Thursday, December 9, 2010

One Puff Of Something

I had to laugh today at one of the MSNBC's newsfeed stories. It's the report from the U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin that says one puff from a cigarette can trigger a heart attack.

Yup. And you can catch AIDS from using a public toilet.

So, I'm wondering why cigarettes? What about going to a campfire? What about a wood burning stove? What about going outside in the winter and seeing the smoke from a chimney? Burning toast? What about dirty exhaust fumes from, let's say, a semi truck? Nope. All of these won't hurt you because only cigarette smoke can. Oh, and second hand smoke. Even though no one can agree if second hand smoke is the smoke that comes off the end of a cigarette or if it's the smoke that a person exhales. Two very different things but you may as well lump them together out of convenience.  Anyways, cigarettes must be magical if "...one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack."

Sure that's pretty ambitious claim for a report but it's pretty far fetched.  This obviously must be the reason why joggers who never smoked, all of a sudden drop dead.  There - that solves that problem.  It has to be some kind of smoke or second hand smoke from a cigarette. It just has to be.

She goes on to say: "I advise people to try to avoid being around smoking any way that you can." Probably because she thinks it's yucky, gross and stinky. And all people who smoke are poor. Don't forget that one.

The other quote that was great was from some wienie named Michael Cummings, who would probably get mad if you don't put DR in front of his name.  The article says he's a "nictoine(sic) expert", even though the report was on smoking and not nicotine.  He whines:"How many reports more does Congress need to have to say that cigarettes as a class of products ought to be banned?"  He works at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and helped to review the report. "One-third of the patients who are in our hospital are here today because of cigarettes."

What about the other two thirds? What's causing all the other cancers if smoking isn't causing the majority? Just a thought.

Maybe this will explain something: the article's writer says, "Still, this newest report is unusual because it devotes more than 700 pages to detail the biology of how cigarette smoke accomplishes its dirty deeds — including the latest genetic findings to help explain why some people become more addicted than others, and why some smokers develop tobacco-caused disease faster than others."

In short, no one knows why they're blaming smoking since there's no direct co-relation to anything. But they are. I think 500 years ago they would blame these kinds of things on the Devil.

"There is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke, whether you deliberately inhale it or are a nonsmoker who breathes in other people's fumes," the report concludes. You know what? I'm no genius but I think that if you do directly inhale smoke, you will have more exposure. It really is "safer" to breathe other people's fumes. Really. I'll bet if I chained smoked 5 cigarettes, I would probably cough more than someone who watched me do it.

And to end it the article: "Kicking the habit lets your body start healing, Benjamin stressed: "It's never too late to quit but the sooner you quit the better. Even if you're 70, 80 years old and you're a smoker, there's still benefit from quitting."

I found it odd that since cigarettes are so deadly how can people in their 80's still alive and smoking?

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