Best Cigarette Free 4 Life Plan

Have you been looking for an easier way to stop smoking and can’t find a solution. You have tried all of the treatment, you may have even worn the patch, chewed the gum and done every thing imaginable, and however nothing can take away from the nagging cravings for a smoke. However, the good new is that there is an easier way. It is called Laser treatments. Smoking is a really bad habit. It is one of the habits which are considered to be a part of fashion today. Although it is a part of being fashionable today, still it is not a healthy habit. It is a habit that can very easily destroy your health. Keeping this in mind, it is important that you pay attention towards getting rid of this habit without suffering from the side effects of this problem.  Thus the best way of quitting smoking will be to do it through the ways which will make you get rid of this habit in a healthy way. In this way you will be able to avoid the side effects. Laser technology can help you a lot in this regard.

Laser treatment is a process of using a pulsating light to penetrate the points that are identified as acupuncture points, it is then absorbed into your skin and the cells until it stimulates the endorphins, and eases the cravings associated with smoking.

Laser treatment is done by trained and usually certified laser specialists. They will give you a consultation to find out what are they physical and psychological reasons why you are addicted to smoking. In fact to help you stay out of the addiction, the therapist may prescribe aftercare. You will usually only have to have just the one treatment but incase you have problems your therapist may suggest other ways to keep you smoke free. Treatment is a very short process, as it usually only takes about thirty minutes.

The laser will be applied to certain areas of your body such as your wrists, your hands and your arms. During the treatment you will not feel any pain usually people just feel relaxed and the cravings will be gone, you will not need the nicotine.  The method is completely safe and 100% all natural, so you won’t have to worry about it interfering with any medication you are currently taking. Doctors in Europe are saying that this procedure has a 90% success rate.

So if you are looking for an easy way to get rid of your smoking problem the best thing to do is to have laser treatment and never smoke again. This will ensure a healthy and long life for you. Smoking is not a healthy habit, and people should try to quit it.

If you quit smoking today, you can save bags full of money. Several people and instances have already tried to determine how much savings you can have if you quit smoking, but of course that will differ from smoker to smoker as well as be influenced by other factors associated with smoking such as health matter.

In the work place

Smokers sometimes get a hot deal, not making money, but not being hired by Companies.

They may say it out loud or they may not, but they prefer non-smokers because

1. smokers take more sick days off.
2. they fall ill more and
3. their family falls ill more.
4. they have a shorter attention span as they have to go out for a smoke every couple of hours,
5. they have higher health insurance premiums that some companies hate to foot and
6. they may pass respiratory infections to co-workers.

By quitting cigarette smoking you can widen your horizons as far as jobs are concerned and then have a greater chance of sticking around.

How to decrease your assets’ value

Have you ever thought that a smell that you as a smoker cannot smell can influence the value of for instance your house? Because non-smokers are not willing to buy a house filled with the stench of cigarette smoke. The people living there may have gotten accustomed to the smoky smell, but for non-smokers the carpets, drapes and furniture reek of cigarette smoke and it can either result in a slower sale of the house or not getting as much money as you would like for it.

The second most valuable asset after your house is most probably your car. Is the inside of your car smelling like your house …. Full of smoke? What an easy way to decrease the value of your car ! If you want to get more money for your home and car down the road – and who doesn’t – quit cigarette smoking today.

Even places like an online auction site can be an unlikely place where your smoking can lose you money. Many bidders prefer stuff from smoke-free homes when they for instance buy toys for their children. If you have kids and you are looking for toys and other stuff online on auction sites, you will undoubtedly see many listings which highlight the fact that their bedding or plush toys come from smoke-free homes. They expect to and often do get better money just because they do not smoke.

Looking smart can cost you more

Because your clothes are always smelling of smoke, it may be that cleaning them professionally 0r having them laundered, might cost you more than just an airing. A few dollars here and there may not seem like much now, but multiply the number of extra dry cleaning items by the number of weeks you have smoked and you will not be too pleased with the answer.

Personal costs

Smoke affects your breath as well as your teeth. Bad breath and yellow teeth can cost you money, even if it is only a packet of mints. Factor every expense, from the value of your home to a pack of breath mints and add it up. Multiply it by the number of years you have been smoking and it can shock you.

