But are the kids listening?

No generation in history knows more about the dangers of smoking. Teenagers have been bombarded, from their earliest years, with anti-smoking propaganda directed at them by parents, doctors, teachers, and public health officials.

The propaganda always claims to tell teenagers the "truth" about smoking: that tobacco is bad for their health and harmful to developing bodies. But young people, always alert to adult hypocrisy, are apparently not impressed.

Smoking's advantages

They recognise a half-truth when they hear it. The propaganda never acknowledges the many advantages of smoking, its dark pleasure and irresistible beauty.

Some years ago I wrote a book entitled Cigarettes are Sublime, in order to stop smoking. I had been lighting up since I was twelve.

The soldier's friend

For me, as for many addicts and neophytes, it wasn't enough to know that cigarettes were bad for my health.

I felt I had to understand the benefits of smoking, in order to be able to stop - in order to begin to understand the power of its charms and, in my case, to find substitutes for its rewards.

Cigarettes, after all, are a source of consolation, particularly in times of loss. They provide a powerful antidote to anxiety. That's why they are beloved by soldiers, journalists and actors in the wings.

A break from tedium

They are a means of release and relief after exertions. They are a tool of social intercourse, an aid to dieting (particularly for young women obsessed with being thin), a spur to concentration.

Smoking a cigarette interrupts and punctuates the tedium of work and waiting. It opens up in our daily lives a brief parenthesis in which our thoughts, like smoke, rise above quotidian concerns. Smoking has often been considered a form of prayer.

'A dark pleasure'

But most of all, cigarettes introduce into our lives a form of beauty, the negative beauty that has been called sublime. It is the beauty, not of childish pleasures that taste sweet, but of adult pleasures, which rarely taste good, and inevitably entail risk.

That's why 43% of US teenagers smoke. Cigarettes have traditionally been the most widely available means of initiating adolescents into the reality of adult pleasure.

Teenagers understand implicitly that they are expected to discover for themselves how to deal with the temptations of compulsive habits.

A life of struggle

They recognise what adults rarely acknowledge, that they need to experiment with risky pleasures, because they are probably going to spend the rest of their life struggling with and against them.

What parent would want to raise a child who was never ever solicited by deliciously dangerous practices?

Maybe on No Smoking Day adolescents should rather be encouraged to try it. On this day, they would be allowed to experience what it might mean to enjoy a substance that's likely, if abused over a long period of time, to kill them.

An act of rebellion?

They should be fully informed of the risks they face if they continue to smoke, but they should be publicly permitted to take a thoughtful first step in a life-long encounter with the lures and dangers of adult pleasure.

They should be encouraged to recognise that how they meet that test will have the most far-reaching impact on their daily lives and their chances for happiness.

Lighting up on No Smoking Day should be a moment of confirmation for adolescents, a rite of passage, acknowledging the whole truth that they are embarked on the perilous adventure of learning to make fateful decisions, like grown-ups.

Add your comments using the form below.

How can a cigarette both relax you after lots of work AND help you concentrate while you're working? It's only the smoker's faith that prompts all these effects. The pleasures of smoking, and the addiction to it, are all in the mind - not the tobacco.
Leo Benedictus, England

I do not blame anybody for my smoking habit, I have free will and I choose to smoke and I thoroughly enjoy it. I'd rather my children didn't smoke but if they do, then that's their choice. It's their body to do with as they please.
Simon, UK

Why do people scratch their heads and wonder how people can smoke when they know its bad? Life is all about balancing risks against what we like to do. People do what they want, and they always will do when it comes to finding pleasure.
Stewart Dyer, UK

I used to smoke and I loved it - I loved the packets, I loved taking a new cigarette from the packet, I loved holding a cigarette in my fingers and I loved the "catch" at the back of my throat when I drew on it. I gave up when the things I hated about it became bigger than the things I liked. Even though some people think it's "stupid", it is also sublime.
Lizzy Wilde, UK

If I could go back to the foolish moment when I decided to try smoking, I would scream at myself not to do it. It is a sublime pleasure which gradually takes hold on your mind and becomes your best friend in all manner of situations. Giving up is hard, but you can succeed with help and support.
Dave Facey, Leeds, UK

I am a teenage non-smoker, I firmly believe that the hype about smoking merely adds to the problem and improves the brands' images. Any sort of hype is exciting and gripping.
Darren Reilly, UK

I know perfectly well why I smoke - it's nothing to do with seditious and sensual pleasures. Apart from nicotine and its effects, it's from being surrounded by smokers all my life - uncles who lit up whilst chatting away, school friends who rebelled by smoking behind the sheds and at parties, and no interesting people who didn't smoke. By the time you've grown up it's too late to change easily.
Barry Deluxe, UK

I think I must be a very boring or stupid person. Smoking is expensive, bad for you and makes you smell truly revolting. I have never even remotely wanted to try it, nor understood at all why anyone would. I obviously don't appreciate the "sublime negative beauty" of it. I am baffled by people smoking, it is so obviously a daft thing to do. I suppose I'll just have to cope with my own cold unemotional and possibly repressed logic then.
Jon Cooper, UK

It may be true that smoking satisfies psychological needs, but other means of meeting such needs are available. Encouraging teenagers to smoke on No Smoking Day would not be beneficial, because it would merely acquaint teenagers with the most harmful means of meeting those needs.
Benjamin Gardner, England