The death of ABC News anchor Peter Jennings shines the spotlight, where it belongs, on smoking, lung cancer and the other life-robbing diseases use of tobacco can cause.
Like many of my generation, I smoked as a young man. Kicked the habit nearly 40 years ago. Watched my grandfather, a lifelong smoker, die of emphysema, spending the last few years of his life in bed with an oxygen tank, gasping for breath. My stepfather, who smoked, died from the same disease and heart disease killed my wife's father, a chain smoker.
You don't need an MD after your name to see what smoking does to the human body. You just need a brain.
What I find odd is how many news anchors and reporters who are smokers did the Jennings story in their customary "professional" manner (with the sort of detachment we've come to expect-- there's no crying in baseball, or in journalism), and how few news anchors and reporters-- only one that I know of-- used the occasion to encourage viewers who smoke to quit the habit. Okay fine, we expect our news anchors to be 'objective' and to show little emotion no matter what. Yet it seems to me there are times that really do cry out for a bit of editorializing. I can only wonder if any of the reporters who still smoke seriously considered quitting themselves-- or do they think what happened to Jennings won't happen to them?
Smoking will kill you. I quit 12 years ago, but it was to late.
3 months ago, I was diagonosed with small cell lung cancer.
I was given 3 to 6 months. I pray for a heart attack.
I live on morphine.
Moses