Truer words than he realizes.
Tha last words my father spoke to me, while in the oxygen tent, were "You never smoked cigarettes did you Chuck?" "No Dad" I replied. He said "Don't ever start." He died a few weeks later of lung disease at the age of 72 after sixty years of smoking.
I remember him mentioning, when he was in his fifties, that he was up to three packs a day and should probably cut back and I remember that he always smoked Camel straights. In later years, he smoked filters and "Lights" and tried to quit but never quite managed it, even after he was diagnosed with emphasima(sp?)
Not that I am anti-tobacco. Far from it. I enjoy a good cigar several times a week and I even keep a well stocked humidor on my desk. I've been smoking cigars since Vietnam, 1967. I just never could get behind cigarettes. Never even tried them.