Why not take up this challenge: You are a smoker and your kids are secondary smokers, let x-rays be taken of your lungs as well as your kids’ lungs. Then compare it with x-rays from a non-smoker. Your kids’ x-rays might just be the reason why you quit smoking.

Want to learn about the different ways you can use to quit smoking?  There are more than you can imagine by John Roberts!

Quitting smoking really is a necessity at this point in history, because smoking cigarettes has been banned from restaurants and other public places. And in fact, it is definitely the intelligent thing to do for more reasons than good health alone. This editorial explores the very best hypnosis and NLP methods that can be used to make it as painless as possible to break the addiction to cigarettes.

There are 3 individual parts to the addiction to smoking cigarettes. Two of the elements are mental, and only one part is physical.

Part A: YOU SMOKE FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.

When you were an infant and you got restless, your mother would put a nipple into your mouth to pacify you. You would get distracted, become calmer, and often go to sleep. That scenario was repeated many, many times so that your unconscious mind was programmed: When something goes into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure from it.

Now that you are a grownup, if you feel anxious or tense, you crave something in your mouth for relaxation and pleasure - a smoke!

Part B: SMOKING IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.

Remember Pavlov? He rang a bell every time that he fed his dogs. After a few repetitions, all he had to do was to ring the bell, and that would trigger the dogs to salivate.

When you associate smoking with any other action, the other action will trigger cravings for a cigarette and an urge to light up a cigarette. This is called a conditioned response.

For example: If you smoke when you see someone else smoking, you will automatically get an urge to smoke each time you see someone else smoking.

Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your unconscious: If a person smokes a cigarette and simultaneously drinks a cup of coffee, the mind takes a snapshot of the cigarette in the hand, and ties it to the cup of coffee. Thereafter, every time the person has a cup of coffee, his unconscious mind fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of a cigarette, and the smoker gets a craving for a cigarette.

You may be unaware of the mental picture of the cigarette, because it may only be at the unconscious level of mind. Just as you are unaware of what you are seeing through your peripheral vision until something or someone draws your attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for a cigarette.

Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .

I’ve worked face-to-face with several thousand smokers and I give you my guarantee that the physical addiction to tobacco is the weakest part of the smoking addiction. In fact, I believe that it is only ten percent of the addiction to tobacco. I believe that 90% of the addiction are the mental and emotional parts! (Parts A and B).

HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A SMOKER WHO WANTS TO QUIT.

When you eliminate the feeling of tension that pushes a smoker to smoke a cigarette to create relaxation and pleasure (Part A) . . . and when you erase the conditioned response of feeling compulsions for cigarettes when having a cup of coffee, driving, or finishing a meal, etc. (Part B) . . . then you can give up tobacco without needing willpower, and without having to suffer from withdrawal symptoms or weight-gain.

Hypnotism can help trigger a smoker to stop smoking. Hypnosis will make it easy to give up tobacco because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:

Part A is where smokers light-up a cigarette for relaxation and pleasure. It’s your thoughts which create feelings of stress. More to the point, people persistently run mental movies in their mind’s eye. If the movie is negative, it causes a feeling of stress.

We can use different NLP and Hypnosis methods to program the subconscious mind to quickly and easily take those stress producing mental images, and quickly exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This instills relaxation and pleasure, and eliminates the stress that triggers the oral urges and compulsions for a cigarette.

Because of the elimination of tension, the smoker who is quitting does not experience the compulsion or need to substitute food in place of the cigarettes. So quitting without weight gain is possible.

Part B is where smokers light-up because smoking becomes a conditioned response to many different activities and locations. Remember in the earlier example how smoking became unconsciously associated with other activities and environments so that each time you get into that activity or environment, the mind flashes an image of a cigarette, and the image of the cigarette triggers an urge to light-up?

There are stop smoking hypnosis, and quit smoking NLP techniques that can quickly eliminate those conditioned responses so that your subconscious will lose the cravings for cigarettes, and the compulsion to smoke. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject the cigarettes.

