Please...STOP Smoking!

It's another New Year. If you are a smoker, perhaps you have entertained stopping once again. I hope you do it this time. Smoking cessation, like controlling any chemical addiction, is not easy.

I have never been a voluntary smoker. Both of my parents, and eventually, my step-parent, were heavy smokers. I can remember lying on the floor watching television, looking up at a cloud of blue smoke hanging just above me. As a non-smoker, I suspect that my secondary exposure was significant. I worry about that exposure even now. In the 1950's, everyone smoked. People smoked in movie theaters as we watched people on the screen smoking. Ronald Reagan appeared in smoking advertisements. The "cool kids" all smoked.

Cigarettes used to be about fifty cents a pack. When I did my medical and surgical rotations at the Veterans Administration hospital in the 1970's, the patients could buy cigarettes for 25 cents a pack in the commissary. Many were hospitalized for emphysema and various forms of cancer. I remember assisting a surgery to remove a huge cancerous tumor from a man's throat and create a tracheostomy (a portal in the neck so he could breathe). A few weeks later, I saw him actively smoking through his tracheostomy.

Yes, I did try one cigarette when I was about ten. I didn't care for it. I even tried making my OWN tobacco one time using a variety of leaves, including a large proportion of poison oak. If that didn't cure an urge to smoke, nothing would. You have not experienced discomfort until you have poison oak over 100% of your body. I cannot tell you how much I hate cigarettes and or how much they have affected my life.

When I was in kindergarten, my father died of lung cancer. Within a more few years, two of my uncles and my grandfather died of lung cancer. Some were coal miners and my father worked with asbestos in the shipyards during World War II - exposed to an incredible amount of cancer-causing chemicals. Not too many years ago, the Marlboro man died of lung cancer, too. They were all smokers. A lung cancer link to cigarettes was suspected at that time, but not proven. Decades later when it was proven and warnings appeared on cigarette packages, people continued to smoke. Within a short time, the lung cancer rate for smoking women soared to first place. Yes, you've come a long way, Baby.

No longer do Americans have to tolerate smoking in a crowed movie theater, or in restaurants. Smoking is banned in most public places. Some communities have even banned smoking outside! Several years ago, we had the opportunity to travel to Great Britain. The smoking was so prolific, especially in pubs where I wanted to try the food, that we had to eat outside most of the time. I heard that Ireland has not banned smoking in the pubs. This is something that I never thought I would read in my lifetime. No longer are cigarettes 50 cents a pack. Now, they are $5.00 a pack; taxed heavily by the government to help pay for a variety of things. In California, the cigarette tax money even helps pay for birth control pills, immunizations, and health care for the poor. Some of that tax money goes for anti-smoking educational programs, cancer research, and so forth. I am sure that a lot of that money also ends up in thousands of undeserving pockets.

Do people have the right to smoke? Perhaps, as long as I don't have to pay for their medical care. Unfortunately, we ALL non-smokers pay in one form or another for tobacco abuse. Non-smokers typically pay the same health insurance premiums.

One of my best friends is a pharmacist. While he is no longer a smoker himself, his wife and adult sons continue to smoke. I was shocked the other day when he told me that he gives cigarette money to his still-living-at-home, non-working sons. His wife has terrible varicosities in her legs - a visible example of the condition of her other "hidden" blood vessels. She has also had skin and colon cancer so far. She continues to smoke.

My 32-year-old daughter smokes, but promises to stop after New Year's using some of the new medications for this purpose. I pray that she (and her boyfriend) finally give up cigarettes for good. I remind my daughter that that grandfather she never met died when he was just five years older than she is now. In the past, she just told me to butt-out (so to speak).

Threats of disability or death have not significantly slowed down the toll of tobacco use. High cigarette taxes have helped (a little), but not enough. If cigarettes were ten dollars a pack, people would still buy them. There are people that give up food and other necessities for cigarettes. Restricting where people can smoke is certainly a deterrent, but people will find a place; like right in the doorway to your workplace. It is their right. They like it. And they are going to smoke no matter what.

Parents will continue to die. Teens will start to smoke. Old geezers will walk around (slowly) pulling their little oxygen generators. Medical providers will lose sleep knowing they have to tell another person that they have cancer tomorrow.

Everyone has the ability to stop smoking; they first must make that decision. Some smokers will need medications; nearly all will need encouragement from family or friends. Some will need the psychological support from health care professionals. Some will take smoking cessation classes, or get hypnotized, or use anti-smoking devices. It really doesn't matter how you chose to stop. As far as cigarettes are concerned, Gone is Good - Gone for Good.

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: Quit Smoking for Good
• Are You Ready to Quit?

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