#127 She Died of Smoking

Heard "She died of smoking at 31" on TV again this morning.  That bugs me. 

She died of lung disease, but how can they know that smoking caused it?  If she didn't smoke, then they blame it on secondhand smoke.  The antismoking folks act like all the other pollution, the plastic gases and hydrocarbons in the air, the metals that we breathe in our shower steam, has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  (No one knew where Jay's brain cancer came from - he blamed it on a random cosmic particle.  That happens to lungs too, and will increase as we destroy our atmospheric protections.)  In some ideal future, when everyone has quit smoking, what will "they" blame lung problems on then?  There may be less, because smoking is a major stressor, but it's not going to go away.  And if we don't pay attention to the other causes, lung disease will increase.

"They" are missing the big picture.  They are concentrating on one factor, while the other factors are getting worse.  They are blaming that one factor more than it deserves.   They want to blame all of it on that one factor.  So, she died of lung disease, but how can they state unequivocally  that smoking, alone, caused it?  

She died of an inability to clear all the damage done to her lungs, including but not limited to, cigarette smoke. 

In the '70s and before, almost everyone smoked, everywhere.  There were ashtrays in the arms of movie theater seats, next to hospital beds, built into the desks in college classrooms, on buses.  Even nonsmoking households had ashtrays for guests.  My very strict and puritan grandmother, who didn't allow alcohol or so much as a deck of playing cards in her home, allowed guests, including her son (but not her daughter, my mother), to smoke in her home.  So up to and through the '70s, everyone (that's everyone over 30 now) was exposed to, at the least, dense secondhand smoke - and we're talking cigars and unfiltered Camels, too.  The super-tarry leaves of Marlboros.

Some people smoke.  Some don't.  Some smokers get lung cancer or emphysema.  Most don't.  Some nonsmokers get lung cancer or emphysema.  Most don't.  The relationship between smoking and lung disease is not casual, but I am thoroughly tired of people who blame all of it on smoking.

(Note that as exposure to cigarette smoke has dropped, childhood asthma has increased drastically.  Are these kids smoking in secret?  I would like "them" to explain that.)