Forty a day for forty years – that’s a hell of a lot of cigarettes – but je ne regret rien. I loved smoking. But note the past tense because, eventually, for all the clichéd health reasons you can imagine, I had to give up. Despite always knowing it was a matter of life or death, I dreaded packing it in. Smoking has been so much part of my persona for decades; I just couldn’t imagine life without puffing away. All the usual smoking cessation options didn’t work, from gum to patches, Alan Carr to NHS counselling. Until eventually, on the recommendation of no less than two NHS doctors, I tried disposable vapes. Miracle upon miracle, they worked. And I am now a happy chain vaper.
At last, I thought, I would stop being demonised for my bad habit. I have endured years of sanctimonious lectures from public health policy-wonks about how the dangers of tobacco meant smokers could be treated as pariahs, which – by the way – made giving up even less attractive.
