Rishi’s right — my first fag at 13 had me hooked for 60 years

ISMOKED my first cigarette at the tender age of 13. An untipped Woodbine stolen from my grandfather’s packet. It made me feel dizzy and sick, but I was determined to persevere.

The next one had no such ill effects and I was hooked.

pictured myself as the elegant Bette davis, always photographed with a cigarette in her hand. In the early sixties, it meant becoming one of the cool crowd at school; hiding behind the bike sheds with cigarettes stolen from the packets of the adults we wanted to emulate.

By the age of 16, we were old enough to buy them ourselves. We’d take turns to spend our pocket money on a packet of ten to be shared around the group. We all had perfume and packets of mints to mask the smell from our parents when we got home.

And so began a 60-year addiction that at my worst had me smoking more than 20 a day.

Feeling increasingly like the pariah with a disgusting habit, I have tried to quit numerous times. But any moment of sadness or anxiety led me to the tobacco counter. The addiction felt too tough to conquer.

so I could not be more supportive of Rishi sunak and his efforts to ban smoking. This week he relied on Labour votes to see off opponents on his own benches, winning a significant victory for his new Tobacco and Vapes Bill by 383 votes to 67.

There are further stages, including a vote in the House of Lords, but if the Bill is passed, it will make it an offence to sell nicotine products to anyone born after January 1, 2009 – that means anyone 15 or younger this year.

The legal age to buy them would rise year by year, creating a new generation who should never smoke. Rishi can do them no greater favour than making sure they remain free of the pernicious addiction to nicotine. Take it from one who knows.

I was at university before I finally summoned up the courage to offer my father one of my cigarettes. He was shocked; my mother appalled.

News about the possible danger to health was beginning to spread. my parents said they’d never wanted me to smoke. Wasn’t I afraid of how much it would cost and whether it was true that it could cause lung cancer?

I tossed their concerns aside and said, no, I enjoyed it, just as dad had always said. What was never addressed was that he and I were both addicted to nicotine and the cigarettes would probably never let us go even if we wanted to ditch them.

my father never did quit. When he was 50, he tried to do it to please my mother. I became suspicious about his frequent visits to his friends around the corner – both smokers. It also seemed strange that his dog had more walks in the park than any Yorkshire terrier could possibly need.

When I found a packet in his coat pocket while searching for something else, I became the equivalent of the horrified parent. He died, aged 80, from lung cancer, asking me during his short time in

the hospice if I had a fag. I denied my father his last cigarette.

As for me, I gave up twice during two pregnancies.

Luckily for my sons, the smell of cigarettes and alcohol made me violently sick – my body seemed to be protecting them from any poisons as I carried them. As soon as they were born, I couldn’t wait to start again. And any further attempt to quit proved futile.

That was until November last year. I’d fallen and broken a vertebra. I was in hospital. I was not mobile so there was no way I could take myself outside for a quick one. Hints at taking me out in a wheelchair were studiously ignored by the nurses.

I was taken to a care home for a few weeks for respite care and physiotherapy. Right, I decided. This time, at the age of 73, you will succeed in giving up. so, for nearly six months, I have fought the addiction. I have worn a nicotine patch. I still do. I have packs of nicotine gum. I am chewing a piece right now.

This is the future from which Rishi sunak wants to protect the next generation. The longing for a cigarette and the nicotine it contains is a painful hunger. I’ve watched fellow smokers taking a break from their jobs, walking along a path to a hut designed to accommodate them and I have longed to be with them, lighting up and feeling the kick. It occupies your mind day in, day out, even when you know it is more than likely that it will kill you.

There is simply no argument against the proposals in this Bill. Choice is not an element here because the powerful addiction to nicotine removes the element of choice. I would like to see the young protected from what I have endured, and I truly wish I had never been so silly as to smoke that first Woodbine six decades ago.