IN SUMMATION

In summation, by utilizing certain NLP methods, it becomes very easy to stop smoking without withdrawal or weight gain. And many of these methods do not even require post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on programming the unconscious mind to use the same thought processes that the unconscious is using to create the addiction to cigarettes, to eliminate the mental addiction.

Alan B. Densky CH offers Neuro-VISION Video Stop Smoking Hypnosis DVDs and Audio Quit Smoking Self Hypnosis CDs. Visit for FREE hypnosis MP3s

A recent study made on teenage smoking came up with a figure of approximately 4.5 million adolescent smokers in the United States alone. And that everyday, roughly six thousand children below eighteen years of age begin to smoke. Out of that six thousand children, two thousand will grow up to become regular smokers. One survey says that approximately ninety percent of smokers began smoking before they reached the age of twenty-one.

To some teenagers, smoking may begin as an innocent experiment, to some it is their own way of expressing rebellion, but it may develop into a lifelong habit that can be difficult to quit. It has been proven that adolescents who regularly smoke have just hard time dropping the habit. And they say that the best way to get kids to stop smoking is to not get them started on the habit in the first place.

Here are some tips that can help keep your adolescent children away from the smoking habit: l Seek out the reason. Teenagers have different reason to get into smoking. Some do it just to test what it feels like to smoke, some do it because of peer pressure, some in an attempt to feel cool or independent, some because they want to fit in to a certain group, and some do it because they are rebelling. It may be surprising but some teens smoke in an attempt to lose weight or feel better about themselves. It would be easier to know how to deal with the problem if you know and understand the reason behind it. l Just say “no”. Telling your kids that smoking is not allowed may be more helpful than you think. A recent study showed that teenagers who thought that their parents would not like to hear of them smoking were less than half as likely to smoke as compared to adolescents who thought their parents didn’t mind. l Be a good role model. To make your children believe that smoking is bad, set yourself as a good example. Teen smoking is more common among adolescents who are used to seeing their parents smoke. If you smoke, avoid smoking in front of your children, or don’t leave your cigarettes where your children can find them. l Tap into your teen’s vain side. Although movies may depict smoking as something glamorous and macho, the truth is, it isn’t. Remind your teenagers that smoking is a smelly and dirty habit— it leaves yellow stain on your teeth, stench on your hair and clothes, and bad breath. l Do the math. Smoking is an expensive vice. Show your teens how much smoking costs on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. Compare smoking costs to electronic gadgets, clothes, and other teen essentials to make them understand that they can use that money on other important things instead of buying cigarettes. l Explain cigarette addiction clearly. A lot of teenage smokers believe that they can quit anytime they want, but that isn’t always true. Teens can become just as addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes as adults do. A recent study shows that of adolescents who’ve smoked at least a hundred cigarettes, most of them would like to quit but are finding it difficult to do so. l Tell your kids what’s in store. Inform your children o the long-term consequences of smoking — lung cancer, heart attack, and stroke. Not to mention the chronic coughing and other pulmonary tract concerns.

The best way to make your kids understand that they should stop smoking is not by giving threats or ultimatums, instead show them that you’re concerned about their well-being. Be supportive, encourage them that even if they may find quitting difficult, in the long run, with perseverance and will power, they will be able to quit the habit and live a smoke-free and healthy life.

The writer, Abbey Grace Yap, is an active advocate for health consciousness and disease awareness. She possesses a deep passion in discovering new health-related information and sharing it to her readers. Choose Variety of High Quality Medicines at Online Medicines Enjoyed Reading this article? More here: Pharmacy Articles

Have you ever paid attention to your actions? What are the moments when you just can’t cope without smoking? Research, performed in different countries, gave the same result: usually the cigarette is necessary to a smoker after experienced stress, or when a person has nothing to do and smoking becomes a way to kill time, and health in addition. I bet that the reason of your smoking habit was just mentioned. However, the non-smokers get stressed or bored too. Why don’t they need a cigarette? Of course, you can say that nonsmokers have nothing to compare with, but what about people who gave up smoking?

The answer is simple: it is all about the habit. Smoking is usually called “a bad habit”, but in the international statistical classification of diseases smoking is named “the nicotine dependence syndrome”. From the medical point of view, you are sick. Your problem is not just of chemical, but also of the psychological origin. That is why, if you made up your mind to quit smoking, the psychological methods of treatment, like hypnoses, reflex therapy (visits to reflexologists), visits to psychologist or self-perfection, will be helpful.

