walking, tweeting, talking ashtrays

Now that I am back in the world of paid work, I am also back on public transport!! When did ashtrays have 16 legs, loads of big hair, short navy skirts and untucked white shirts??? 8 teenagers boarded a bus I was happily sitting on yesterday afternoon and I honestly thought the person next to me had hypnotised me and made me lick the inside of an ashtray. Not just any ashtray, the one from the front bar of an average pub at 4pm -  back when you could smoke in bars, opening time was 8am and the men in the front bar lit their second cigarette from their still burning first one. 

And this was after the Government's election, I mean health, tax - increasing the price of cigarettes. 

I am no psychologist and I am sure there have been plenty of studies but perhaps cost is not such a big factor in getting these kids to stop or not take up smoking?? It is cool to smoke. OK, I don't agree with that statement, but it just is!! and i can admit that i am not part of gen Y's coolness. Now, I don't want to just teenage bash. Smoking is really stupid, teenager's don't think of the health risks, 40 is soooo far away and whatever, they'll quit when they're older, it'll all be fine! I don't quite know how we get across the risk message -  how do we smoking completely uncool?? there have been sports stars in expensive ad campaigns, there have been muso's sprouting the benefits of tar free lungs... and still, swarms of school uniforms go on stinking like a gutter outside a great bar (now that smoking is banned inside!). Perhaps its about finding cool young people to spread the message that they don't want to kiss someone who smells worse than their aunt's potato bake left on the back table until the day after boxing day. People whom kids see as just like them, not an athlete that most kids are never even aspiring to be, not an outdated TV celeb and certainly not a health minister, school principal or parent.

Teenagers seem to get the idea of longevity when it comes to climate change but not when it comes to their own bodies and health risks. Is that a basic psychology of - you adults are getting this wrong even we can see that vs it can't happen to me, don't tell me what to do??

hmmm.... pictures of gangrene toes, $25 packets, 'hidden' cabinets at the newsagent, age restrictions... still at every bus stop are armies of walking ashtrays -  pumping i-tunes simultaneously into one ear and out in to the traffic through the dangling second earpiece to nowhere, tweeting from their phones and ready to assault your bus with stench. 

Perhaps it's all ok and the stench is worse than the bite because they don't actually inhale?!

thanks BuNika on flickr for the pic.