Isn't it about time us smokers wheezed our way up to parliament to protest about the rise in tab prices..3 increases in a year now

At least the Eastern European shop keepers manage to keep their prices down..It must be cheaper to smoke cigars

I don't but the wife puffs 20 a day. On Monday at Morrisons I bought 200 at a cost of £131.50 and I expect that will be £150 after the budget - £15 a pack of 20. She could have bought a house by now after smoking for 56 years.

New Zealand is a very anti-smoking country. i see anybody born after 2008 cannot buy cigarettes legally in their lifetime..seems a smart move.?

Eye watering that, just under £5500 a year, how can you afford that ?

You always get someone who says my uncle Eric never smoked yet he got cancer and died when he was 19,…yet his brother Dave smoked 120 fags a day and died aged 120 when was hit by a bus taking part in a marathon.

My dad and mother in law died within two weeks of each other from lung cancer and throat cancer brought on by smoking…..and they weren’t that old.
My dad only started because he was advised to by a doctor in the States when his ship docked because he had a chest infection and told the smoke offered protection…they didn’t have the info we have today.

As pretty much a none smoker all my life apart from a bit of wacky tabbacy in my youth, it was an interesting speaking to a good pals daughter a newly qualified doctor in 2020, her first big posting was the nightingale Covid hospital in Harrogate which she said was tough with the amount of deaths, told me that the vast majority Asian, elderly or over weight, one curious thing was that not one were smokers.

mind you thats a bit like snowys first paragraph above. i smoke about 4 packets a week. i,ve stopped a number of times but never feel a new man because of it. there is always some shit to happen to get me running to the nearest shop to start again. really it cannot do you that much good but neither might the side affects of some of the stuff the doctor prescribes. if they do go up to a 15 quid a packet i,ll try to stop again, but only because of the cost and nothing else. if every doctor or nurse were non smokers i,d never have started again. so stop the fags, ban the booze and keep away from dirty women and your life will feel longer even if it isn,t.

She says, again, that she is going to quit! I have heard that at least 1000 times over the years and this is the ONLY subject we don't discuss as in the early years of our marriage (54 now) this would cause an argument.

And….? ….. are you advocating Capstan full strength as the ultimate antidote to Covid. Like I said, my old man was advised by a doctor in the early 50’s to take it up for the sake of his health, so I’d be very wary of statistics like that, considering most of the people won’t have been in the best of health to begin with.
I tnink the ‘casualty list’ for the Tobacco Barons profits is proof enough they ain’t doing it for the good of their ‘customers’.

We had one of the older hands in our crew who was diagnosed with gout in the early 80’s and the doctor told him he had to go without alcohol for 14 days before the treatment started and boy did he drink!
Anyway we were all on break time a week later and suddenly he said…”Do you lot feel like this all the team’…it was like Father Jack suddenly coining out of his alcoholic coma.

I just found it an odd thing as I said bet it’s full of smokers, it’s something about the virus unable to attach itself because the lungs were lined apparently. My grandad smoked the Capstan Full Strength always held it in towards his hand I was fascinated as a kid as to what was the brown stains on his fingers. Awful habit really.

funny though is when you do stop the last thing you feel is that you are better off. just where does those savings go i,d like to know.

You put the money aside even in a money box, it could pay for a decent holiday.

however most just do not do that and come to the same conclusion as i do. bit like if you shop at aldi and then go to sainsbury,s pay more but at the end of the week you do not seem to be any worse off.

I’m not having a pop at you, it’s just when hear these things you have to take them with a pinch of salt.

Salt, now there's the real killer!!

be a first for me..I've been to some classy resorts..Benidorm,Ibiza etc. I can't imagine not having a tab at happy hour.. .still hoping the day will come..it's all in the head isn't it mr j ?


Gave up 20 years ago for 18 months...lost the fight at the Berwick inn after 4 or 5 pints on a warm sunday afternoon..