IAN, 29, started smoking cigarettes in Class Seven. It was the early 90's and his friends came from well off families.
He took his first puff from a cigarette passed around by the boys.
"Typical of a first time smoker's reaction, Ian coughed untill he almost went blue in the face.
Still he persisted onto his next puff.
Small time puffs soon progressed to smoking a whole roll to himself.
By the time he was in Class 8, Ian was smoking 2 to 3 cigarettes a day.
He bought cigarettes with his spending or lunch money. At that time, one roll cost 15 to 20 cents.
"Ahh, it was peer pressure," he reasons.
Ian says they were all big fellas in his group, so they easily got away with buying cigarettes from the nearby shops after swapping their school shirts for a tee-shirt.
At other times, one of them would lie to the shopkeeper that his father had sent him to buy cigarettes.
"By the time I was in secondary school I was a hard core smoker. I was smoking by the packet!" he says.
Ian says he got into smoking because it made him feel popular.
"We thought it was cool when other girls and boys would say 'hey, boy, he's smoking!" - it was a show off thing," he says.
"Sometimes I would smoke just because one of my friends was smoking, it was like, "vacava, puff?"
"Smoking also gave me a relaxed feeling just for that while." he says.
"Most of my friends had money so when one person bought a packet of cigarettes, we'd all share."
The friends would smoke in the boys toilet, and especially at the bus stand near the bean cart area in Suva.
"Boy that was a popular smoking area for school students - boys and girls!" he says.
For Ian, smoking led to drinking and clubbing the following year, when he was in Class 8.
"Two bottles stubbies ga, mateni!... cut!" he laughs as he recalls those silly days.
When Ian was at USP, he'd smoke up to one packet of 20 cigarettes a day.
When he started working, it was two packets a day - a packet 20, and a packet 10.
"Smoking turned out to be a stress relief for me, sometimes we have too many things in our head and smoking makes you feel relaxed just for a while," he says.
Today, Ian has been smoke-free for just over a year.
He started having shortness of breath, plus his mother and "someone very close to me asked me to stop".
"They think it's hip, but it's not," Ian says of school students who smoke today.
"That thing is not cool, it's macawa saraga!"
Margaret, a Form Four student from a Suva school didn't hide the fact that she smokes.
"I smoke when I go out with my friends," the 16-year-old said, while being interviewed at the Suva bus stand bean cart zone, one day after school this week.
Her "friends", who also smoke, range from Form Six to Form Seven students.
"To make us cool," she giggles, when asked why she smoked.
"We have boyfriends," she says, and adds that their boyfriends like it when they smoke.
"I started smoking in Form Three," Margaret says. "I do it to relieve my stress sometimes," she adds.
Laucala Bay Secondary school fourth formers, Losena and Aqela say smoking while still in school is stupid.
"It's part of socialising," Aqela says. "They think it's cool, but it's not," Losena adds.
Patrick, a Form Three student at Latter Day Saints school says young people smoke to look cool.
"They just want to follow their friends," he says.
"I don't know - maybe because of peer pressure," his friend, James, a third former at Marist Brothers High School says.
Jope, 22, was only 16 when he started smoking. He was in Form 5 at a Suva school.
He and his friend were cruising around in his friend's family car during lunch hour one school day when his friend lit a cigarette.
According to Jope, his friend's parents knew their son smoked.
"When he lit up, I asked him if I could try it, so he gave the cigarette to me to puff. I coughed! but my friend taught me how to smoke," he recalls.
"From there, it started," says Jope
Jope blames it all on peer pressure.
"Looking at my friend smoking, I thought it was cool. That first time I smoked, I felt this spinning sensation in my head. It felt good, so I continued to smoke!" he says.
Jope used his spending money to buy cigarettes. He'd buy the rolls after school once he'd changed out of his school uniform, or early in the morning when he went to buy bread. One roll used to cost 30c then. Today, one roll costs 50c.
Smoking was usually done during the lunch hour car cruising.
When Jope was at the Fiji Institute of Technology, he would borrow cigarettes from his friends, or share puffs, or a group of them would put in and buy a packet to share.
Only last month, Jope saw first hand the dangerous effects of smoking when one of his aunts died from cancer caused by smoking.
Today, one of his uncles is fighting for his life in hospital after continuously coughing out blood. Jope says that uncle of his smoked one packet of cigarettes a day.
Jope has since quit, but also because he'd suffer from very bad coughs.
"I came to my senses and found out that smoking causes cancer," he says.
