Quit. Muster all your intestinal fortitude and just do it. While not all smokers will end up ravaged by lung, throat or bladder cancer no one escapes unscathed. Heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, emphysema, hypertension, chronic bronchitis, prematurely aged skin, loss of fertility … the list is long and only grows the more we learn. If everyone in the US quit smoking health care costs would plummet and we might just be able to pay off our national debt in a few years.
Last week I passed five male teens on the corner smoking. A few minutes later I passed five girls of the same age. So, I stopped and asked them, “Do any of you smoke?” They all made faces and a few started to edge away but three yelled back, “No way!” I then asked, “Would you date a boy that smokes?” In unison they all sang, “No.” There are good reasons why people can’t smoke in offices, bars or in city parks. The smoke is toxic and the rest of us don’t want to share your poison. When I see parents puffing around their young kids I want to whack them across the back of their heads, but social decorum requires I keep my opinions to pages like these.
Consider that a person can survive a few weeks without food, a few days with out water and barely a few minutes without oxygen. When you smoke you are inhaling hot, toxic gases into the most miraculous and delicate of all the human organs. Deep in the lungs the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide happens at a thinner than tissue paper layer of cells. Those hot, toxic gases are destroying this life-sustaining interface with every puff. Sure, you’ve got millions of alveoli, but do you really want to burn them like kindling?
For the young, here’s a news flash: smoking isn’t cool. If you think it is you’ve been duped by advertising and peer pressure, the same stuff that said it was cool to wear crocs and designer jeans. You don’t see people doing that anymore, do you? If you’re old, there are still health benefits to gain from quitting a long-term addiction. Don’t be that person wheeling a tank of oxygen behind you. The one who can’t walk two blocks to the market or climb a half flight of stairs. Who at forty is mistaken for an AARP member. Who on their deathbed look back at their life and say, “Why didn’t I just quit?” Save yourself a bundle of woe. Quit smoking.
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