I started smoking because it was soooo cool back in high school. I went to grad school in Mexico and smoked Mexican cigarettes (at the time all the bourgoise Mexicans smoked Raleighs) like Records, Filtrones and Deltas. When I returned to the US, they had added all manner of additives to cigarettes and so I smoked a pipe. In 1986, I realized that the only benefits of smoking were that it went well with coffee in the morning and gave me a slight dizzy feeling, it make me cough all the times, and I could count on at least one case of bronchitis every two years. So I just quit one day when I was on vacation in Honduras.
At sometime in the 1980's the sine qua non cigarette used to impress others in Mexico ceased to be regular Raleigh filters and became king size Marlboros. I wasn't there to see how they did this, but it must be one of the great ad campaigns of all time.
After pestering my sister for years about how she could stop coughing if she quit and hearing her say, between coughs, that she didn't cough all that much, I bought her a rolling machine, tobacco and tubes, and at least she is spending less than a third what she used to spend.