WHEN I RUN INTO SOME OF THE FIRST STUDENTS that I taught from the 1980s, they would ask, ?Do you still smoke?? I was a heavy smoker, sometimes going through as many as three packs a day and students still remember how, in class, I?d have smoke coming out of my nose, my mouth and, they?d joke, my ears.

Some of you are probably expecting me to go into a long anti-smoking tirade now. But I?ll tell you, as an ex-smoker, that the worst thing you can do to make someone stop smoking is to nag. Which, unfortunately, is what?s happening now to poor Noynoy Aquino.

?Quitting is easy,? I used to quip, ?I?ve done it a thousand times.? The reality is that it can be very difficult for some people. I had to be one of those, but let me save my story about quitting for Friday, with tips to maximize success.

Today I want to talk about how society itself contributes to smoking. Noynoy is younger than I am by a few years, but we more or less belong to the same generation, one which came of age at a time when smoking was acceptable, if not encouraged.

I usually tell people I smoked from the time I was 14 up to 40. Actually it was just one drag at 14 on someone else?s cigarette and I hated it. At 16 though, packed off to a university dorm where one didn?t have to smoke in secret, I became hooked.

When my father discovered I was smoking, he wasn?t too happy not so much because it was unhealthy as smoking being a ?for adults only? activity. Like porn, smoking was something you could do once you were adult, and 16 wasn?t adult.

No hope

One day my father asked what I smoked and was aghast to find out I was smoking locally manufactured cigarettes. He had the driver bring me to the places where I could get ?blue seal? cigarettes, foreign brands smuggled in from the south to evade taxes. My father?s brand preference was Kent, but I found it too expensive and settled on Champion although I kept a few packs of Kent for smoking during family reunions and other upscale social events.

Expensive was relative. I think Kent was P5 per pack, Champion was P2.50, and, well, local cigarettes were P1 a pack. ?Local? meant locally manufactured American brands. No Hope yet at that time.

After I transferred to UP and began going to poor communities, I discovered Bataan Matamis (some older readers can probably hear the radio commercial: ?Bata. . .aaaaaannnn Matamissss?), which was even cheaper. I can?t remember the price because I didn?t quite get hooked on Bataan. It had no filter so you would inhale, puff?and spit out loose tobacco sticking to your lips. Thinking about it now, I never did find out if it gave you sweet lips. Bataan cigarettes tasted like their name.

This was pre martial law, when you could get a full tank of gasoline for less than P10 and students demonstrated when prices went up half a centavo. This was also the time when we young people played on language, inverting syllables, so that ?pare? and Joseph Estrada became ?erap,? and ?sigarilyo? became ?yosi.?

At family reunions everyone but everyone (well, the adults at least) smoked. The teenagers still had to smoke in the garage although some time around 18, you could join the adults.

We aped the adults. There was a rough male way of smoking, holding the cigarettes with your thumb and second finger, carelessly flicking away ashes while taking beer or whiskey and talking politics. Inhaling and blowing were always hurried affairs, the cigarettes burning furious and fast, down to the filter, so you could tell which of the men smoked by looking for fingers stained brown by the nicotine.

Many of the women in our clan smoked too, holding the cigarettes delicately between the second and third crimson manicured fingers. Every move seemed measured as they dragged in the smoke: long, languid and leisurely. They would blow the smoke upwards, or to the side, never in frontal assault like the men did. The women rarely finished their cigarettes, almost as if to redeem themselves, as if to say, ?I can live without the cigarettes . . . unlike the men.?

People smoked everywhere?at home, in offices, in cars and in jeepneys and buses. So when I went off to the United States to study, I thought I could do that too. But the Americans, despite their exports of cigarettes to the world, were already beginning to cut down on smoking for health reasons. Exposes were beginning to appear showing how tobacco companies suppressed growing evidence that tobacco caused cancer and respiratory illnesses. In the years that followed, the list of tobacco-related illnesses was to grow.

Killer cigarettes

There was some inkling, back in the Philippines, that cigarettes were harmful to health, but few seemed to realize that cigarettes could kill.

At our family reunions, there was a large oil portrait of my grandfather and step-grandmother, almost as if watching all of us as we smoked. My grandfather had, among his pre-war businesses, a cigarette factory, and he himself was a smoker. He died in the 1950s from stomach cancer. My step-grandmother smoked, too, only occasionally such as at parties, but I remember being able to tell if she was under stress because she?d smoke then, and not exactly occasionally. The story always was that it had been an intense mahjong session that killed her, at a relatively young age of 67. No one ever thought that maybe the massive heart attack had come from cigarettes. Or that smoking could have contributed to my grandfather?s cancer.

With time, we came to realize it wasn?t just a few ?side effects? of cigarettes that we had to live (and die) with. Uncles were getting heart attacks but not too many aunts. There was one aunt who died of lung cancer. Ironically, she never smoked but she entertained a lot and at her wake, people were talking now about the dangers of passive smoking.

Today our family reunions are smoke-free. The few smokers left have to go off to the garden. They can?t go to the garage because the drivers, the houseboys, and an occasional household helper, will be there smoking. When I do pass by where they?re smoking, they?ll sometimes sheepishly offer me a cigarette, ?Sir o. . .? It?s a ritual because they know I stopped a long time ago, as did many of the other ?sirs? and ?mams.?

Today, despite the many warnings and campaigns against smoking, there is still strong acceptance of smoking among lower-income Filipinos, which means many social cues that actually push smokers to smoke and young non-smokers to pick up the habit.

Smoking continues to be associated with high social status, with masculinity, and more. One time one of the older drivers told me, almost sadly, in Tagalog, ?Sir, we smoke because life?s hard.? I?d heard that from jeepney and taxi drivers, who said smoking suppressed their hunger and allowed them to work longer hours.

I?m wondering if a new smoking ?ethic? is emerging: that it?s acceptable if it helps you to handle the stress of hard work, driving, or writing (columns?) . . . or holding public office.

Email to mtan@inquirer.com.ph