Farewell menthol cigarettes, it was nice knowing you

In the early 1990s smoking was cool. Smoking Consulate was even cooler. It said so right there on the packet and on every single piece of advertising. They were as ‘cool as a mountain stream’. They also contained a cocktail of potentially lethal chemicals. We knew that too, but we didn’t worry about it back then.

My mum smoked Consulate. So did our nextdoor neighbour. And when I followed in their ashy footsteps, they were also the first cigarettes I smoked too. Now though the end is nigh. Menthol cigarettes are being phased out along with packs of 10 and skinny cigarettes. From Friday all new packets will also have to be emblazoned with graphic picture warnings covering 65 per cent of the front and back.

It’s all part of EU legislation to make smoking less attractive and reduce the number of smokers by two per cent by 2020. I’m not sure anyone who began their smoking career with Consulate ever believed that they were less harmful, but for a novice they didn’t have the same throat-grating effect of a Benson and Hedges or a Marlboro Red.

That was important, because back then we smoked everywhere. We smoked on the tops of buses, for a little while we smoked in the cinema and on planes and when the first of us got a car in sixth form we spent breaktimes smoking in that too. Lunch money was spent on cigarettes and when we couldn’t scrape together the 90p for a packet of 10, the shop near our school would sell us a single and a match for 10p. I think I could count on one hand the friends that didn’t smoke and they always seemed to be missing out.

They never turned a complete stranger into a friend by cadging a late night cigarette in a pub and they never experienced the sheer head-rushing joy of that first cigarette after another failed attempt to give up.

Then came the smoking ban. When it was first introduced in Ireland in 2004, most of us smokers suspected that it would never work. Surely landlords would pay lipservice to the law, because the craic just wouldn’t be the same unless it was enjoyed through a fug of smoke.

But then the unthinkable happened. Ireland rolled over and the rest of us knew our days were numbered. Three years later, when the ban was introduced here too I had more than one friend who vowed that there was no point going out if you couldn’t smoke and drink at the same time. They did of course. We all did, but for a while it didn’t feel the same.

A few of took it as an opportunity to give up; most of us remained defiant and yet gradually something did change. It’s now almost 10 years since the arrival of smoking shelters in pub beer gardens and that decade has witnessed a shift. We no longer think that it’s ok to light up on a hospital ward or casually reach for an ashtray after dinner in a restaurant. When we weren’t looking smoking became socially unacceptable.

These new regulations are the natural next step. Despite being forced out into the elements to enjoy a quick puff, 10 million adults still smoke in the UK, more than 600 children have their first taste of nicotine evry day and some estimates suggest that cigarettes kill 100,000 people in Britain each year.

The Tobacco Manufacturers’ Asocciation isn’t happy. They were never going to be, but after 100 years of cigarettes going mass market it may have to accept that smoking is on its way out because even those of us who loved it most have given up.

I stopped four years ago. I no longer liked the way they made me feel or the way my day revolved around when I could have my next fag. By then mum had also given up, so had the nextdoor neighbour. When news of the menthol ban broke, a friend posted on Facebook, ‘Thank God. The only thing that could ever tempt me back to the dark side’. She’s not alone. So farewell Consolate, it was nice knowing you.