Don’t treat smokers like criminals

In your “Safer Road” editorial (Opinion, Jan 2) you write: “It is astounding that after years of campaigning and education, so many people, especially young people, still smoke.”

To those who have never smoked, this may be astounding, to a person who has experienced and therefore understands every single aspect of this addiction, it was foreseeable that both the smoking ban in its present form and the anti-smoking campaign, as it is conducted, would fail.

For more than two decades I was a heavy smoker. I remember when and why I started, I recall the triggers that made me smoke more or less, I vividly recall equally the good things and the bad things about smoking.

I remember the guilty feelings associated with smoking in the presence of non-smokers and the yearnings to be able to quit. I recall the many failed attempts at giving up and I remember why and when I finally quit, 17 years ago.

To this day, I regard it as one of my greatest achievements in life. I am a very happy ex-smoker, but I will never condemn a smoker, because I fully understand the addiction.

It breaks my heart how smokers are nowadays treated. I could cry when I walk past the entrance of our hospitals, where old and sick people in wheelchairs and on drips are made stand in all weathers in their pyjamas to smoke a cigarette, whilst a voice over the intercom constantly declares that this is a smoke-free campus.

The mockery of it all! The inhumanity of doing this to a sick and elderly person — you would treat an animal with more compassion. Outside all workplaces around the country we see people standing in the rain and freezing cold, smoking.

It looks bad and it evidently does not stop people from smoking. Smokers are not criminals or second-class citizens, they do not deserve to be treated as such.

Draconian measures and sanctions have no place in our modern society; what smokers do deserve is professional help to quit the habit.

In my experience, giving up smoking requires the right mindset at a time when life is good and happy.

Knowledge and expertise gained through practical life experience is invaluable in leadership, teaching and education because it retains essential elements such as humanity and compassion.

Evidently within the worldwide “powers that be” are very few individuals with essential and relevant life experience because humanity and compassion not only for smokers but within society in general are disappearing rapidly. I find this very frightening.

Brigitte Noonan

Knockraha

Co Cork