【明報專訊】Growing up in Hong Kong, I used to think that smoking always symbolised a sort of decline to me: a physical kind associated with lung cancer, strokes, heart disease and a general malaise; or a social or mental decline of someone who is experiencing a midlife crisis or immense stress, so much so that they have resorted to smoking; or someone who has let go of themselves, indulging in reckless, hedonistic pleasure; or maybe someone who has been influenced negatively by those around them. In short, I used to think that a person only smokes if something has gone wrong in their life. So I was shocked to find that smoking is much more common among young people in the UK than in Hong Kong.