I have never smoked a cigarette. Nevertheless, I should confess one thing: smoking has always tempted me. I am literally green with envy when I see people smoking, sporting a relaxed air. They look cool and laidback, and while they smoke, they seem to simultaneously bolster the ‘feel good factor’ by breathing out stress, tension, worries and other ailments. A priori, they seem to feel an immediate relief from whatever their irksome preoccupations. Hence, were it not for health (mine and that of others!), I bet I would smoke oodles and oodles of cigarettes.

There are things we do that gravely harm our health. All the same, we end up doing them, often knowingly and consciously but also imprudently, as if we had telling compulsions. Forget the ordinary folks, even the most lettered act in the same way. One hackneyed example that people refer to is “many doctors smoke, even if they are never sick and tired of preaching”.

The preaching from ‘smoking’ teachers and parents is, of course, no different to that of doctors. Such preaching from smoking ‘elders’ implies a breach of the basic message of yet another universal warning on smoking: “children see, children do”. The common sight of street children in Kathmandu running after fag ends is a sad example.

Until recently, cigarette cases mentioned mainly one international statutory warning to smokers: Smoking is injurious to health. That, however, did not prevent people from smoking, as if such activity were more important than the most precious asset: our health.

Nowadays, in countries like France, more radical and ominous warnings on cigarette butts, carved in extra-large bold letters, snap virulently at smokers: smoking kills, smoking engenders cancer, smoking causes impotence, smoking causes heart and pulmonary diseases and most morbidly, the little death sticks provoke slow and painful death.

Such warnings, again, appear to end in smoke. So does the idea of making cigarette price exorbitant. Neither has succeeded in diminishing the staggering number of smokers on the face of earth: teeming millions continue to smolder the face of the planet everyday, yet another ugly cause of global warming.