This article is to help people, who chose the most difficult, but most available way to quit smoking - the way of self-perfection. Statistics shows that only 17 percents of tobacco dependent people can stop smoking following this method. And only in case if the dependence is of low degree. To give up smoking you need only two things: exact motivation and ability to distract your attention.

Motivation

First of all, if you have decided to quit smoking, it is important for you to understand that the cigarette, you had just smoked was the last one. That is it! Enough! Don’t try to reach for the cigarette pack complaining that no one warned you how hard it is going to be! Knowing that this cigarette is your last, don’t memorize every moment of the smoking processes; there are so many good things that can take place in your mind instead of the picture of stinky stick! Cigarette is evil. And having smoked your last cigarette try to realize that there will be less evil in your life.

Think about it when the pack of cigarettes won’t be in your pocket, but in the dump. Your last smoke is the first step to healthy life, but it can be done only once, performing this process twice or more leads nowhere.

It will be a mistake to set as a goal the pure result itself. Proving yourself that you don’t depend on nicotine is just a dare, not a conscious choice. And, in a months, you will celebrate your victory over nicotine addiction.

The best motivation is own health. Statistic shows that the highest percent of persons who gave up smoking is among people that passed through serious operations. All the rest are still thinking that there is no sense to quit smoking because perfect health will stay forever.

Ability to Distract Your Attention

While you were smoking the psychodynamic stereotype was memorized by you. According to it your hand is ready to reach for the cigarette any time you have experienced emotional pressure. It is hard to say what is necessary for you organism: the dose of nicotine, or usual ritual. But people who gave up smoking forever mention the ritual as the main reason of dependence. So the way out is to find something to replace the usual action of smoking: like beads or cell phone games. It is useful to talk to people who had already quit smoking. Watching at the actions of ex-smokers, you will realize that a cigarette can be successfully replaced by something else. Meeting a person that quit smoking is also a dare: “if he can, means I can, because I’m not weaker than he is?” if you can’t find such a person between your friends try to use Internet and stop smoking support groups.

Besides everything that was told, I need to warn you, that to quit smoking is a hard task. Your organism will provoke stress situations itself to activate the first part of the algorithm, expecting you to finish it by a cigarette. This normal reaction has to be overcome. However, this is the stage there 83 percents of people give up. This is the time to remember that all the cigarettes of the world are not for you now!

And in conclusion. I know that while reading the article thoughts about smoking came up on your mind. Remember the words that were told before: “getting back to the beginning of the way will get you nowhere”. If you want to quit smoking without help of psychologist or hypnoses therapy, show your will-power right now by throwing away the last cigarette pack, your last pack.

http://Stop-Smoke.org website by Alex Donovan is a seller of Nicocure - effective quit smoking herbal remedy. You are allowed to distribute this article with an active hyperlink to http://www.stop-smoke.org/ only.

With a cigarette in my hand…I feel like an Impotent, seems to be a joke but their isn’t anything funny about it. You always knew that cigarette can cause variety of life-threatening diseases like lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease just add one more to it. Guessed it right buddy, Impotence! Scientifically called erectile dysfunction and defined as the inability to achieve or sustain erection till the time being essential for sexual gratification.

Stats reveal even shocking outputs; around 430,000 deaths each year are directly caused by cigarette smoking. Smoking is responsible for changes in all parts of the body, including the digestive system and human impotence. Current estimates indicate that about one-third of all adults smoke. And, while adult men seem to be smoking less, women and teenagers of both sexes seem to be smoking more.

Perilous Smoking

Smoking is a major and avoidable hazard for sexual health. Given that two of the three main side effects of smoking on erectile function are acute responses to nicotine, then immediate improvements on stopping smoking are possible. Smoking reduced volume of ejaculate, it also leads to reduction in sperm count and causes of abnormal sperm shape.

British Medical Association (BMA) estimates that up to 120,000 UK men in their 30s and 40s are impotent as a direct consequence of smoking. This figure is likely to be an underestimate, because it does not include impotence due to previous smoking in men who no longer smoke.

