smokers hit by the tax man

[kipper]

Cigarette price HIKE: How much fags and rolling tobacco will go up from 6pm today REVEALED                   

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CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond choked millions of smokers by hiking the price of cigarettes and tobacco to “punitively high” levels in his autumn Budget today.[/color][/font][/size]

over £10 for some fags would you pay it or would you give smoking [/color][/font][/size]

[celeste]

£10 

people will go without food rather than give up, I don't smoke  but wouldn't pay that, cheaper to roll their own maybe

[lozflan]

This will be my one and only rant.
I helped to fund my dear Mum's habit,I gave up in my 50's.
I can only say,a smoker can be choosing the manner of their passing. Going blind for one isn' much fun.
In the last3 years,4 male pals have gone,3 had emphysema and heart jobs, which gave them an[size=78%] extra 1o years of reduced mobility retirement, 2 were taxi drivers. All younger than me.[/size]
[size=78%]I' shocked how many still smoke,many women.[/size]

[ExileSteve]

I can easily understand how they met their fates, Lozflan. The memories of being trapped in that horrible smokers nightmare of being willing to sacrifice almost anything for another packet of fags while at the same time trying to ignore all those terrifying fears seeking to attract your attention are clear and vivid. Thank God that they are just memories these days and that I'm not still enslaved by that foul and odious addiction.

[St Chads Lad]

My Father took to smoking during WWII in the army, his ciggie of choice were Woodbines he got through fifty a day, after my Mother passed away I fell asleep on the settee one night and he carried me upstairs to bed but at the top of the stairs he had to put me down while he caught his breath, I was five years old at the time, he told me that after he came downstairs he threw the remaining cigs on the fire because he worried about what would happen to his kids if anything happened to him, I was the youngest of eight, he never smoked after that and always cursed the day he started and I was never remotely interested in smoking, dirty habit.

[ExileSteve]

A dirty habit and a deadly, suicidal addiction. Thank God your father had the strength to break free from it.

[lozflan]

Having to attend Hospitals many times this last 2 yrs. almost every time a patient is propped up at the entrance,attired in a gown sometimes holding some treatment equipment,having a ciggy.
Last week in the bitter cold too.

[Parky]

Having to attend Hospitals many times this last 2 yrs. almost every time a patient is propped up at the entrance,attired in a gown sometimes holding some treatment equipment,having a ciggy.
Last week in the bitter cold too.

indeed I’ve even seen them at the Christie 

[ExileSteve]

It's all part of the trap set by the addiction, which is based on quite a clever confidence trick. For many years as a smoker I firmly believed, as all smokers believe, that the cigarette I was puffing away on was in some mysterious way relieving my symptoms of stress which were (of course!) caused by my hectic lifestyle and heavy responsibilities. Interestingly, this confidence trick is so subtle and so clever that most lifelong non-smokers have fallen for it too. Even people who hate smoking and have never touched a coffin nail in their lives are usually convinced that the smoker relieves his terrible stress levels by being a slave to his deadly addiction. How bizarre!!


It took many years for the penny to drop in my head. The stress I was trying to relieve was actually caused by falling nicotine levels in my bloodstream, which had been created by the previous cigarette I had inhaled, along with all the others before it. Honestly, the revelation hit me like a sledgehammer.


I suggest that we should not rush to be judgmental when we see smokers puffing away outside Christies or any other hospital. They are almost universally good and decent people who are imprisoned by one of the strongest and fastest-acting drugs known to mankind. The illusions it creates prevent most of its victims breaking free before their doom has been sealed. Feel for them, and thank God it isn't you.

[lozflan]

Yes indeed Steve,my comment was just to show what a death grip the addiction has. I too have seen it at Christies. Just think if Airports go Duty Free again.

[Parky]

I believe that Austria have just recently overturned their smoking ban. The fools