Here is an important quote taken from one of the founding fathers of the field of Speech Pathology--Charles Van Riper. It appeared in the eight edition of his text Speech Correction by Charles Van Riper and Lon Emerick, Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1990. It is one of the most definitive statements on smoking I have read. He writes:
"Almost every one of our laryngectomee clients had smoked cigarettes for many years. "Why me?" many of them asked, for they knew elderly persons who had used tobacco all their lives with no apparent ill effects. It was difficult for our clients to acknowledge that they had played roulette with cigarettes--the statistics show a clear and present danger from smoking--and had lost. The odds in this game of chance are very high and decisively stacked against those who smoke.
Cigarette smoking is the single most important preventable cause of premature illness and death in the United States. A staggering total of 350,000 deaths a year can be attributed to smoking--that’s almost 1,000 deaths each day! Anyone who has even a slight awareness of the evidence knows that cigarette consumption is directly linked to cancer of the respiratory tract. But some people are not aware that tobacco is also:
Now, if that list of horrors is not enough to convince you that cigarettes are definitely not "user-friendly," smoking also ages your face at a faster rate! Smoking tends to alter the creases in a persons face in particularly distinctive --and negative--manner.
You don’t need a degree in chemistry to see why cigarettes are so harmful to your health.
When the tobacco is ignited, the core of the cigarette burns at 2000 degrees F. and becomes a miniature chemical plant, producing some 4000 gaseous and particulate compounds. With each inhalation, dozens of poisons, tar, cyanide, carbon monoxide, ammonia, and others--rush into the snmokers' blood stream. But the real culprit, the substance in tabacco which keeps smokers coming back for more and more, is nicotine.
Contrary to the impression promoted by the tobacco companies (to the tune of almost $1 billion of advertising each year), smoking is not a voluntary adult decision. It is not a matter of free choice, at least not after early adolescent experimentation designed to make the smoker look older and appear "cool." Smoking is compulsive, driven behavior. Studies show that smokers carefully regulate the number of cigarettes they consume, as well as the rate and depth of puffing to maintain a certain level of nicotine in their bloodstream.
Smokers are nicotine addicts…"
There is more, but that certainly is enough to make us really want to keep this habit away from young children! I like what King James I of England commented in his days about the nasty little habit that was returned from the "New World." He described smoking as…
"Loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes thereof, neerest resembling the horrible stinking smoke of the pit that is bottomless."
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