Smoking has been shown to have harmful effects on all parts of the digestive system, contributing to such common disorders as heartburn and peptic ulcers. It also increases the risk of Crohn’s disease and possibly gallstones. Smoking seems to affect the liver, too, by changing the way it handles drugs and alcohol. In fact, there seems to be enough evidence to stop smoking solely.

• Other Hazardous Consequences of Smoking
• Smoking causes cancer.
• Smoking causes heart disease.
• Smoking causes fatal diseases.
• Smoking causes Erectile Dysfunctions.
• Smoking when pregnant harms your baby
• Smoking causes cancer, chronic bronchitis and other chest diseases

Saira Simmons is a well known author who has long been writing articles related to health & fitness. Her articles are well known across the web for being quite informative and according to the changing trend in the pharmacy industry. saira.simmons@gmail.com http://www.affordable-prescriptions.md

Passive smoking is the involuntary inhalation of cigarette smoke of other people’s cigarettes. Passive smoking, secondary smoke, second hand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke all relate to the same thing - that being the involuntary inhalation of tobacco smoke. Cigarette smoke is generally defined as either the exhaled smoke from a smoker or the ’sidestream’ smoke from the cigarette tip. It is made up of over 4,000 chemicals of which, 40 or so are known to cause cancer, including numerous hydrocarbons, arsenic and polonium.

Smokers choose to inhale this noxious combination of chemicals and carcinogens but non-smokers do not. In the case of children or babies, there is normally no choice whatsoever and it is estimated that some 700 million children around the world are exposed to secondary smoke from the 1.2 billion smokers in the global population.

It is well documented now that secondary smoke or passive smoking has some adverse affects on the passive smoker and most significantly when they are children. Indeed, in an extract from the 1997 Declaration of the Environment Leaders of the Eight (G8) on Children’s Environmental Health, they stated;

“We affirm that environmental tobacco smoke is a significant public health risk to young children and that parents need to know about the risks of smoking in the home around their young children. We agree to co-operate on education and public awareness efforts aimed at reducing children’s exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.”

So, what evidence is the G8 working from and why should we care? Well, a review by the World Health Organization in 1998 concluded that passive smoking is a cause of bronchitis, pneumonia, coughing and wheezing, asthma attacks, middle ear infection, cot death, and possibly cardiovascular and neurobiological impairment in children. Furthermore, a report in 1992 by the Royal College of Physicians in London estimates that 17,000 under 5s are admitted to hospitals in the UK every year as a direct result of passive smoking.

A report from Hong Kong in 2001 concluded that children living in homes where there are two or more smokers are 30% more likely to be admitted to hospital for treatment than those living in a smoke-free house.

UK reports from 2000 and 2001 have found that environmental tobacco smoke has a detrimental effect on children of any age and also that asthma is more prevalent in smoking households. It is thought that between 1,000 and 5,400 new cases of asthma are solely attributable to passive smoking every year in the UK.

A further report from Britain in 2006 linked smoking with a three-fold increase in the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), commonly called cot death. Many other studies have found environmental tobacco smoke exposure to directly correlate with increased incidences of ear infections, meningitis, mental impairment, autism, subdued vitamin C levels and poorer sense of smell and taste. On top of these malaises, there have also been found, links between childhood exposure to tobacco smoke and the risk of cancer in later life and with general malaise. A Norwegian study found that adults who had been exposed to smoke during their childhood had poorer attendance levels in their adult life at work.

Studies in Britain have found that there is widespread acknowledgement that passive smoking is not only bad for children but also for adults. However, the specific risks that increase because of passive smoking are not well known. The majority of people cited chest infections and increased risk of asthma as the most common outcomes of passive smoking. Two more common outcomes of environmental tobacco smoke in infants are cot death and glue ear (ear infection), but this was not recognised by most respondents in the survey. Despite this, two thirds of smokers say that they do not smoke in the same room as children and a quarter state that they would smoke less in the company of a child because of their knowledge of the dangers of secondary smoke.

