WHEN Roddy Doyle depicted Pamela, the battered wife in his television drama, Family, as a heavy smoker, he was inadvertently painting a picture of a typical smoker, according to a recent survey.
It found that the person most likely to smoke is a married Dublin woman, not well off, and aged between 25 and 34. She enjoys her cigarettes more than most other smokers.
The survey was conducted by a market research agency on behalf of Nicorette nicotine chewing gum.
The number of people smoking is falling, though very slowly, a decline of 1 per cent since last year. Thirty per cent of the population smoke. However, 33 per cent of married women and 34 per cent of Dubliners smoke.
The survey found that the health message on smoking is getting through, with 46 per cent of smokers, saying they do not enjoy all the cigarettes they smoke.
Half of all smokers also say they have tried to give up smoking in the past two years, some of them as many as four times.
The reasons they gave for failing, or for fearing an attempt to give up smoking, were all linked to the addictive properties of cigarettes: craving; acknowledged addiction; irritability without cigarettes and an inability to operate without cigarettes.
Dr Pat Manning, a consultant respiratory physician and the Irish delegate to the European Respiratory Society, said the survey was worrying because it showed young married women from lower socioeconomic groups were most likely to smoke, and least likely to give it up.
These were most likely to have children, and there was a lot of evidence of the damage to children, from environmental smoke, starting in utero. This damage included low birth weight and a range of respiratory diseases.
Ultimately smoking would only be reduced by a commitment of Government and the community to prevent young people from starting to smoke, said Dr Manning.