My giving home tuition English to some Chinese students is a bit like a two-edged sword: the youngsters benefit by learning (near) perfect English from a (near) perfect semi-native speaker and yours truly reaps by getting to know better how the locals really tick.

And a lot of fun is had by all in the process.

Part of the drill, and free of charge to boot, is my version of guidance to healthy living habits, good manners, consideration for the comfort and well-being of others and, most importantly: NO spitting.

Some of my "lectures" include an inculcation to avoid addictive vices under the adage that what comes naturally to us members of homo sapiens, is, generally, either necessary for the procreation of the species or beneficial to our health.

Like eating and drinking and sports and sex and mental games.

My pet-hate is smoking and, usually, I waste no time trying to convince my charges that smoking is a habit that is not only very unnatural but silly and unhealthy in the extreme.

I illustrate this by showing gruesome pictures, plucked from the Internet, of black tar-coated innards of lungs and air-passages from people who died of smoking-related diseases.

While seeing someone smoke is in todays' society not considered out of the ordinary, would my students, I ask, think it natural if they saw people crouching behind smoke belching omnibus and truck exhaust pipes inhaling the burnt diesel vapours?

Habit-forming and hard to kick addictions such as overindulgence in alcohol, heroin, hemp, ecstacy in the disco, and an almost limitless palette of hard drugs should be avoided like the plague. Most of these teens are quite familiar with countless cases of relatives and friends who have been trying to quit smoking but simply could not muster the necessary dose of self-control.

Frankly, there is almost limitless good to be enjoyed in life so why get addicted to something that, often, is unpleasant to start with, but almost impossible to kick the formed habit only mildly increased social acceptance in selected and often unsavoury and pathetic peer groups.

The kind of acceptance that one can well do without.

I then tell them, in keeping with their teenage development: No girlfriend likes kissing an ashtray. And for thinking that girls like masculine, smoking and beer drinking types: most girls actually don't.

All this behavioural engineering goes under the banner of English tuition and I was convinced, until yesterday that is, that my micro-managed attempts to mould considerate citizens with sublimely healthy living habits out of, occasionally rather rough and tough raw material, was bearing fruit.

Rather diminutive and teenaged Bobby, with an angelic face, is one of those students under my tutelage who was duly lectured many moons ago and it was then that Bobby honestly and sincerely promised never to allow himself to get involved in addictive vices, no matter what prevailing peer pressure. His cherubic deep brown eyes confirmed all this and the deal was sealed by a resounding hand-slap.

And I was happy with the thought of having saved yet another soul from becoming a paying contributor to the wealth of the tobacco barons, and later, most likely, to the Chinese Health Authorities.

I was a little late for my tuition appointment last night and upon my return I saw Bobby walking away with some fellow students, clutching a king-size filter tipped cigarette and belching smoke like a factory chimney, totally oblivious to my approach.

Impulsively, I gave Bobby, who turned around in amazement, a solid kick in the rectum.

Fifteen minutes later, Bobby announced himself at my residence and tearfully related how he was pressured into accepting the cheroot from a friend and really, really, it was the first one EVER.

So, what needs to be done?

For starters, cigarettes are just too bloody affordable in China by all, including schoolboys; 2 yuan (20 Eurocents) or less for 20 of the worst.

I hear that in the US 20 such "coffin nails" cost around US$5 or 40 yuan. For a change, it might be a good idea to copy this US example. The additional tax-income of 38 yuan can be applied to care for hospitalized and dying smokers and maintenance of smoking related orphans.

Then the ineffective and useless small print warning on the side of the Chinese cigarette box that smoking might be unhealthy should be replaced to show shocking colour pictures of diseased lungs occupying the full front of the box.

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