Cigarette smoking, it says on the pack, may be hazardous to your health. This is the most harmful of the personal vices, and is fortunately becoming less socially acceptable. Physicians rate smokers by their number of “pack-years,” which is the number of packs per day multiplied by the number of years that you have smoked. For example, if you have smoked two packs per day for five years, you are a ten pack-year smoker. For each pack-year that you smoke, you decrease your life expectancy by about one month. You greatly increase your chance of sudden death. A heavy smoker, smoking two packs daily for thirty years, or sixty pack-years, has decreased his or her life expectancy by five years.
THE CIGARETTE SMOKER
More Heart Attacks (x2)
More strokes (x4)
More Lung Cancer (x300)
More Emphysema (x300)
More skin Wrinkles (x4)
More High Blood Pressure (x2)
Other bad things happen too. The physical reserve of the cigarette smoker is decreases. Smokers are less healthy, less vigorous, have less active sex lives, and appear to develop skin wrinkles at earlier ages. They spend twice as much time in the hospital as nonsmokers.
Just as important, the last years of a cigarette smoker are not a period of grace and beauty. Tortured wheezing, swollen purple lips, and the feeling of suffocation mark these years. In medical slang, the late-stage cigarette smoker is termed a “blue bloater.” Fortunately, present evidence suggests that the ex-cigarette smoker can regain much lost function and improve life expectancy, although not back to that of the nonsmoker. Pipe and cigar smoke, when not inhaled, is less hazardous and accounts for only a fraction of the problems created by inhaled cigarette smoke, but smoking a pipe or cigar can also certainly decrease your social acceptability. The militant nonsmoker (“Would you mind putting out that cigarette?”) is a constructive new social phenomenon, and the smokers are being packed into smaller and smaller spaces in the back of the airplane. The hazards of “second-hand smoke” are real, although relatively small, and many people feel that forced exposure to the smoke of others is deeply offensive. Five up your cigarettes and avoid the hassles.
THE CIGARETTE SMOKER
More Heart Attacks (x2)
More strokes (x4)
More Lung Cancer (x300)
More Emphysema (x300)
More skin Wrinkles (x4)
More High Blood Pressure (x2)
Other bad things happen too. The physical reserve of the cigarette smoker is decreases. Smokers are less healthy, less vigorous, have less active sex lives, and appear to develop skin wrinkles at earlier ages. They spend twice as much time in the hospital as nonsmokers.
Just as important, the last years of a cigarette smoker are not a period of grace and beauty. Tortured wheezing, swollen purple lips, and the feeling of suffocation mark these years. In medical slang, the late-stage cigarette smoker is termed a “blue bloater.” Fortunately, present evidence suggests that the ex-cigarette smoker can regain much lost function and improve life expectancy, although not back to that of the nonsmoker. Pipe and cigar smoke, when not inhaled, is less hazardous and accounts for only a fraction of the problems created by inhaled cigarette smoke, but smoking a pipe or cigar can also certainly decrease your social acceptability. The militant nonsmoker (“Would you mind putting out that cigarette?”) is a constructive new social phenomenon, and the smokers are being packed into smaller and smaller spaces in the back of the airplane. The hazards of “second-hand smoke” are real, although relatively small, and many people feel that forced exposure to the smoke of others is deeply offensive. Five up your cigarettes and avoid the hassles.
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