In order to protect children, there are a number of things that parent should do to try and minimise their child’s exposure to tobacco smoke:

Smokers should try to smoke only outside. If you must smoke inside limit smoking to a room where you can open windows to allow adequate ventilation. Smokers should never smoke in a child’s bedroom and must not allow anyone else to smoke there. Smokers should not smoke while washing, dressing or playing with children. Finally, smokers should never smoke in the car with the windows closed or open.

Some children rights campaigners suggest that exposing children to cigarette smoke is a form of child abuse and should be punished accordingly. I am inclined to agree with them.

Pete Howells has written the EasyQuit System that will help any smoker quit tobacco. The EasyQuit System works by giving smokers the instructions they need to follow to achieve their ambition to quit rather than just telling them smoking is bad for them. Visit http://easyquitsystem.com to find out more about his incredible process for quitting smoking that boasts 96% customer satisfaction.

It has become politically correct to demonize smoking. It’s not enough to force owners of offices, factories, restaurants, and bars to forbid smoking, now they’re going after the parks and beaches.

First of all, let me make it clear that I’m a non-smoker, I haven’t smoked for over 35 years and don’t intend to start. I have no vested interest in smoking itself, but worry about all the unwarranted laws that are currently being passed concerning the subject. When they’re done with smoking, there’s many other issues these corporate alien lawmakers will be legislating on. Our freedom gets gradually eaten away, as they pass more and more silly restrictive laws.

Whenever the government wants to push an issue, they use highly exaggerated statements and statistically unsound studies to try to scare us. Getting people to quit smoking is one of the current issues of choice.

Here’s a quote from the surgeon general’s web site.

We know that secondhand smoke harms people’s health, but many people assume that exposure to secondhand smoke in small doses does not do any significant damage to one’s health. However, science has proven that there is NO risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Let me say that again: there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.

I want to examine the subject from a different point of view, to see if statements like the one above are warranted. I will use real world facts, observation and logic to challenge this statement.

Do I believe that smoking kills? Yes, I know it does. But there are interesting facts behind smoking deaths that are not quite clear. Lets look at two famous personalities that unquestionably died from smoking related diseases. First is Edward R. Murrow who died at 57 from lung cancer. He was a very heavy smoker. He once remarked he couldn’t live a half hour without a cigarette. Johnny Carson was another personality that died at 79 from emphysema. He too was a very heavy smoker.

Both these individuals abused their bodies by overindulging in cigarettes for many, many years. Smoking didn’t just kill them a year after they took their first drag. In fact, they lived longer than some non-smokers. It appears that Carson was more resistant to chain smoking than Murrow. That could explain why Carson lived longer than Murrow.

I personally witnessed a neighbor, who was a heavy smoker, succumb to emphysema while in his seventies. You could go on and find many, many such cases. One conclusion you can draw from such examples is that the development of smoking illnesses come from many years of overindulgence. Exactly how long it takes for such illnesses to develop depends on the amount of cigarettes smoked per day and the person’s natural resistance to toxins.

Now how about light smokers? The longest living documented person was a French woman named Jeanne Calment. She died in 1997 at the age of 122. At the age of twenty-one in 1896 she began smoking. She smoked no more than two cigarettes per day. She quit when she was 114 because she could not see well enough to light her cigarette and not because of problems from smoking. She died from old age and not smoking.

Most people are more familiar with the comedian George Burns. He died in 1996, forty nine days after reaching his hundredth birthday. He smoked up to ten cigars per day for seventy years. He once commented that if he had listened to his doctor and quit smoking, he wouldn’t have been able to attend the doctor’s funeral. He didn’t die from smoking.

Let’s apply some logic to our examples. Do you suppose that if Edward R. Murrow, Johnny Carson, and my neighbor were light to moderate smokers they would have lived longer? Logic says yes! In fact it looks like Johnny Carson had a lot of natural immunity. He could have conceivably lived to be a hundred or more. Light smoking may have had no effect on him or it could have even helped him live longer.

What if Jeanne Calment or George Burns smoked two or three packs a day? They could have lived longer than most heavy smokers because of their strong immune systems, but I doubt that either one of them would have been alive to celebrate his or her ninetieth birthday.

