MANILA – Presumptive president-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III will not quit smoking anytime soon.
Aquino was quite defensive about his smoking habit when peppered with questions yesterday about calls made by some quarters for him to stop smoking now, in preparation for his presidency.
Aquino was back in the Senate yesterday, after three months of campaigning.
“People knew when I ran for President that I smoke,” Aquino said, in reply to a query on a proposal by a nongovernmental organization for him to be its poster boy against smoking.
“So as long as I don’t violate any laws and I don’t disturb anyone, maybe this could be the remaining freedom I can have?” he said.
But the senator promised he would quit smoking eventually. “At the appropriate time, I will quit smoking,” he said .
Pressed again why he was not ready then to give up smoking, he stressed that his new job would see him facing many “pressures” and by quitting now, he would be adding “unnecessary pressures.”
“It might affect the decisions that we have to make,” he said.
Told that his giving up smoking would be for his own good, Aquino said he “accepts” this as true but insisted that “there would be bad stress that would be added in removing it.”-INQ.