HERE is something to make all die-hard smokers stop and think.

A poll of children has revealed that what they would most like their parents to give up for the New Year is. smoking.

There are no two ways about it: cigarettes kill. Smoking wrecks your lungs, and causes heart problems, cancer and a host of other horrible conditions.

Health chiefs have repeatedly stressed the best thing anybody can do to improve their health is to stop.

And yet how difficult it is.

There are 1.6 million fewer smokers in Britain today than in 1998. But still almost a quarter of the adult population smokes.

The Government has been doing what it can to make us stub out the habit.

From July this year, smoking will be banned in public places. And over recent years there has been a series of graphic advertisements designed to get us to quit.

Who will ever forget those sickening images of fat dribbling from the end of a cigarette? Shock tactics maybe, but effective.

The latest campaign, launched today, is equally hard-hitting. Smokers are dragged by a fish hook from their home or place of work to buy a packet of cigarettes or have a fag in a freezing car park.

The £7 million campaign is designed to ram home the addictive nature of smoking.

Will it work? Maybe.

But if you still won't take notice of the TV ads, at least listen to your children.

They don't want to lose their mum or dad before they've had a chance to grow up.

You owe it to them to quit, if not to yourself.