In reply to Derek Honey, Fears grow for our empty pubs (Oxford Mail, November 5), pubs were not created solely for the use of smokers.

Times have changed. We do not want to breathe in secondhand smoke just because people are addicted to nicotine and have decided that they want to harm and shorten their own lives.

I was a hooked, happy, dedicated smoker who, after numerous half-hearted attempts to give up, was still at the point of throwing away half-full packets of cigarettes out of frustration of not having the willpower to pack it in.

Anyone, who can read plain English, must be able to understand that the use of nicotine is a sentence of a shortened life. I have been there. I collapsed at work, aged 42, with chest pains and unable to lift a finger without suffering an angina attack - all thanks to me and a helpless addiction to nicotine.

Believe me, when a heart consultant puts his face in yours and tells you that you and tobacco are finished, you stop. I love my family very much and I realised very quickly that after looking at the concerned faces of my wife and children, my family wanted me alive and not just a memory or photograph.

If people want to smoke and are unable to stop, they have a choice - stay at home and harm yourself, probably harming your own family as well, or wake up and get a life before it is too late.

If I could stop, so can everyone else. Smoking is, and has been proved to be, the most harmful thing you can do to your own body and those around you. Smoke-filled pubs are a way of recreation that is now in the past.

Move on, Mr Honey, and get a healthier lifestyle.

RICHARD ANDERSON, Wood Farm Road, Headington, Oxford