How dangerous is smoking really? Is it as dangerous as the media makes it out to be, and is it more dangerous than other habits like drinking?

Is this a serious question?

It is April Fool's Day.

Ahh yes of course. With all the snow...I’d forgotten ?

Never smoked however my oh did until 15 years ago. I have a bad chest and struggle to fight off a cold. My oh rarely gets ill and fights off a cold in two days. His mother smoked 20 - 40 cigarettes a day for 65 years and broke off the filter. However she rarely touched alcohol. When she died at 87 it wasn't due to smoking. Her friend 95 who smoked the same has recently moved into a care home due to constant falling. She chose the home herself as it has a large heated smoking area and she can stay there all day.

I know two ladies who both lost their lives to cancer who never smoked however both husbands still smoke heavily and its over 12 years since they became widowers. Neither appear to be heavy drinkers.

However I know many who have numerous health issues due to alcohol intake.

Depends how much you drink !

Also first day of the school holidays here.

My grandad smoked every day until his death at 86 years. Not from cancer I might add

If this is a genuine question …..Go to a hospital to the pulmonary ward and have a check around at those on oxygen and look at the X-rays and see the dark brown crap on the lungs most will have been heavy smokers. Listen to a smokers laugh you can always recognise the sound, smell a smokers clothes the nicotine hangs around in all the fibres.
Take a child or baby’s oxygen levels if they live with a full time smoker you will be so surprised
Or
If this is wind up get back to art school

I had cervical cancer, and was really embarrassed when the surgeon told me they found nicotine in my biopsy. I still continued to smoke for a few more years though.

I will take this post on face value and ignore the date. In my many years working for the NHS, I consistently heard doctors say that smoking was worse for you than anything else like being overweight for example. I have never smoked because I watched my Mum damaging her health by smoking every day. She eventually died of emphysema thanks to cigarettes.

It stinks.

My mother smoked about 5 cigarettes a day from her teenage years until her late 40's. She developed asthma and COPD in her late 70's. It made the final years of her life miserable. She was on 24hr oxygen for the last 3-5 years of her life.
Her one regret was that she started smoking in the first place, even though, at the time it was a fashionable thing to do.

BiL didn’t give up even after he had his legs amputated, may he RIP.
Dr. Google Smoking is not just bad for your lungs. The chemicals in cigarette smoke can damage the blood vessels in the legs. Untreated, the condition can lead to amputation. For too many smokers, the first they learn of the connection is when a vascular surgeon diagnoses them with peripheral artery disease (PAD).

My father chain smoked roll ups. He didn't die of cancer but he had an aortic aneurism that burst, developed pneumonia from the long anaesthetic and spent 4 months in and out of ICU before going home and dying from a pulmonary embolism. All this came from smoking. As a child I was constantly ill with bronchitis and missed weeks of school every winter. All this ceased the minute I left home and got away from the smoke laden atmosphere.

Like everything else it's all in the genes. Some people are affected by a whiff of smoke and others can smoke all their lives until they die of old age. The problem is that you don't know what your tolerance level is, so you have no idea whether smoking will affect you or not. So it's a lottery.

I think alcohol is far worse due to the effect it has on society. It affects behaviour, causing wife beatings, street brawls and even murder. It makes people aggressive. Cigarettes do not make people behave like that.

mokryna My father in law was another heavy smoker. He was very lucky to avoid amputation but had to have several vein grafts in his legs. He eventually died of lung cancer.

My dad, a smoker since he had been 15 in 1945, died at 68, heart attack. 24 years ago.

My mum is still alive at 92, never smoked.

Mum was a secondhand smoker for 46 years although Dad did smoke outside for the last 20 years of his life.
Mum had breast cancer at 83.

My sisters and brother and I are all in our 60s now.|
We are hoping that it was Dad smoking that caused his untimely death.

We are all suffering with arthritis though like Mum and, seeing her in even more pain than we are, we are thinking about the pros and cons of lasting that long !

I stupidly smoked until I was pregnant at thirty I instantly gave up and never smoked again. My lovely dad never drank but smoked heavily his health was terrible from the of age forty five. Diabetes a heart attack thrombosis ulcerated legs triple bypass a massive stroke killed him aged sixty six all because of smoking.

It puzzles me which art school would allow smoking on the premises

Is it as dangerous as the media makes it out to be

Not the DM scaremongering again, is it?

I think flavored vaping should be outlawed. Here in France when I walk pass high schools I can smell chocolate or vanilla etc. The smell is caused by students who are being caught up in the distasteful habit which is being passed off lightly with ‘sweeties’ by the tobacco companies.

Callistemon21

It puzzles me which art school would allow smoking on the premises

I think BlueBelle is referring to bored ‘ on holiday’ students winding us up on gransnet ?

In my grandfather's and father's generation, almost all men smoked. Serving members of the armed forces received a cigarette allowance, and most men were either conscripted (in wartime) or did their two years national service.

One grandfather died of lung cancer at 59, two years after being given radiotherapy, then "sent home to die" as nothing more could be done for him. I remember him being frail and bedridden all that time, and my grandmother having to look after him. You think losing a couple of years at the end of your life is something unimportant? Try it and see, or try spending a couple of years caring for a sick husband and then not having him around for the rest of your life.

Of that gandfather's children, the two sons (ex-forces) both smoked heavily, and both died of cancer, one of lung cancer, the other stomach cancer. Yes, tobacco smoke causes cancer in other places besides the lungs. It is implicated in many tumours, including in the mouth, oesophagus, stomach, intestine, bladder, plus others. Everywhere the tars or juices reach,, and also where the bloodstream carries the cancer cells to form secondary tumours (metastases) The two daughters, who did not smoke (women didn't smoke very much then) did not develop cancers. That was ALL the men (smokers) in the family, but NONE of the women (non-smokers)

My other grandfather (also a smoker) developed a stomach cancer in his early fifties, but he was "lucky" - it was found and removed before it had spread to liver and/or lungs, and he survived. However, the effects of the surgery left him with digestive problems for the rest of his (long) life. His wife, a non-smoker who had nevertheless lived in a house with several smokers, did not develop it - but toward the end of her (also long) life she did have a lump in her stomach. It was not investigated further. Of their six children, three out of the four sons (all ex-service, all smokers) died of colon cancer, one of them in his fifties, the other two in their early seventies. The two (non smoker) daughters did not, but they both had stomach ulcers at one point of their lives, possibly as a result of living with smoker husbands. One of those husbands (ex-forces) died of liver cancer.

Final tally - almost all the smokers in my family have died of cancer - not suddenly, after a lifetime of happy inhaling, but slowly and painfully, and after tens of years of impaired lung function and circulation before the cancer, then two to five years of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, increasing breathlessness, immobility, and dependence on others for basic care. Some of those who didn't smoke at all, just breathed in the second-hand fumes, also suffered the same fate.

I wouldn't say that it was worth the cost.

Mokryna
The vape problem is worse than that here in the uk.
The pond life known as county lines (drug gangs) are targeting certain children with free vapes. Then they give them free vapes spiked with spice. Gotcha. ?

This is an old article but it’s a huge problem in schools.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/vaping-cannabis-oil-spice-fake-thc-manchester-children-a9250431.html