Replies

"I won't screw up my kids' health on the basis of any studies, that's for sure!"

Good for you! I grew up with a smoker, and my husband and I both smoked for 35 years. I was given less than a year to live in 1998 because of lung cancer, and thanks to God and some excellent doctors and a special diet, there is no trace of it to date.

But even if you don't get cancer (and you may need to have a specific gene or something) you sure do damage to your lungs and those of people around you. The medical profession calls it Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and it can kill you just as surely as lung cancer.

Carolyn

This is really sad. People pretend they don't know what cigarettes do so they won't feel guilty about feeding their addiction and smoking in front of their kids. I'm normally not the type of guy to get all warm and fuzzy about kids' issues but this one gets me riled up.

Any person being intellectually honest should be able to understand that smoke is ... get ready for this ... bad for you to breathe! It's amazing that people would attack me for this. It doesn't require detailed scientific knowledge nor a subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine to understand this. SMOKE IS BAD FOR YOU!

This is why the soldiers who were near the burning oil fields in Kuwait got sick, this is why firefighters who get too close to the action without masks get sick, and it is why people who are exposed to cigarette smoke get sick - even if they never develop any detectable cancer, their lungs and circulatory system suffer.