RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume C, Issue 29468, 21 March 1961, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

EX-EX-SMOKERS

Everyone knows the story of the man who was asked if it was easy to give up smoking. “Of course it is. I’ve done it scores of times” he said. But what is news in Christchurch at the moment is the number who have given up smoking, sometimes for months and even years, and then crept back to it—first by taking a stray cigarette from somebody else’s round, then being shamed into buying a packet so they could return the occasional cigarette they borrowed, and then smoking again as heavily as ever they did before. The most interesting aspect of the whole matter is the variety of excuses offered for falling off the non-smoking wagon. Most ingenious is that of the man who says he couldn't afford to stop. Every week he stopped he put on more weight, he had to buy more

clothes and it would have cost him a fortune. Judging on the number of suits the average man buys every five years, it might be interesting to work that out actuarially, as they say in the insurance business. That argument is taken a stage further, and very shrewdly, by those who claim that if they put on too much weight it might be bad for their general health. So many thromboses round a man can't be too careful. Other backsliders say they do it because all their associates do, and it becomes awkward not to. One ingenious excuse was that of a man who said that when he stopped smoking his wife started, and he had to begin again to break her of the habit. The previous Finance Minister (Mr Nordmeyer) probably stopped more New Zealanders smoking than did all the protagonists

of the lung cancer theory. It wasn't that they were mean (perish the thought!) but that they didn’t like to see all that money going into taxes. A few say it played havoc with their temper, and they were under pressure at home to start again, another few claim that they started chewing gum or eating sweets instead and it cost them more money with less satisfaction. But whatever the excuse there are now hundreds of New Zealanders in Christchurch alone who have stopped that pernicious habit, and started it again within a few months. There are certainly enough of them to form a Relapsed Smokers Association And when they find the man honest enough to admit that he gave up giving up smoking because he liked tobacco they can elect him chairman.