Cigarettes & The Cancer Pandemic

Cigarettes & The Cancer Pandemic

This Blog Entry is Informational

Non-Fiction / Editorial

Party people, barfly’s, night owls and other everyday folks engage in what the CDC calls an ‘epidemic’ and that ‘epidemic’ which anyone can opt out of being part of is called ‘cigarette smoking’.

What I didn’t understand until recently is why the CDC referred to cigarette smoking as an ‘epidemic’ and has classified its effects as a worldwide pandemic. I understand totally now with a clarity that is gut wrenching, heart breaking and depressing.

Someone in my family, a chain smoker, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. The diagnosis is unmistakable and the prognosis is real bad. I don’t smoke cigarettes but millions of others do, according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) the percentage of smoking adults in 2009 was 20.6% of all adults (46.6 million people in the United States).

Nearly everybody at a bar, any bar, smokes as much as they drink and they smoke cigarettes. Cigarettes are the most avoidable poison on the face of the planet and should be totally outlawed (not tobacco use - just cigarettes), but it isn’t because of what the Federal Government has allowed Tobacco Companies to put in cigarettes other than tobacco. I didn’t understand why cigarette smoking is an epidemic until I actually called and talked to somebody at the CDC.

The CDC spokesperson referred me to these statistics: Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, and lung diseases (including emphysema, bronchitis, and chronic airway obstruction). 1

For every person who dies from a smoking-related disease, 20 more people suffer with at least one serious illness from smoking.2

But this epidemic talk has me totally blown away. How has the Government of the United States successfully hid or obstructed this truth from getting out? So I decided to look to where I was pointed. The CDC said that an avalanche of information from scientists and researchers from all over the world has been available for the media and the public but it seems that it has gone ignored.

One in Two of all cigarette smokers will die from smoking cigarettes. A half billion people, nearly 8% of the world population will die from smoking cigarettes if current use of cigarettes maintain at their current levels.6

The CDC has published these statistics: Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death.

· Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 5 million deaths per year, and current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8 million deaths annually by 2030.³

· In the United States, tobacco use is responsible for about one in five deaths annually (i.e., about 443,000 deaths per year, and an estimated 49,000 of these tobacco-related deaths are the result of secondhand smoke exposure).

· On average, smokers die 13 to 14 years earlier than nonsmokers.3

Cigarettes have been designed to be addictive according to the Tri-County Cessation Center of Dutchess, Ulster and Sullivan Counties in New York. The number of toxins in a cigarette is outrageous. The exhaust from your automobile has to be cleaner than cigarette smoke. You may say “really”. But it’s true.5

There are over 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke and at least 69 of those chemicals are known to cause cancer.

The Tri-County Cessation Center reports, “Over 4000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette – 69 of those chemicals are known to cause cancer.

Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanides and ammonia are all present in cigarette smoke. Forty-three known carcinogens are in mainstream smoke, sidestream smoke or both.

It's chilling to think about not only how smokers poison themselves, but what others are exposed to by breathing in the secondhand smoke. The next time you're missing your old buddy, the cigarette, take a good long look at this list and see them for what they are: a delivery system for toxic chemicals and carcinogens.”

The shortlist of addictive and cancer causing chemicals in cigarettes are as follows:

• Acetanisole • Acetic Acid • Acetoin • Acetophenone • 6-Acetoxydihydrotheaspirane • 2-Acetyl-3- Ethylpyrazine • 2-Acetyl-5-Methylfuran • Acetylpyrazine • 2-Acetylpyridine • 3-Acetylpyridine • 2-Acetylthiazole • Aconitic Acid • Ammonia • Ammonium Bicarbonate • Ammonium Hydroxide • Ammonium Phosphate Dibasic • Ammonium Sulfide • Amyl Alcohol • Amyl Butyrate • Amyl Formate • Amyl Octanoate • alpha-Amylcinnamaldehyde

• Benzaldehyde • Benzaldehyde Glyceryl Acetal • Benzoic Acid, Benzoin • Benzoin Resin • Benzophenone • Benzyl Alcohol • Benzyl Benzoate • Benzyl Butyrate • Benzyl Cinnamate • Benzyl Propionate • Benzyl Salicylate • Dimethyltetrahydrobenzofuranone • delta-Dodecalactone • gamma-Dodecalactone • para-Ethoxybenzaldehyde • Hexyl 2-Methylbutyrate • Hexyl Acetate • Hexyl Alcohol • Hexyl Phenylacetate • 1-Histidine • 3,7-Dimethyl-6-Octenoic Acid • 2,4 Dimethylacetophenone

• 3-Methylthiopropionaldehyde • Methyl 3-Methylthiopropionate • 2-Methylvaleric Acid • Myristic Acid • 3,5,5-Trimethyl -1-Hexanol • para,alpha,alpha-Trimethylbenzyl Alcohol • 4-(2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohex-1- Enyl)But-2-En-4-One • 2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohex-2- Ene-1,4-Dione • 2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohexa-1, 3-Dienyl Methan • 4-(2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohexa-1, 3-Dienyl)But-2-En-4-One • 2,2,6-Trimethylcyclohexanone • 2,3,5-Trimethylpyrazine • 2-Methylheptanoic Acid • 2-Methylhexanoic Acid • 3-Methylpentanoic Acid • 4-Methylpentanoic Acid • 2-Methylheptanoic Acid • Fomaldyhide

I have always wondered why people keep smoking something that will kill them when the Tobacco Companies have listed the poisons that the Government allows them to put in cigarettes. The answer is simple: addiction! Once you get hooked on the cigarette you can’t seem to get off of it until dead. And the Cigarette companies have all but admitted this very fact.

“The list of 599 additives approved by the US Government for use in the manufacture of cigarettes is something every smoker should see. Submitted by the five major American cigarette companies to the Dept. of Health and Human Services in April of 1994, this list of ingredients had long been kept a secret."

Tobacco companies reporting this information were:

American Tobacco Company

Brown and Williamson

Liggett Group, Inc.

Philip Morris Inc.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company”4

So here we are, educated, hard working, intelligent people who knowingly suck on something all but designed to kill. The only people who profit from the use of cigarettes other than the Cigarette Companies are Doctors, Hospitals, Funeral Homes and Monument Salesman. The aftermath of having lost a loved one to cancer is emotionally scarring to say the least. But the real pain comes in going through it with someone you know or love.

It is pathetic, it is downright ignorant, people not only suffer from an addiction to a substance sanctioned by dark forces in their own government but pay the cigarette companies to kill them.

Somehow all of this is legal.

Find something else to suck on.

Don’t die from cancer you can easily avoid.

The following studies have been cited.

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses—United States, 2000–2004.Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2008;57(45):1226–8 [accessed 2011 Mar 11].

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cigarette Smoking-Attributable Morbidity—United States, 2000. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report2003;52(35):842–4 [accessed 2011 Mar 11].

3. World Health Organization. WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2009.Geneva: World Health Organization, 2008 [accessed 2011 Mar 11].

4. http://www.tricountycessation.org/tobaccofacts/Cigarette-Ingredients.html

5. http://www.nutramed.com/environment/carschemicals.htm

6. A descriptive model of the cigarette epidemic in developed countries; Alan D. Lopez, Neil E. Collishaw and Tapani Piha

Doris Maye