Tobacco kills more people each year than alcohol, drug addiction, accidents, AIDS and epidemics combined! Tobacco addiction is the single most preventable cause of premature death and chronic illness in World Society. Yet, every day of every year, far more than 3,000 children, many as young as 7 or 8 years-old in the United States alone, begin a life of addiction, ill health and limited futures by drawing those first noxious, choking drags on a cigarette. It takes as few as fifty cigarettes to create a lifelong addiction to tobacco. The misery these poor, naive children face in terms of grief caused to their families, harm to their children. loved ones and pets, to say nothing of the peril to their lives and health is far beyond their comprehension. They see only the illusions created by the Tobacco Mafia aimed at getting them to choke down those first fifty cigarettes, chews of tobacco, etc. It doesn't matter what form the drug is consumed. The results are predictable and profitable for Big Tobacco.

Although most accepted statistics quote annual death rates from tobacco as less than 500,000 users and 43,000 individuals who succumb due to exposure to second-hand smoke, the actual numbers are far higher. Many of these deaths are reported as being due to "natural" causes, pneumonia, heart attack, stroke, etc. They don't take into account the fact that most SIDS deaths occur in families where at least one parent smokes and that when both parents smoke, the rate climbs.

Children who live in households with smokers suffer higher rates of serious respiratory disease, chronic asthma and tend to have more absenteeism than children from healthy, nonsmoking households.

Pets exposed to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) tend to live 30% shorter lives than those in tobacco-free environments.

In almost all cases, smokers begin their path to addiction, illness and death as children, prior...and often, far prior to age eighteen. Fully two-thirds of those who begin smoking will be unable to break the addiction before permanent harm is done.

Children are clearly unable to make informed life and death decisions of this nature and it is their parents' responsibility to keep them free from such a viciously harmful drug. Caring parents can make a deep impact by refusing to expose their children to any television or movie representation of tobacco as being desirable in any way. Anyone remember "Superman II," the two-hour commercial for Marlboro cigarettes? Shows such as "Becker," which features a central character (a doctor!?) who sucks down cigarettes at least three or four times per episode should be forbidden as well.

It is oxymoronic to equate any sort of healthy lifestyle with anyone who is addicted to tobacco. Virtually every inhalation leaves permanent deposits of tar and carcinogens in the alveolae, oxygen to blood transfer sacs of the lungs. These are small, delicate parts of the organ and are unable to repair themselves. In short, even light tobacco use permanently damages the body and negates many benefits of exercise, to say nothing of increasing the risk of sudden death due to heart attack, etc. Virtually all of this harm, as well as the addiction itself is tranferred to the developing fetus in the wombs of mothers who smoke during pregnancy. A fetus has no defenses to these abuses and although the damage may not be apparent at birth, like fetal alcohol syndrome, irreversible damage may be observed later in childhood.

What possible relation can tobacco have to athletic events? If children are to be included in the audience of any such event, there should be no posters or advertisement of any sort for tobacco products within their sight. Auto racing is clearly the worst of the current offenders and our efforts need to be concentrated in that direction.

Think about these ideas:

Flatulence smells bad but it is harmless. Tobacco smells just as bad, but it is harmful. If you walked up to a smoker and farted proudly, as Benjamin Franklin recommended, the smoker would certainly be offended and angry. Yet, that same individual will most often be angry when asked not to indulge in their addiction within smelling distance of those who respect their bodies.

Be firm when you tell smokers "Your right to smoke ends with my nose!"

How does it make you feel to know that you spend as much as 75% more on health insurance as a nonsmoker to absorb the cost of tobacco addiction to the health care system than tobacco addicts should contribute?

 

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Hollywood's Responsibility for Smoking Deaths
By Joe Eszterhas
New York Times
Friday, August 9, 2002