I am so thrilled to see the Tobacco Legislation pass the House and Senate and the President’s promise to sign it. It is a major step forward, but we can’t stop there. I urge the President, the Secretary of HHS, and other leaders to use this as a leverage to ratchet up the pressure to prevent teenagers from starting to smoke and to help smokers battle the addiction. The savings would be enormous, in health care costs, as well as quality of life and loss of life due to smoking-caused heart disease, emphysema, cancer, and suffering from a host of side effects in the function of every organ system: skin, teeth, digestive, bladder, brain, eyes.

My father died at age 65 due to heart disease caused by his heavy smoking. When he promised to stop, he would smoke in the car and come into the house, not realizing that we non-smokers could smell the detritus on him. My brother died at age 40 from a terrible head and neck cancer directly related to his heavy smoking. My mother-in-law died from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), from heavy smoking for most of her adult life, even though she gave up smoking 15 years before her death. I think my father, brother, and mother-in-law started to smoke because it looked cool or tough or sexy, and the nicotine gave them a little “high,” and a way to socialize. They just couldn’t break the habit or didn’t believe that they would suffer the consequences.

When I see others smoke, especially twenty- and thirty-somethings, I want to walk up to them and pull the cigarettes out of their mouths, but that would probably be considered assault. Even the new Tobacco Bill doesn’t condone such action. But something equally compelling is sorely needed that can reach out to the individual smoker, provide hands-on medical intervention and coaching to quit smoking and retrain physical and social habits, reward success and protect against relapse.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 8:58 am and is filed under Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.