We may or may not win our political battles any time soon. One of the things we DO have some control over is whether we become another statistic, a life lost way too soon.
So, if we feel powerless to defeat the bastards, at least make the fight of your life to defeat one of the strongest addictions known, the addiction to nicotine.
I don't want to lose any of you. I want to outlive the bastards, and I want you here to do that too.
Quit for one day. Today.
The stats are amazing. Our biggest threat is not drug use, or terrorists, or gay marriage, or even AIDS. Our biggest health threat is tobacco use. In the next 60 minutes, 49 people will die because they didn't quit soon enough.
Tobacco use is the single leading preventable cause of death in the United States, accounting for approximately 430,000 deaths each year. The economic liability associated with tobacco use ranges from $50 billion to $73 billion per year in medical expenses alone.
CDC 1998-99 http/www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss4910a1.htm
Research consistently shows that smoking cessation saves lives and reduces smoking-related health care costs and is one of the most cost-effective health interventions available.
http://www.fsa.usda.gov/tobcom/health.htmTed Kennedy, June 1998: "In the three weeks since the Senate started this debate, 66,000 more children have started to smoke. Three thousand more will start each day. Tobacco use is responsible for 20% of all premature deaths in the United States. Tobacco is the nation's leading cause of preventable death and disability. It accounts for 400,000 deaths a year -- more deaths than alcohol -- more deaths than car accidents -- more deaths than suicides -- more deaths than AIDS -- more deaths than homicides -- more deaths than illegal drugs -- more deaths than fires -- more deaths than all of these combined. ...The federal government currently spends $520 million a year on tobacco control efforts. That sum is dwarfed by the amount spent to fight illegal drugs, which will total $16 billion this year -- thirty times as much. This disparity is especially significant, since tobacco use causes 400,000 deaths a year, while illegal drugs are responsible for 20,000 deaths.
http://kennedy.senate.gov/statements/980609.htmlOh yeah, and if you don't care about dying in 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 years, make yourself more kissable, right now!
From my newspaper:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/2241157Nov. 21, 2003, 8:43PM
Dying from effects of smoking isn't worst of it
By MARY TURNER
This is a very emotional subject for me; it's about my own personal holocaust. ...I think that when you've read this, you'll know why I implore smokers to quit. You see, my mother smoked for 44 years, starting at the age of 16, and smoked at least a pack a day. Always a stylish woman, my mother proved to be very avant-garde when she developed a perforated ulcer (a disease nearly unheard of in women at that time) at the age of 39. After that, she frequently suffered from bleeding ulcers as well. Her ulcer problems dogged her until she was 61, when she went to the dentist, who told her, "That spot on your tongue doesn't look good!" She quit cold turkey, but she did indeed have tongue cancer. (It was no coincidence that she didn't get ulcers again. Cigarettes inhibit the stomach's ability to maintain its lining, leaving it more vulnerable to its acids.)
It took two surgeries to stamp out the tongue cancer and another to remove five teeth from the right side of her lower jaw, and part of her cancerous jaw as well. Count five teeth from the back of your mouth. You'll find that without those, it's rather hard to chew. I guess it didn't matter much because during these procedures, she also lost part of her sense of taste, and nerves in her tongue and lips were damaged, making it difficult for her to speak or eat, or even know when she was drooling. But she was able to go back to work and live her life, though not with the same gusto.
I'm happy to report that she enjoyed another eight good years, until, at the age of 69, she developed lung cancer. The prognosis was that if she just had one lobe removed, she'd be just fine; but it was not so. Although she'd had chest X-rays every six months after first developing cancer, the tumor was already inoperable. This meant that she had to endure three rounds of chemotherapy and several weeks' worth of radiation treatments. I never knew before this that one of the possible side effects of chemotherapy is hearing loss. Mom lost about 50 percent of her hearing in just one day. Another side effect is kidney failure, but she recovered from that after about a month of hospitalization.
My Mom was no sissy; she went back to work 10 days after the lung surgery. The chemo, she said, is what kills you. But even that didn't kill her, and it didn't destroy her sense of humor or her love of life. Mom trucked along for another six years, still working every day and traveling. But she couldn't eat or hold conversations much, since she didn't hear or speak well. Too bad, those were always her favorite things to do! Then, two and a half years ago, she developed congestive heart failure, and as a result of the earlier radiation, an inflexible esophagus, requiring the insertion of a feeding tube into her stomach. She could take no food or drink by mouth afterward.
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