Dying for a fag

My big goal was to stop smoking on New Year's Day 1997, but we'd had a party the night before and when I woke up someone had been sick in the bathroom. I couldn't face cleaning it up until I'd had a couple of Silk Cuts.

But, after a few more packs, my resolve returned and I quit the evil weed for good.

I was determined this time. Like the vast majority of smokers - 90 per cent according to surveys - I'd tried to stop several times before, with varying success.

I'm not saying it was easy to stop - the first few days you feel like a zombie, as if your brain is operating on a different planet from your body.

But that soon goes and then the real battle begins, to break the habit.

There are countless methods to quit smoking, some scientific, some more eccentric. Mine falls into the latter category - I used Fishermen's Friends every time I felt a craving come on. I found the anaesthesia-like mintyness of the lozenge was akin to having fresh sea air pumped through your body and totally wiped out any desire for a drag.

However, the real catalyst that stopped me smoking was the fact that it was becoming increasingly difficult to light up in public.

When I started smoking at 16 you could smoke on the bus, on a plane, at work and in every café, restaurant and pub. Most people I knew smoked. It was a fact of life.

But ten years later, it wasn't so easy. I was living in London, commuting on the Tube and working in a non-smoking office - suddenly instead of smoking being part of my life, my life was about when and how I was going to be able to have my next fag. I was on 40 a day and anxious all the time about getting my next fix.

So, it's not surprising that one of the biggest consequences of a public smoking ban is a mass stub-out by the public.

When France brought in anti-smoking legislation in the 1990s, tobacco consumption fell by a third. And in the year since Scotland brought in the ban, an estimated 22,000 people have given up the habit, a figure health experts expect to see repeated each year.

So there's no reason why we shouldn't see similar results in England when smoking is outlawed in enclosed public places from July 1.

Already pubs across the country are gearing up for the change. York nightclub Nexus is forking out up to £40,000 for a rooftop garden so smokers can still indulge on a night out, and other pubs are following suit by providing covered outside areas.

There is plenty of help for people who want to stop, including the NHS website (www.gosmokefree.co.uk), the NHS stop-smoking helpline (0800 1690 169) and local stop-smoking services and support groups.

Your GP surgery can give you more details and offer prescriptions for patches and gums to help with nicotine withdrawal.

Health analysts assert the smoking ban will have the greatest impact on public health in a generation and that we won't see the true results for ten to 30 years.

They expect to see large decreases in the number of deaths from lung cancer, coronary heart disease and respiratory illness. In Scotland, 400 non-smokers will be saved each year from the effects of passive smoking.

If you need a crude reminder of why the Government is clamping down on smoking, here's one - tobacco use kills about 114,000 people in the UK each year. That's more than 300 every day, or as if a jet airliner crashed every day, killing all its passengers.

And if you still think it won't be you, you might be right. But half of all regular smokers will eventually be killed by their habit.

Still dying for a fag?