We can deduce that the immune system determines how people react to smoking. Your immune system will eventually be overwhelmed after you’ve been chain smoking for years. I’ve never heard of a light smoker dying from cigarettes. (There are always exceptions. Someone with a very poor immune system will die of anything.) Light smoking might even have beneficial effects for some people like Jeanne Calment and George Burns.

What about second hand smoke? Wouldn’t inhaling second hand smoke be even less toxic than being a light smoker? If you smoke a cigarette a day, then you smoked 365 cigarettes per year. According to one study, being in a room filled with second hand smoke for eight hours a day would amount to smoking 4.3 cigarettes per year. Even if that’s a miscalculation, and its really equivalent to 100 cigarettes per year, that’s still much less than Jeanne Calment’s one or two cigarettes a day. We should be able to easily assume that being exposed to second hand smoke has a much smaller effect than being a light smoker.

I’m a member of the baby boomer generation. There are about 77 million baby boomers living today. It turns out that smoking was so prevalent during the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s that practically everyone living during that time period was exposed to some form of second hand smoke. Everyone was smoking at work, many parents were smoking in front of their children, some parents would let their teens smoke, even in Army boot camp the barracks were always full of second hand smoke. When I was going to college, many teachers would allow smoking in class. Some teachers would even lecture with a cigarette in hand. During that time, even if you didn’t smoke, exposure to second hand smoke was unavoidable.

How has all this exposure affected the baby boomers? The ones that are currently suffering from smoking related illnesses are the ones that are heavy smokers who refused to quit. People like me kicked the habit years ago. No matter how much second hand smoke they were previously exposed to, they have no smoking related problems, except, perhaps, heart disease. I know people in their late seventies that smoke moderately and still show no signs of any disease.

Heart disease is not only a smoking related disease, but can also originate from food, genetics, and frustration. It’s practically impossible to prove that baby boomers who have heart problems and currently don’t smoke got their heart disease from exposure to second hand smoke that occurred years ago. Of course if they’re currently heavy smokers, their heart disease probably was caused or aggravated by their habit.

Let’s look at my smoking history. My father was a moderate smoker. So for about 13 years I was exposed to second hand smoke from him alone. When I was thirteen I started smoking and smoked for about twelve years. So I was exposed to some form of primary or secondary smoke for about 25 years in my early life. Ever since I quit, I have had very little exposure to second hand smoke. Because I don’t really fear second hand smoke, friends and acquaintances expose me to short periods of passive smoke several times a year. I have no smoking related lung disease, or heart disease. I’m in my early sixties.

Politicians have come out with a lot of studies that show that second hand smoke is dangerous. Unfortunately, most of these studies are not statistically significant, which means that they prove nothing. There are also studies that have shown that that second hand smoke has beneficial effects. Some are even more statistically relevant. Of course, it is not politically correct for anti-smoking factions to mention them.

In spite of the fact, that I defend the right of people to smoke, I also think it’s a good idea for most people to quit. There is no doubt that heavy smokers eventually die from smoking, but years before they die, they must undergo the harsh effects of their debilitating disease. Even though, light smokers may never get a smoking related disease, it’s almost impossible for most people to remain light smokers. One reason for this is that smoking is addictive. It draws you to an ever increasing daily cigarette quota. In today’s corporate alien society, many people claim that they smoke because of frustration at work. If profits fall, corporations are quick to blame their workforce and subject them to a barrage of endless harassment. The calming effects of cigarettes are used to cope with many of today’s on the job abuses. The light smoker under stress then quickly evolves into a chain smoker.

Does it really seem logical, that when it takes thirty years of smoking to kill a chain smoker, that a few hours of second hand smoke is going to hurt you? Get real! Yet the government has convinced a lot of people that this is a reality. Just recently Chicago has banned smoking on playgrounds and beaches. With all the problems this city is facing, why do Chicago politicians concern themselves with such nonsense? It’s, probably, just greed, since violators of this ordinance face a hefty fine of $500.

The fewer substances you depend on the better. If you depend on cigarettes, try quiting. If you can’t quit, cut down. If you encounter second hand smoke, don’t worry, it may annoy you, but it won’t hurt you. It could even strengthen your immune system.

George Lunt is someone who feels the world is getting too corporate. His writings relate the individual’s struggle with big government and big corporations. His website is http://www.corporate-aliens.com.