How and why did you start using tobacco?

it provided a relief from the mental and physical stress. Nicotine causes a sense of relaxation when it first hits the body. It was why the military gave them out to soldiers. My dad started smoking when he went into the army during WW2. 

Cigarettes were not invented during World War I, but were popularized during the conflict and became a staple of smoking in the twentieth century. Easier to use than pipe tobacco and cheaper than cigars, cigarettes were ideal for the trenches. They masked the smell of death and decay, kept nervous men calm, and were regularly given to wounded and dying soldiers.

Tobacco was valued as a wartime necessity, a fact that the tobacco industry seized upon in its advertising that featured soldiers, flags, and all the trappings of a triumphal nation making the world safe for democracy. At home, tobacco funds were established to “send smokes to the boys”, eventually sending 16 billion cigarettes as part of relief by the war’s end.

The First World War made America, and it established the cigarette as the prime mover for the tobacco industry. The cigarette would result in one of the lasting wounds that marred those who fought. Prior to the war, incidences of lung cancer were rare and extraordinary occurrences. In the decades after the war, the disease became more common and affected veterans, who took up smoking during the Great War, disproportionately.

To be cool like the other kids. 1st use gets you a little high, tolerance builds fast then it's calming effect hooks you and addiction seals the deal.
I didn't mark or commemorate my quit smoking date. Smoked from 15ish yo to early 40's

"How can I tell that my temper would have been as sweet or my companionship as agreeable if I had abjured from my youth the goddess Nicotine?"


Sir Winston Churchill.......a LONG time ago. People like drugs.......and we could run down that rabbit hole a ways......even shift over to political aspects of it as we argue about the "tobacco settlements"........

It was definitely promoted in hollywood with all the tough guys and heroes smoking. Also, Edward Bernays the father of modern day marketing was hired to start an advertising campaign to entice women by presenting it as sexy and independent. Most people are very malleable and gullible when it comes to psychological manipulation.

smoking in a race car is one thing but smoking during a motorcycle race is really hard core !!!