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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> > Now I am glad I never took up the habit.

We recently celebrated my father's 81st birthday.  All my uncles, all 
Herself's uncles, my FIL, who smoked are dead, almost everyone of them of 
tobacco 
induced cancer of some sort.  My father quit when he was 38 years old.

Like you, I've never smoked, never used tobacco in any form.  If pressed for 
a reason I suppose I'd say that it's nasty stuff and I never overcame the 
revulsion enough to see the other side of it.  Yet, Jeanne, do you not also 
recall 
the rationalization you heard in the 50's and 60's ..... "when your number's 
up, it's up!  I know someone who died of this or that and they never smoked a 
day in their life.  My grandpa lived to be some ghastly old age ... like 61 
.... and smoked every day of his life!"   Yet here at the end, all the (at 
least) men I know personally who are healthy and are past 70 years old are 
non-smokers.  The rest are dead.   The statistics are a slam dunk.

Alas, today's problem is obesity, and today's people have the same penchant 
for denial that smokers had in 1955.