Columnist Susan Snyder: Danger of smoking is a slow burn

Friday, Jan. 3, 2003 | 8:53 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

The kid ahead of us in the grocery line joked with the cashier, pulled out his Nevada driver's license and plopped down $3.69 for a pack of cigarettes.

"Boy, I'm glad I don't work here any more," he said as the checker ran to a different stand to retrieve his brand.

We smiled, but we were in shock.

My companion was in sticker shock. He recalled paying 19 cents a pack or $1.98 a carton for smokes on his U.S. Air Force base in Korea. And he paid more than that before he stopped smoking in 1987.

I was sort of in shock over the fact that someone young enough to be carded for buying cigarettes was actually buying them. Don't they know better yet?

According to a Las Vegas Sun report published Thursday, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study coming out this year will show the rate of smoking-related cancers in Nevada is higher than the national average.

Nearly a third of our state's adult population smokes. For 10 years Nevada has had one of the nation's three highest rates of smoking. State figures released earlier this week show 63 of every 100,000 Nevadans die from cancers of the lung, throat or windpipe, compared to the national average of 57.

The first year my companion quit smoking, he took the money he'd have spent on cigarettes each week, dropped it into a jar and paid for a ski trip. At $3.69 a pack, the kid we saw could sock away $1,346.25 in a year. Hello, Aspen -- if he still has the lungs. Cancer, however, is a thief.

We buried a friend in October after his two-year battle with cancer.

Last week a close girlfriend e-mailed a thank-you for the gift I'd sent and said she was toasting 2003 and the lesions that physicians have found on her liver. The highly rare, aggressive form of cancer that struck early last year has not abated.

These two people don't know where their cancer came from. They had no known choices for avoiding it.

But we know smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. Tobacco companies even have been forced to admit it with their checkbooks. Yet young people still start.

Older generations were oblivious to the risks. We grew up with the Marlboro Man, and with Lucy Ricardo innocently puffing away in front of the mantel.

But people young enough to be carded grew up with U.S. Surgeon General warnings, widespread information in school and even peer pressure that makes them stand outside in the sleet to light up.

Why do they still smoke?

Maybe they haven't tried to hold up their end of a conversation with a longtime pal whose entire future hangs in the balance of the next CAT scan. Try to think of something witty, comforting or appropriate that follows, "They found a couple more lesions on my liver."

Maybe they believe they can always quit. After 16 years without a cigarette, my companion says he still thinks about it sometimes. But he says he wouldn't have even one, because he knows there's no such thing.

"It is really hard to quit," he said.

Seems harder to die, when you do it month by month, piece by piece. It certainly is hard for your friends to watch.

Many of us make resolutions to give up bad habits. But resolving never to start usually is easier.