Smoking

It's evil. It kills you. It shreds your finances and makes your clothes smell.

Boys don't want to kiss you.

Those are the bad points.

Bad Point number one: It's evil:
I have had people say this to me a few times: I was at a barn party back in the smoke-filled days of my youth when some fat bloke who'd had a few came outside to belch and spotted me puffing on a Rothmans. "You should give those up," he said ferociously, as though he was the Angel Gabriel delivering Bad News to a dumb tart - and added, for extra punch,  "Fags are evil you know." He let slip a bubble of a fart, hitched his trousers up and stared at me like I was Lucifer wielding his trident.
I nodded pleasantly and blew a few smoke rings at him in the shape of hearts. It had taken me two years to perfect this skill and finally it had come in useful just as I knew it would.
Fags aren't evil. They're fags. I bet a few Syrian refugees would like a fag right now as they sit traumatised in their tents surrounded by their dead children. Killed by war. Not by fags.

Bad Point number two: Smoking kills you.
This is true. Medically speaking, smoking is very risky. Professor Peto said so and he's an impossibly handsome fellow and undoubtedly speaks the truth. So, if there are any children reading this, please,  don't take it up: I want you to live long enough to know that Brexit didn't mean the end of croissants and Lidl.
However. I heard on Radio Four recently that merely standing close to the kerb in some polluted areas of the UK can give you chronic asthma and shorten your life: a very solid-sounding woman advised that we should stand back and turn away when a bus pulls in somewhere in Birmingham. Many thousands of us apparently, are breathing in toxic, noxious air. A bit like the lounge bar of the Saracens Head in Beaconsfield in the 80's before smoking in pubs was banned.
So the message is: even if you don't smoke Evil Fags, every city-dweller should move, pronto, to the more rarified environs of, say,  Mull, Eigg or Croyde in North Devon. Hang it, Sheppey is probably healthier for you than commuting to Waterloo or the City from your flat in Ealing.
Also, myriad other things kill you: falling off ladders, sepsis, drowning, car crashes, heart attacks, grief, choking....   Life is a smorgasbord of death.   

Bad Point number three: it shreds your finances.
Well yes it does. But not if you're well off and don't drink, drive, have a second home or holiday abroad. If you ARE well off and do all these things you'll probably still manage the nine quid or so it costs a day to smoke a pack of 20. That's three quid cheaper than one small glass of sauvignon blanc at the Buddha Bar in Knightsbridge.
But if you're poor, on minimum wage etc, trying to feed a family and put petrol in your vehicle then yes it's ludicrously expensive - unlike in other European countries. (Will the cost of fags go up or down after Brexit? Up I expect.) So it is indeed a big financial burden. A pisser for sure. But then so is decent tin foil, dog food and the cost of camping or caravanning in the school holidays. Lots of things cost lots of money. Fags are just somewhere on the spectrum. Like 100% Egyptian cotton sheets or chocolate digestives..
   
Bad Point number four: it makes your clothes smell.
Yep. But so do fry-ups, roast dinners and bonfires. I was at a Christmas party last year and I nipped out for a smoke. When I returned I snuggled myself in between colleagues and continued partying. They filled my glass, I filled theirs and we continued to laugh like drains and do silly shit on snapchat. Later, one chap took me to task: "why do you need to smoke?" he wailed, "it smells so awful!" He wasn't sitting anywhere near me that night. But he is a fitness foo-fighter...all spindly legs, tight chest and a tuft of hair like Tin-Tin. As he poured out his disdain he had damp patches in his arm-pits and his partner was wretching in the bogs. Personally, I couldn't tell the difference between us. I didn't take him conspiratorially to one side and say "you smell like a shaft of piss and your partner has turned the toilets into a nepalmed no-go area..." Smoking really presses buttons it seems.

Bad Point number five: boys don't want to kiss you.
Hmm.
1.Boys will usually forgive anything if they think they're going to get some action.
2.Smokers don't mind.
3. I've had all the kissing I need thanks. I don't want boys bending in with their bad breath and baggage. No! I want to get my son through to University or whatever he does at 18,  then cut loose the anchor and sail off to smoke on the whitewashed decks of a cruise ship packed with jiggling Italians, to smoke with my legs swinging on the Great Wall of China as a storm hits, and to smoke hanging off the back of a tuk-tuk in Mumbai three sheets to the wind, fag dangling.