Can I bust a dart off you?

This week’s food for thought… is smoking ramping back up?

Ask yourself this - do you bust the old durry just to be social?

As I sit hunched over the keyboard in my usual Sunday hung over state, I’m toying with uncertainty on whether to have Chicken Treat for the second time today. But one thing I do know is that the last thing I feel like is a cigarette. Ironically, just 20 hours ago I was sitting outside a club on a kerb ‘busting a durry’.  I admit, YES it’s a filthy habit and I loathe smoking, however, after a few beverages I’m impartial to the cheeky dart. Aren’t we all?

While my judgment might be slightly skewed given my slightly intoxicated state, I can’t help but wonder if smoking is on the rise. Has it become cool to smoke again? Is there a recent apparent increase in young adult smoking? Or do we just find our selves lighting up to be social. 

Given any day of the week you’d never catch me at the smokes counter in Coles buying a carton of Winnie blues, but chances are come Saturday night there is a high possibility you could find me chasing a cheeky smoke off a random and then troubling them for a light. Until today, I was fairly resigned to the fact that smoking had become a big taboo in our society, given it has all been but eradicated from enclosed spaces. Smokers have now been driven outside and sort of outcast in a way. But it seems as the weekend swings around that's all but forgotten and it becomes a social ritual. I went to gig recently and I spent the majority of the time outside in the courtyard talking with strangers. Cigarette in in one hand, drink in the other, bonding over a silent killer. At one point it seemed there were more people outside than what there were inside. I think I listened to about one song and my memory of that is very hazy.

Maybe there are two kinds of smokers after all. There are those who have an addiction to nicotine and then there’s a new breed that light up to be social and don’t particularly take anything from inhaling and filling up their lungs with smoke. 

Is social smoking just a fad or is it here to stay? Maybe I will need to stop off at that smokes counter after all and invest in my own pack and lighter if that’s the case.

Bye for now – I’m off to get that half chicken and chips after all.

Cuttsy