Though I knew tobacco was bad for my health, I tried smoking during an outing with some schoolmates when I was 19. The immediate gratification I drew from my first puffs proved stronger than the long-term health risks I was exposing myself to.

From there on, I became a slave to nicotine, the addictive agent found in cigarettes. It punctuated my day. I could skip a meal but not a cigarette. It was more than a must after a meal or a cup of tea. Once I even found myself knocking at my neighbour?s door for a fag. I once managed not to smoke during Lent but the first thing I did after Easter mass was to light a cigarette!

Then came that blessed day when I decided to kick the habit forever. I gathered all my will power after pulling on what I decided was to be my last cigarette and have never lit another one again ever since. I would lie if I said it was easy but it was not as difficult as some pretend quitting to be.

I was then 22 and I strongly believe I would not have been as healthy as I am now had I not taken that significant decision twenty years earlier. With hindsight, I now realize I might have escaped from serious health complications as I was smoking around 30 cigarettes a day, tuning myself to the radiation rate equivalent to 300 chest X-rays!

I prefer not imagine the amount of tar I would have collected in my lungs, the damage to my arteries and the cholesterol levels I might have had to constantly control. These long-term side effects of smoking I was laughing at when I was 19 might well have been there as fast as my daughter has grown up into a healthy smoke-free 16-year old youth.

I thank God I have saved her and the rest of my family from the side effects of passive smoking, which appallingly claims around 40,000 lives each year in the US alone. It is a major source of indoor air pollution, which bears many a toxic substance, which affect both the respiratory and cardiovascular system of regularly exposed victims. Children exposed to cigarette smoke are twice as likely to develop asthma than their smoke-free counterparts, for instance.

I have also made quite an interesting saving during those 20 smoke-free years during which I would have purchased around 12,000 packs of cigarettes, seen the dentist twice a year instead of once to free my teeth from brownish tar stains, seen the doctors several times for hard to heal chest infections and absented myself from work due to smoking-related ailments.

Abstaining myself from considering the costs of passive smoking on my three kids and wife, I consider having saved more than Rs 350,000 from having been a non-smoker for the last two decades.

Health being the greatest of all wealth though, I consider quitting cigarettes as one of the most significant achievements of my life. The idea of committing a slow suicide and putting my family at risk in the way is unbearable.

Sometimes I happen to think of tobacco, which was unknown to the rest of the world until Columbus discovered America, as the greatest revenge of native Red Indians on the cruelty of Western colonists. It has claimed more than 10 million lives in the last century and might well kill 10 times more in this one if it is not unmasked and fought adequately.

More aggressive campaigns to discourage youngsters from smoking should be made while helping hands should be extended to those who wish to quit. Smoking is out of fashion and a killer habit that should be decried. It only serves the interests of a few magnates to the detriment of the quality of life and economy of nearly 650 million smokers. Let?s hold hands together with the authorities in their fight for a smoke-free society.

<B>Alain JEANNOT</B>