Four leading cancer organizations - the Center for Disease Control, cancer registries, the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society have supplied demographic data to once again assemble and produce the "Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975-2003, Featuring Cancer among U.S. Hispanic/Latino Populations." What is cancer's status in this fair country these days, you ask? Here is their conclusion:
The report includes comprehensive data on trends over the past several decades for all major cancers. It shows that the long-term decline in overall cancer death rates continued through 2003 for all races and both sexes combined....Death rates decreased for 11 of the 15 most common cancers in men and for 10 of the 15 most common cancers in women.
This is good news, although it doesn't help my patients who are currently fighting cancer. If the decline continues, however, maybe their children and grandchildren will not be stricken with the cowardly disease.
I know that more widespread and effective screening has helped reduce the death rate for certain tumors. I know that new targeted agents are being discovered and released at an admirable rate, most of which have been shown to be an improvement over older treatments. Are these the two most important causes of the decrease in cancer-related mortality?
Well...are they?
"The greater decline in cancer death rates among men is due in large part to their substantial decrease in tobacco use. We need to enhance efforts to reduce tobacco use in women so that the rate of decline in cancer death rates becomes comparable to that of men," said Betsy A. Kohler, President of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, Inc.
Does that answer the question?
The report contains other interesting bits of data, such as the rate of thyroid cancer in women is rising, but I shall leave further exegesis for another day.
Today my message is to current smokers, and it is quite clear: if you are reading this and you smoke cigarettes, your risk of dying from cancer is much higher than a non-smoker.
So why on earth do you do it? Do you know the answer to this question? Some experts would say they do, and have the research to prove it:
In summary, our data suggest that a person's first puff may represent the beginning of a process that leads rapidly to symptoms of nicotine dependence and escalating cigarette use in some young smokers. Novice smokers may not recognize the symptoms they experience as related to nicotine dependence, and consequently they may view tobacco control messages as irrelevant. Young people, their parents and health professionals must be made aware that symptoms of nicotine dependence can manifest long before regular smoking and that, once cravings are experienced, the likelihood of progression to daily use and tobacco dependence is greatly increased. This information should be incorporated into interventions to encourage and support novice smokers to stop smoking, and to provide help for those experiencing difficulty quitting because of symptoms of nicotine dependence.
You never realized that you're a sucker, did you? Somewhere in this country someone is laughing at you right now, just waiting for you to slap down another wad of your hard-earned dough for a carton.
I'm leaving now, before I get any more disgusted. My advice to all smokers is - please read this.
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Well, I quit 18 months ago.. having a pregnant wife being more of a motivator.
The problem with detailing the dangers is that teenagers are pretty much drawn to anything described as dangerous and don't have great abilities to judge risk. Even things like indoor bans can end up creating feelings of solidarity..
Somehow both my brother and I believed that we would get addicted to nicotine if we smoked one cigarette. Once we were old enough to realize that it might not be quite that simple, we were old enough to think that smoking was disgusting. So neither of us ever started.
I don't know where we got that information or how our parents brainwashed us but I grateful that they did. Especially as there is now evidence to show that it was right after all.
Not smoking is not a guarantee you won't get lung cancer - I'm an example. I read that women seem more susceptible to lung cancer than men.
Isn't it obvious? Global warming is causing cancer rates to fall.
When I was in high school and college, I was an avid "social smoker", smoking cigarettes while at parties or other social contexts where others were lighting up. Alcohol intake was almost always involved. Occasionally, I would smoke as many as 15-20 cigarettes at a time. For some reason, however, I never became addicted to smoking. To this day, if I am in the right situation--socially and involving alcohol intake--I greatly enjoy a cigarette or two, yet I usually go many weeks or months between smokes, and never even think about or have the slightest desire for smoking during those intervals.
I am absolutely convinced that there is some physiological basis for my failure to become addicted to smoking. Several of my friends from high school and college--who engaged in very similar smoking behaviors at that time--are currently addicted. I wonder whether there is a genetic component, although both of my parents were true addicts for many years (both since quit and have stayed quit).
Physio Prof: There are scores of studies about the genetics of smoking addiction. This reference is a recent review of the data:
http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/123/5/1730
Article is also known as Batra V et. al., Chest 2003;123:1730-1739
From the tone of some of the anti-smoking articles I've read, you'd think a bunch of farmers sat down with the Devil one day a few hundred years ago and figured out how to genetically engineer an innocent plant into an addictive, disease-causing monster weed, and force it down the throats of people who would rather be left alone. This is nonsense. Tobacco is not the problem; smokers are and have always been the problem.