I Hate Smoke, But I Don’t Hate Smokers

I am deeply anti-smoking. But that does not mean I am anti-smoker. For me, the issue is not who smokes, but how smoking is so often practiced without any empathy for shared spaces. Too many smokers feel free to light up while driving, in front of people who clearly do not smoke, even near children—as if the smoke somehow stops at their own lungs.

The problem is, smoke has never respected boundaries. It moves, lingers, and enters other people’s bodies without consent, including children who have absolutely no choice. That is where smoking stops being a personal matter and becomes a question of social ethics.

What makes this especially frustrating—and perhaps morally painful—is that this is not about personal preference, but about other people’s right to breathe air that is not poisoned. Children, for instance, have no mechanism to “give consent” or “move away.” They simply absorb it.

My view on smoking did not come from theory or health slogans. It grew out of family experience. In my family, there were three smokers: my older brother, my eldest younger brother, and my father—when he was still alive. My father was a heavy smoker. I never knew exactly how many cigarettes he smoked each day, but I knew it was not a minor habit. He once underwent a lung X-ray, and although I was never given a detailed explanation, it was hard not to associate it with smoking.

What was both confusing and ironic was that my father often felt pain in his chest, yet seemed even more distressed when he did not smoke at all. Only later did I understand: this was not a sign that cigarettes were helping him, but evidence of a dependence that had gone too deep. His body no longer recognized a “normal” state without nicotine.

Toward the end of his life, my father’s condition deteriorated. He could no longer walk. He spent his days lying in bed. His chest pain was often unbearable—accompanied by loud, prolonged groans that kept my mother awake all night. The house was filled with exhaustion, anxiety, and a sense of helplessness.

In the middle of that condition, there was a moment when my father asked for a cigarette. That request made me deeply angry. When it was refused, he became furious and slammed the door. I was honestly baffled by his way of thinking at the time. Yet I chose silence. I never confronted him, never discussed smoking with him directly. My relationship with my father was not close or intimate, and that distance meant many things were never spoken.

Now, whenever I see people smoking carelessly, an emotion surfaces that is more than simple dislike—it is memory. Cigarettes take me back to that room, to the sound of groaning, to sleepless nights, and to an addiction that persisted even when the body had already collapsed.

Sometimes I think in very simple terms: imagine if someone stopped smoking for just one year. How much money could they save? One pack a day means hundreds of packs a year—money that could have become savings, security, or a better future. Instead, it is burned away, along with health and years of life.

There is something deeply tragic about seeing someone sit quietly, lost in thought, with a cigarette in hand. To me, it feels like a slow form of self-destruction, disguised as something refined. Smoking is given an image of calmness and elegance, yet the reality remains the same: buying poison, burning it, and hoping the body will somehow endure.

Perhaps that is why I have never been able to see smoking as merely a personal choice. Its impact does not stop with one person. It spills into families, public spaces, and the lives of those who never chose to inhale it.

I do not hate smokers. I simply wish there were greater awareness that smoking is not only about oneself. Because for some people—like me—cigarettes are not just smoke. They are memory, loss, and wounds that never truly fade.