Chapter 1: The Art of Concealment

Smoking is indeed a vanishing practice, particularly when it comes to the art of discreetly enjoying a cigarette. Imagine the skill required to hide a lit cigarette behind your back while casually chatting with your Dean of Faculty in a parking lot, all without raising any suspicion about the smoldering ember.

You might find yourself pondering which brands of cigarettes are the most inconspicuous, so as to not alarm the students you teach with the telltale stench or the yellow stains on your fingers after your lunch break. And then there’s the delicate task of denying your smoking habit to someone important in your life. Over the years, I’ve spun tales about a fictional colleague whose smoking habits were more akin to a gentle breeze rather than the roaring inferno that my own habit had become. To my eternal embarrassment, she seemed to buy it—every single time.

How many times have you convinced yourself that this will be the final pack? Yes, you acknowledge you've hit your budget limit for the month, and yes, you realize the financial mess you’re in, but you tell yourself that just one more pack—this one, the last one—can’t possibly lead to total disaster. Right?

Each time, you reflect on your father, whose own smoking habits and financial chaos you despised. Yet somehow, you reassure yourself that you’re nothing like him. You insist it’s not an addiction, that it’s not a habit. You even tell yourself that you dislike the filthy habit—though deep down, you really don’t.

Having witnessed several people succumb to cancer, and even being present during one of those heartbreaking moments, you still manage to convince yourself that it won’t happen to you. Ah, yes—now that’s not one of the lies you tell.

The manufacturers of cigarette packages think that graphic warnings will deter people from smoking. They seem to believe that no one wishes to die from a seemingly trivial indulgence, such as a crafty fag, as we Brits might say. They fail to recognize that, for some, the allure remain