For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 25, 2021

Good call, girls.

So—who’s gonna believe you without proof?

Your still young, Watch out. don’t let your smoking friends get to you.

Right now they feel sick to their stomachs. I hope that’ll teach them to not smoke!

Well, I did try smoking cigarettes, cigar and cloves. None of them stuck. Out of them all, I liked the cloves the best and did smoke it a bit through the first year of college with a group of friends but after returning for my second year, I stopped smoking cloves. Never smoked anything else since. I tried many other stuff but none of them bit me. The only thing I am addicted to is sweets. I believe it is hereditary. I was adopted as a baby and when I met my bio dad, he informed me that my mother was an addict and smoked like a chimney. I never told my boys about her and viola. Both started smoking early in their high school years and are still smoking today. They told me they just picked up the butts from friends and started smoking as if they were supposed to. Nobody in my adoptive family nor my husband’s family smoked. Just them. Then I found out my bio mother smoked. Definitely hereditary. My bio-dad also tried during his college years but nothing ever stuck – just like me. He also has a sweet tooth – like me. Genetics is fascinating especially when you are adopted and unknowingly acquired habits of the biological family. Well, Liz here has parents who don’t smoke. Hopefully, that will work in her favor.

Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

“Butt”?? Shouldn’t that be something like fizzz, sssss or even fizzle?

Maybe that cigarette had some cannabis in it. The girl is tripping. Why else would Liz call her girlfriend a man?

I love the taste of a strong pipe tobacco. But I’ve never loved the taste of cigarettes.

Don’t try being grown too quick, Candace and Liz!

I wish I’d have thought of that.

“We did it! We did it! We went ahead and did it!” ….. sounds like Dora the Explorer..

A few years after I quit, I smoked a cigarette that a co-worker had left on a work bench. I enjoyed it, but later I got a severe headache and diarrhea. Never again.

My grandmother used to smoke when I was a kid. She’d smoke like a fiend. One day she left her cigarette in the ashtray and I decided to try it to see why Grandma liked it. I stuck it in my mouth and I inhaled like I’d always seen her do it. How did it go? Let’s just say, that incident is the main reason I have sworn off smoking for life.

Back in the 50s, almost everyone smoked. I started at age 6. When I was 19 I quit smoking cigarettes but started smoking cigars and pipes. Which I quit in 1981 when I was told if I didn’t I would be carrying an oxygen bottle around for the rest of my life. I quit that day

lets hope so, for your sakes.

My adoptive parents smoked Chesterfields throughout my childhood. Even in the car. On trips. With the windows rolled up. I started smoking at 15, with my parents permission. I finally kicked the addiction 35 years later. I now have COPD. Do I have regrets? Sure I do. All three of my adult children have tried smoking cigarettes. Now in their 40s only one still is at it. Hereditary? Not sure. Harmful, definitely. Even to those smokers who never die of emphysema or cancer, it is harmful to all who breathe the same air.

Mission accomplished. Go wash your teeth and head over to the mall. A little bit older, a little bit wiser and a little bit dirtier.

Wise decision. If she’d kept up that nasty habit, she would have actually had “lizard breath”

Hopefully lessons well learn

Girl’s you should never tried to start with, yet young kids think they know it all. For me I grew up with a dad who rolled his own cigarettes as second hand smoking, my mom never liked it. I never got started on smoking. My daughter cannot be around smoking.

I used to know a chain-smoker. He gave it up because they were so danged hard to light.

And there is the end result of their experiment!

Good! Never do it again. Really. Trust the cardiac RN.

Closest I ever got was candy cigarettes. Never tried to light one.

One life experience that I never partook in, not even the funny cigarettes. Never interested me, Just lucky I guess…..

Sometimes actors who don’t smoke have to do a smoking scene….now that’s acting!

A satisfactory conclusion to this story arc. A lesson well learned and a message to the children who read the funny papers.

My mom and dad both smoked when I was a kid. My mom took years to quit. She would stop for a while, but then relapse, making up all kinds of rationalizations and making herself miserable. My dad decided to stop one day, and quit cold turkey.

RIGHT ANSWER!

That was my reaction too Elizabeth; the only one in my family who never went any further with it; nasty tasting things. All the money I saved went to some pretty great vacations; not to mention saving my lungs!

Both of my parents smoked unfiltered Camels, my dad also pipe (Half and Half tobacco) and cigars. Of the three children, only 1 smokes. Neither parent died of lung or other smoking-related cancer.

I grew up as the adopted child of two smokers. I learned early on how bad tobacco is, and tried to get them to stop. They eventually did… about a year after I moved out. As a result of growing up in a smoke-filled environment, I now have asthma (yes, second-hand smoke can cause that in children), though thankfully it’s quite a mild case.

In truth, with as much as is known about tobacco, I think it’s a wonder that anyone’s foolish enough to start using it. (Yeah, I know: kids tend to not understand long-term consequences of things, as that part of the brain doesn’t normally develop until the mid-20s, and dismissing them has become a family and cultural trait. But still….)

They will smell like cigarettes when they go in the house.

Never do it again, I like what I hear!

This strip deserves a triple like.