How Do You Tell Loved Ones to Stop Smoking?

I'm not a smoker or an ex-smoker. Honestly, I can't understand why anyone takes it up in the first place. However, I definitely don't look down harshly upon smokers. Why they take it up, may be difficult to understand, but we all know how addictive it becomes once they've become chronic smokers.

Dwelling on why the habit starts isn't constructive. Just as dismissing it as something easily kicked does no good for the smoker or the people in their life. We've known for many years now that tobacco can be as addictive as hardcore street drugs, the most famous example physicans comparing tobacco to being cocaine. There's more than a few people who have trouble kicking lesser habits, so if tobacco is that addictive, we non-smokers must be understanding of just how overwhelming it is for long time smokers to finally leave it behind permanently.

Non-smokers, though face several concerns. Perhaps most pressing to them is protecting their health from second hand smoke. Here again, most of us now know the devastating health affects of breathing the second hand smoke of the smokers in your life. Expectant mothers, the elderly or the youthful population still growing are all cautioned to either ditch the habit or refrain from starting it up. It goes without saying that if there are young children in the house, the family smoker needs to become accustomed to smoking outside all the time or most of the time.

Of course we're faced with sticky social situations. New York City and other metropolitan areas have either banned smoking from public establishments or they're on the way to doing so. How can this be handled suitably though for special occasions? Say for private house parties on holidays like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and the like? It's one thing to go to a bar and have a level playing field, but quite another to be hanging out casually and be told not to smoke when the party's getting started.