This just in: Smoking kills

The last few entries for this blog touched on stroke prevention, with special attention to stroke risk that, to some degree or other, people can control.

The final entry - for now, anyway - on this topic is the one other entries about smoking as well.
that raises my hackles the most: smoking. You can read

From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly 1 of every 5 deaths, each year in the United States. More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.

That's how many lives are needlessly cut short by smoking. Comparing smokers and nonsmokers, the CDC reports that stroke risk is 2 to 4 times higher among smokers.

I must admit a selfish reason: In 1992, my father died because, years before, he smoked. That led to emphysema which led to a host of other health problems. His last few years, this decent, loving man was tethered to an oxygen machine and a scooter.

All because, when the dangers of tobacco were well hidden, he lit that first cigarette.

Don't light it. Do anything you can do to prevent anyone you care about to light it.

It's currently popular to argue that there's no good or bad, no right or wrong - it's all relative. That's bogus. Pure plain and simple: Given what we now know, smoking is wrong.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

-1 Corinthians 6:19-20

If every tobacco company on the planet went out of business tomorrow, it would not be soon enough.

A smoke is not worth a stroke.

(Image from the Coconino County (Ariz.) Health Department)