their general vicinity. But lately I haven't seen much of that, perhaps because the battle against smoking is definitely - albeit slowly - being won by the anti-tobacco lobby. In a societal and cultural sense, it's a slowly fading pastime.

I've never really given a toss about people smoking. My father smoked a pipe and my mother had the occasional cigarette, so my associations with smoking weren't unpleasant. I also felt, borrowing a phrase of my mother's, that people could choose their own road to hell, as long as it didn't affect me.

Alcohol is unarguably more destructive because of assaults and drink-driving. If people want to smoke, look 65 at the age of 50, have bad blood circulation past middle age and take two minutes to gasp across a pedestrian crossing in their 70s, well, as long as I'm not waiting at that crossing, I'm generally fine.

Yet I consider my mother-in-law, who was married to a chain smoker. She now gets short of breath when climbing stairs. She has that classic smoker's disease, emphysema - yet never smoked.

I also watch, fascinated, when people use a smoker's substitute. A particularly curious one is a white tube that provides the aroma and flavour of cigarettes via cartridges. It also provides that familiar hand movement of placing a cigarette in the mouth. I can relate to that. I had along period of using wine glasses with non-alcoholic drinks after Iquit drinking. That association pulls you for a while.

An adult using a plastic tube is not a great look. It's like a great big child with a toy. But it's no more nonsensical than the reasoning behind six months of using wine glasses for soda water and cranberry juice.

If it was your New Year resolution - or decision - to quit smoking, I respect you for it. It's an awful thing to do to yourself. Perhaps it's best to shut off how badly you feel about it, and do it for your family. They'll appreciate it more than you can realise.