Letter: Smoker’s last dying words— Lung cancer, don’t smoke

Friday, Sept. 19, 1997 | 1:50 a.m.

The first sentence states, "When nonsmokers are exposed to smoky environments, traces of a cancer-causing substance can be detected in their bodies...," but then judging from the smokers who have responded to my letters to the editor, the bottom line is smokers just don't care that they are harming other people. The only thing they care about is that they themselves are addicted to and enjoy nicotine. The fact that they are inflicting death on others -- "13 percent of lung cancers occur in people who don't smoke and are exposed to secondhand smoke" -- doesn't concern them.

Smokers speak of their civil right to do so. Yet there is nothing either civil, nor right, about inflicting injurious cigarette smoke on others.

It is apparent to me from the letters of the smokers that smoking kills brain cells. I have yet to see one intelligent argument to support smoking in public places.

I do understand that it is in desperation that smokers are grasping at straws. Isn't there a saying about "the straw that broke Joe Camel's back?" Speaking of Joe Camel, chances are good that those aren't humps on his back, but that they are tumors.

Smokers want the last word, here it is, from Yul Brynner, the late actor. His last pleading words left on this Earth were, "If you are watching me now, it is because I am dead from lung cancer -- don't smoke!"

There, now a smoker has had the last words -- the last dying words, that is.

Sandra Hanson