There’s no way around it. Smoking is dangerous. It harms nearly every organ of the body. As such, smoking is not the smart way to go these days, and it is viewed in a decidedly negative light, especially in Western countries. In one, England, the government has set out an ambitious plan to make the country, in effect, smoke-free in the next five years. A new tobacco control plan aims to slash smoking rates from 15.5 percent to 12 percent of the population by 2022, paving the way to a smoke-free generation.

That might sound too optimistic in a country where smoking currently kills 200 people a day, where there are still more than eight million smokers and where tens of thousands of children take up the deadly addiction every year. But smoking rates in England are at the lowest level since records began. That would be in part due to a smoking ban introduced in England a decade ago this month. The number of smokers in Britain has fallen by 1.9 million – a drop of nearly 20 percent - since the ban was introduced in enclosed public places including offices, factories, restaurants and railway stations. The proportion of the most critical age group, 16- to 24-year-olds who smoke, fell to 17 percent from 26 percent in 2007, a record low and the biggest drop among all age groups.

So, the ban has been an unqualified success. It has done more to help people stop smoking than anything else which has been tried around the world for decades: instituting high taxes on tobacco products, running ads to discourage use, limiting ads that promote use, and providing help with quitting for those who smoke. The ban is also probably the biggest reason why England is optimistic that it can really become a generation of non-smokers by 2030.

Therefore, in England, the sheer force of the law is what brought smoking rates to the lowest ever. It was not done through persuasion or cajoling.

Non-smokers always find it hard to understand why smokers need to be told that it’s bad for them to pump poisonous gas into their lungs on a daily basis. You can offer smokers clinical support, or you can fine, tax or imprison them. However, those who want to smoke will do so, no matter what anyone says.

Attempts to persuade people to quit are invariably counter-productive. There are smokers who say it’s their body and their decision and that the more they get told to quit the more they will say no. They are sick and tired of successive governments picking away at their rights to make it harder for them to smoke. Smoking may be harmful, but in the end they say it’s up to them.

Smoking has nothing to do with the old formula of going to the doctor who then gives you something and you get better. It’s a powerful addiction and can’t be stopped simply by lecturing.

You can tell smokers all the harm smoking does until you are blue in the face. How cigarette smoking causes 87 percent of lung cancer deaths, and is responsible for many other cancers and health problems. These include lung disease, heart and blood vessel disease, stroke and cataracts. That their smoke is also bad for other people - they breathe in your smoke secondhand and can develop many of the same health problems as smokers do. That quitting smoking can reduce the risk of such problems. That the earlier you quit, the greater the benefit.

Try telling that to a smoker.