(Warning: Smoking is injurious to health)
It looks like Milan beat everyone to the New Year's resolutions this time. As the clock struck midnight and brought a calendar change, cigarettes became Cinderella—smoking hot but not to be seen in public anymore. Everyone who has ever smoked a cigarette and thought of never doing it again understands the feeling the fashion capital of Italy is heavy with.
Italy hadn't hopped on the healthy bandwagon in the last decade, which saw dramatic declines in the smoking habits of younger adults in the US and many other countries. According to a cross-sectional study conducted by National Health Interview Surveys between 2011 and 2022 in the US, “Adults younger than 40 years had dramatic declines in smoking prevalence during the last decade, especially among those with higher incomes”.
Why The Ban
Milan's reasons for imposing a strict ban on smoking in public spaces are rooted in the city's effort to tackle air pollution. The city council sees smoking as a significant pollutant: cigarettes are responsible for 7% of total emissions in Milan and its suburbs. Given that almost a quarter of Italy's population smokes, this doesn't seem outlandish.
The enforceability of this ban can be debated. And so can the compulsions behind it. Do human beings invariably make the best decisions for themselves? Rarely are smokers unaware of the dangers they subject themselves to with each puff. But rarely is this awareness enough to quit. The gross realism of graphics on cigarette packs is no deterrent either. Smoking-attributable diseases and death happen only to other people, not us—such is the smokers' sense of invincibility. Each year, about 7 million people die of smoking-related health complications globally. But, they are some other people.
As the first week of the new year ends, an evaluation of all those zealously formulated resolutions also creeps in. In a 2015 study conducted in the US, about 68% of smokers expressed a wish to quit. Many manage to quit, some do not. Every January, the Potential Quitters Club regroups and realigns.
When Smoking Was The 'Sexiest' Thing Around
Many smokers complain of being discriminated against for being banished to secluded spaces. Those old enough to remember the days when you could smoke on a flight rue the slow decline of human civilisation. Literature and visual pop culture are replete with references to a golden era of smoking. When mothers could smoke with babies on their laps. When nothing of note could be done without chainsmoking. Smoking was once marketed as the sexiest thing around; the smoker was a rebel, a genius. Self-portraits of Van Gogh and Edward Munch with cigarettes were great advertisements for the latter. Smoking women were a league ahead because they smashed patriarchal rules of propriety quite literally blow by blow. Heck, even gods smoked. Or, so did we believe and continue to do so. Depictions of gods smoking in the Mayan art is an example of how man creates god in his image and not vice versa. Maya people are believed to be heavy smokers.
Headlines around the Milan smoking ban have underscored the paradoxical association of smoking with style. According to the WHO data on smoking, 80% of global smokers are from low and middle-income countries. Smoking prevalence in the lowest-income groups is reported to be the highest, survey after survey. Smoking's traditional ties with making style statements in the world of the wealthy, therefore, has been a bit odd.
Is the Milan ban, after all, the assertion of the elite? By making the fashionable streets of the city smoke-free, a signal is being sent. Enough of slumming it out; we want to stay in our lane by being healthy now. Killing oneself slowly is not stylish anymore.
Whether banning something stops its proliferation is another debate. What it does achieve is the destruction of agency. And that's what Milan's city council seems to be going for. That you think you can just light up one and subject everyone else in your vicinity to passive smoke is not a good enough reason anymore. It's not your choice anymore. Should it ever have been a choice is a pertinent question, too.
So, how is your New Year's resolution of quitting smoking going?
(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
