I quit in April 1977, at age 21, after smoking about a pack a day for
10 years. Yep, started when I was 11. It trakes a ot of effort to smoke a pack a day when you have to hide just about every cigarette you have.If you want to know how deep an addiction can go, consider this:
5 years after I quit, I was sitting in bar. I was not hammered (yet!) My right hand came up and reached into my shirt pocket to grab a pack of smokes. Scared the crap out of me to know just how close to going back we addicts can be.I just heard that the smoking rate in the US has remained steady at about 20% for the past few years. The same report also mentioned that it is taking the government a lot longer to approve new tobacco products, which - hopefully - is why the smoking rate has not increased. According to the sources in the report, each time the tobacco industry introduces a new product, it is stronger and more additive.
The government spokesperson said that they are not intentionally delaying decisions on new products, he simply said that these things take time. For once, I hope the government is lying to us and that these requests are sitting at the bottom of somebody's pile.