When your parents were young, peoplecould buy cigarettes and smoke pretty much anywhere — even in hospitals! Ads for cigarettes were all over the place. Today we're more aware about how bad smoking is for our health. Smoking is restricted or banned in almost all public places and cigarette companies are no longer allowed to advertise on TV, radio, and in many magazines.

Almost everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease; that it can shorten your life by 10 years or more; and that the habit can cost a smoker thousands of dollars a year. So how come people are still lighting up? The answer, in a word, is addiction.  

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Teenage Smoking in the Philippines

I lit my first cigarette when I was 10 years old. Why? Out of curiosity. I always wondered why so many grown-ups smoke. It was as if smoking a cigarette was the ticket one needed to be called an adult. "It must be cool," I thought then as I puffed my first puff. I coughed. And coughed and coughed. Still, I tried to smoke some more. The cough ceased and I was blowing smoke. As I finished, I noticed a horrible sour taste left in my mouth. It smelled terrible. "So, this was smoking? What's so cool about it?" I wondered. That was the first and last time I smoked.

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