I have never smoked and, as a lifelong asthma sufferer, have never wanted to. My mother never smoked, although her father, my grandpa, smoked both a pipe and cigarettes until he had an operation and the anaesthetic put him off the ìdea of smoking altogether. He went on to mint imperials instead. My dad's side of the family were all heavy smokers, apart from my grandma; so much so that they would hand around the cigarettes like sweets. I remember the fug in a small room, which meant that it was impossible to see the person sitting opposite. Sadly, several family members died earlier than they perhaps would have done because of smoking. My dad died of lung cancer at 77 - he had not smoked indoors for decades but could never quite give up. He was a teenager in the fifties and it was almost a rite of passage to start smoking then, especially young men. No one had any real idea of the dangers or addiction of smoking then. Even in the seventies, when I was a child, most older teenagers and adults seemed to smoke. Many people had a vinyl three piece suite with giant ashtray on a pedestal to complete the look. People were becoming aware of the dangers of smoking to oneself but knowledge of the dangers of passive smoking was still in its infancy. On a final note, I remember my chemistry teacher, who was also the headteacher, showing our class, aged around fourteen, photos of a healthy lung and a smoke blackened lung in order to discourage us from smoking. The irony was that he was practically a chain smoker himself and every time he bent over our work as the smell of stale smoke was horrendous.