Source: Irish Independent Pubdate: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 Contact: http://www.independent.ie/ Author: Kim Bielenberg THEY'RE CLEVER ... BUT NOT SMART ENOUGH TO QUIT SMOKING In his last TV interview before he died of cancer, the playwright Dennis Potter brandished a cigarette and declared: ``The cigarette a lovely tube of delight. Look at it.'' Potter was fond of reprimanding non-smokers in the smoking carriages of trains. As he puffed away, the writer would tell passengers who neglected to light up: ``You do realise that this is a smoking compartment.'' After decades of dire public health warnings linking smoking with cancer and countless other life-threatening horrors, it does not take a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist to work out that smoking tobacco is likely to bring forward your appointment with the grim reaper. But smart people, including a surprisingly large number of doctors, continue to puff away merrily, or not so merrily ... until they take their terminal breath. About 15pc of Irish doctors continue to smoke, according to the latest surveys; and a good proportion of these puffing physicians probably give us lectures about cigarettes. Professors pull on fags outside lecture halls and top barristers, such as the redoubtable Paddy McEntee SC, light up furiously on the steps of the Four Courts. Why are these seemingly intelligent folk so attached to their tobacco, despite all the warnings? Worthy scaremongers who exhale vast clouds of anti-smoking propaganda seem to be wasting their time with these people. With all their knowledge they still find it impossible to stop. Former Labour minister Emmet Stagg used to work in medical research in Trinity College before he became a senior politician, but he has never managed to kick the habit for longer than five months. He is a 60-a-day man. ``I worked as a medical technologist; so I know the effects of smoking,'' he says with cigarette in hand. ``I am totally addicted. I have to smoke just to feel normal just to feel how a non-smoker feels normally. ``It is very difficult to envisage enjoying anything without smoking. Even when I'm fishing I like to smoke.'' Emmet Stagg says he hates cigarettes; wishes he could save on the cost; and advises young people not to take up smoking. But he adds: ``When I do not smoke I feel miserable. Cigarettes are the only cure for that misery.'' The Labour front bencher, says he took up smoking at a young age: ``I used to steal the odd one from my brother. Then I would buy the odd one myself. My children hate it and I feel that I am turning into a social leper. You cannot even smoke in a barber shop these days.'' ``I gave up once in 1986 and saved the money to buy an outboard motor for my boat, but one of my brothers tempted me with cigarettes and I went back on them.'' Albert Reynolds once said that giving up smoking was one of the best things he ever did and Charles Haughey famously quit the fags when he was Minister for Health. The present Minister for Health Brian Cowan belongs to that affable class of cigarette consumer, the ``social smoker.'' The political guardian of our health describes himself as an `` occasional smoker''and his spokesperson says he is trying to cut back at the moment. Des O'Malley is another heavy political inhaler. Politicians do not flaunt smoking as something that will boost their image. The same cannot be said of film and pop stars, and the socialites who illuminate the gossip columns. Increasingly they light up in front of the cameras; whether you are Gerry Ryan or Liam Gallagher, a fag or a cigar has become an essential fashion accessory. The Irish anti-smoking lobby is irritated by the number of times Bono of U2 appears in public with a cigarette. When he holds a cheroot , he somehow looks like an unconvincing smoker. Perhaps he does it out of nerves; or the pose may be a hideously vain attempt by the Killiney warbler to look cool ``It is certainly not a good image'' says Dr Fenton Howell of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). The Blair Government in Britain is so concerned that smoking is becoming fashionable again that it has launched a campaign to challenge the image that portrays cigarettes as sexy. In an initiative called Put Smoking Out of Fashion, the Health Education Authority is to recruit a number of big names through leading model agencies to try to reverse the trend. Smokers may be turned into social outcasts, exiled to the pavement and the passageway, but the nannyish efforts of the health lobby to stop us all puffing may prove counter-productive, particularly among young people. The less respectable smoking becomes, and the more it is portrayed as a dangerous activity, the more attractive it becomes for teenagers. Smoking is the easiest form of rebellion around, until you find yourself spluttering in the cancer ward. By the time, the young smoker has ceased worrying about being cool and forgotten about peer pressure, he or she may find that it is too late to give up: the addiction is so strong. Public relations executive Mari O'Leary smokes two packets of cigarettes a day. As a former model, she moves in the glamorous world of fashion, where smoking seems to be as popular as ever. ``I was sixteen when I started. It was something to do. I think peer pressure plays a big part when you are that age. You are trying to be older than you are and you think it is sophisticated. I don't think it is sophisticated now.'' ``I would genuinely love to give them up now, but it is very hard to crack. I first started smoking heavily when I was working as a model and I think it was out of boredom. it is really an addiction now.'' ``I smoke mostly in the office when I am on the phone or at the computer, but I have tried to cut back at home since I have had children.'' The Irish Cancer Society admits that it has a problem in convincing people who appear to be intelligent and well-informed. How do you tackle the smokers who know everything they need to know? ``People feel that it is a comfort and they enjoy the warmth of the heat and fire,'' says Avril Gillatt, Health Promotion Manager of the Irish Cancer Society. `` But the idea that smoking reduces stress in any way is false.'' Intelligent smokers know all about the likely health effects, but they still manage to distance themselves from the consequences, according to Avril Gillatt. ``It is very easy to say that it is not going to happen to me and that it only happens to somebody else.'' Despite growing evidence that it is more harmful to women, one of the results of growing equality between the sexes is a proportionate increase in the number of women smokers. Ann, a 41-year-old solicitor, knows that she is doing long-term damage, but has surrendered herself to it. ``I need to smoke. It's been a strong arm for me since I was 17. But it still makes me feel like a schoolgirl. I am also aware that I smoke to avoid eating. It's a way of controlling my weight, but it doesn't make me very happy. Smoking is selective amnesia - you block out the risks.'' The Scottish writer Ann Leslie believes that many career women with children smoke out of guilt: ``The woman who has a board meeting in morning will feel guilty if she puts that first, and guilty if she doesn't. She then has a cigarette, and feels so guilty about that cigarette, that she then has to have another to cheer herself up.'' - --- Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"