Why people start to smoke

Most smokers start smoking when they are teenagers.

In the 'olden days' when your parents and grandparents were teenagers, people started smoking because:

smokingtheir friends smoked.
they thought smoking was the 'grown up' thing to do.
their heroes smoked, including many sports stars.
tobacco advertising in films, magazines, TV, sports and posters showed smoking as being cool, sexy, smart, tough and the adult thing to do.
smoking was allowed in public places everywhere.
people could buy cigarettes in smaller packets of 5 or 10 .
most people didn't know that smoking was bad for their health and for the health of people who were around smokers.