Letters to my sons.

Dear Sons,

while I was out buying my lunch I over heard the following while waiting to pay:

I have 20 please, boxes of 10 are just too expensive. If they wanted us to smoke less they should make 10’s cheaper.

The woman I was listening to was buying cigarettes and  I have tried to follow her logic but I’m afraid I can’t.

I am presuming that her logic was this:

A smoker will smoke all their cigarettes and then stop for a certain period before the craving takes over and they go in search of more.

So if a person has 10 cigarettes they will smoke them all, wait a while and then get some more. If they have 20 cigarettes they will smoke them in the same time frame as the 10 and then wait the same amount of time as if they had smoked 10, before they go and get some more. Smokers only have limited control over  their nicotine craving and making it harder to get hold of ciggies will slow down the consumption.

I can only go on my experiences observing smokers never having been one myself and to a point I can see her logic that addicts will binge when their drug of choice is available but when it is limited  they will also limit themselves.

Her logic falls down at the point of purchase. The nicotine addict, bereft of a hit, is stood at shop counter replenishing her stocks of her drug.  She can buy 10 cigarettes, regardless of the cost, and do less damage to herself and live a little longer or she can save some money and buy 20; knowing full well that she is going to harm her self a little more. Cost is already the issue here, not health.

If a packet of 10 were cheaper she might buy 10, ration her self and wait until tomorrow to buy some more. What is more lickely is that she would simply buy two packs of 10 and save some money – as she cares more about that than her health.

Of course she could save loads more money by just not smoking at all, no cigarettes is much cheaper than 10, more so 20. So even though she cares more about saving money than health, she is unable or unwilling to break her disgusting habit; for health or wealth reasons as her nicotine addiction trumps both of them. Which is sad.