Confession: I used to smoke. I know how hard it is to quit.
After many false starts, I finally made it and now count myself among the many ex-smokers in our country. When I was going through the somewhat tortuous transition - I went cold turkey - it was before today's plain packaging, and even pre-dated the shock images to turn people away from the killer habit.
Too many of us have seen the damage smoking can cause to those who participate willingly and those who are unwittingly made victims through passive smoking. There can be no doubt it is harmful. So any attempt to encourage people to cease smoking has to be a good thing, or so you'd think.
Of course, many measures to discourage people from smoking have a detrimental impact on people in lower income brackets. And as we know, a large portion of Wanganui's population falls into this category. We also know smoking rates here are higher than other parts of the country.
Why that remains is perhaps a mystery, as over time smoking has evolved from being an activity that promoted camaraderie to one where smokers are almost assigned social outcast status. Around most workplaces you see them on cold days, barred from the indoors, huddled together looking for shelter as they feed their need for a fix. And that is what it is; we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that nicotine is highly addictive.
