Right, boy. That post has to be one of the most patronising ****ing things I've ever read.

Now, here's something a lot of people, and the British government, seem to fail to notice: people who smoke have brains. I know what I am doing to myself every time I light up a cigarette. I know it makes me stink, I know it's slowly turning my lungs black. I know that it is causing my skin to age far faster than it should be doing, I know it's thinning my hair. I know that it's a drain on my purse, and it's making my teeth yellow.

But I still do it. Amber Leaf rolling tobacco, or Marlboro Red if I'm celebrating something.

Would you like to know why I do it?

It is because I want to. I don't need any more validation than that. I started smoking when I was 16, and I don't regret it. It relaxes me. Did you know that in the 50's doctors prescribed tobacco for stress? It really does help. My family life was spiralling out of control, I hated my school life, so I sought out the eternal combination of cigarettes and alcohol. It was that, or ****ing ketamine or something. I think I made a pretty okay choice, all things considered. These days I'm a full-time student who works 22 hours a week in an airport; smoking is both a social activity (most of my friends enjoy a rollie) and also something to take the edge off when I'm working, or doing an essay. I like it, because it makes me feel good.

Now, one thing I never do is smoke around children. I can go for a day without a smoke if I'm babysitting, and I always stub out or move away if I'm having a cigarette and there's a child or a mother with a pram nearby. Kids shouldn't be around smoke.

I know when I'm going to quit - it's going to be when I no longer want to smoke. I've heard stories from people who quit, and they say that for every smoker there comes a tipping point when desire comes second to need. I am watchful for that moment. I know it's not far off; recently I've been wandering more and more what life would be like if I could enjoy reading a book outside without having to smoke. It's a creeping thought.

But not wanting to give up right now does not make me 'indecent' in any way at all. You're 13, and maybe a little too young to properly understand the reasons why a person might start smoking beyond peer pressure. I personally have never met a person who started smoking, and lasted as a smoker, because of peer pressure. Or maybe that's because I don't hang around with people who would let themselves be forced into that kind of decision.

Smoking is a choice, a decision. It's a heavy one too. But it is completely my right to make that choice, and it is my right to smoke if I so choose. I really do like the taste of it.

This does not mean I advise others to smoke. I don't. ****'s sake, it's not easy to cut down, or to quit. Smoking is entirely a personal choice.

I am fed up of people telling me what to do. It's my body. I know perfectly well what I'm doing to it. I'm 19, and I can choose to do this. I will one day quit, because old women with rollups hanging from their mouths just don't look cool, and when wrinkles become a proper worry I don't want to speed up their progress. I have more important things to be concentrating on just now (like the essay I am pointedly not writing just now) than quitting.

So, I'm off to have a fag. I've opened the window and lit the oil burner so that the house won't reek of it. There are no children present. I'm hurting nobody except myself, and nobody has the right to tell me not to do that.

Besides which, something you are too young to understand is the after-cigarette. Now that will be hard to quit.