Comment 2 - Smoking

In response to:
“Everyone has a choice to smoke or not to smoke!Whether you started through peer pressure or just fancied a fag, it is your body you are damaging. Smoking is bad behaviour to your body. It can cause horrendous internal damage, leading to cancer and also external effects on your appearance for example: dry skin, rotting teeth, yellow fingers, smelly breath plus many more.
But why with so many health warnings why do people still choose to smoke? One answer is because they are addicted and like any addiction the way to giving up is never easy.Taking into account the continuous showing of characters and actors in films and TV smoking, they do so by ‘glamorising’ it. It adds to the theme, either being sexual or in many gangster films a sign of masculinity and toughness. With these images being portrayed as ‘normal’ behaviour to people on screen do smokers pay less attention to the health warnings? Is the viewing audience tempted in any way in trying a cigarette because it looks so attractive? I feel that young viewer's are tempted by the way it is shown and feel that they are more likely to try it when exposed to certain images from TV or Film.”
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My comment:
Isn’t that the question on every none smokers lips; “with so many health warnings why do people still make the decision to smoke?”
I am a none smoker and have been all my life. My parents smoked when I was a child and so did most of my family, so consequently, according to your argument, I was brought up to believe that smoking was “normal.” I have never felt the urge to smoke, or even attempt it. From a young age the health warnings always struck a cord with me and I tried (in vain) to get my smoking family to stop.
I can see the sexual allure of smoking, watching someone’s long, lean hands reach up to their plump, red, parted lips to take a drag. Yet the effects of yellow teeth, bad breath and serious health problems largely out way the sexual magnetism for me. A lollipop works just as well!

I think young viewers would perhaps think the same way if given the right education. But maybe todays society's idea of rebelling or “being bad” does not have too wide a scope, and young impressionable minds perhaps see smoking as a way to not conform?