Kiss My Ash!

I have never been a smoker. However, years ago, following back surgery, I was misdiagnosed with a pulmonary embolism. I was placed on a pulmonary floor of a major hospital which, needless to say, was populated almost exclusively with smokers, many of them near death. The sounds of oxygen equipment and agonizing wheezing and gasps for air resonated in desperate misery as I walked the hallways towing my IV drip, getting my mandated post-operative exercise. I always thought that “future smokers of America” should first be required to take a field trip to just such a place.

One of the tests I faced was a nuclear lung scan, searching for that mysterious (and non-existent) blood clot. The techie who administered the test had a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, which I noted to him seemed a bit odd given his job at the hospital. He looked at me and said, “There are 90 people working in this pulmonary unit. I am the only smoker. I know I am going to die, and probably not in a good way, but I love to smoke more than life.” Ugh!

The litany of often fatal health impairments that result from or are exacerbated by smoking are massive. But ever wonder what role genetics might play in whether or not someone might become a heavy smoker? Why are the effects in some smokers so much worse that in others? In a world where “it’s not your fault,” it might be advisable for wannabee smokers to assess their future based on those early puffs. Researchers at Duke University had the same questions as they began studies of smokers over longer periods of time in order to determine “cause and effect” variables among smokers.

“[The Duke] researchers looked at 1,037 men and women who were a part of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study of New Zealand, which had followed participants from birth to age 38 to study their behaviors, health, and lifestyles. They created a ‘genetic risk score’ by looking at gene markers thought to be linked to heavy smoking and, when they applied this to the study participants, they got a genetic risk score that could predict who might become pack-a-day smokers.

“‘These genetic risks were very much about smoking behavior earlier in life,’ said Daniel Belsky, a post-doctoral research fellow at Duke University's Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development and the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. ‘People with the increased risk went quickly from trying their first cigarette to becoming a heavy smoker.’

“Of the people in the study, 880 had tried cigarettes. The genetic risk score could not predict who would try smoking, but the researchers found that those with high-risk genetic profiles were 24 percent more likely to become daily smokers by age 15, and 43 percent more likely to smoke a pack a day by age 18. In addition, adults with a high-risk genetic profiles were 27 percent more likely to become nicotine dependent and 22 percent more likely to fail in their attempts to quit smoking.

“The high-risk factor, however, did not change the rate of addiction in people who started smoking as adults, Belsky said…‘This association only occurred in people who had started smoking regularly in their teens,’ he said. ‘Most people try cigarettes as a teen, but only some of them become regular smokers as teens. That group is the one where genetic risk most potent.’” EverydayHealth.com, March 27^th.

Strangely, if you have that nasty genetic marker, waiting to start smoking later in life actually makes it easier to quit later on. Of course, what “I wanna smoke” kid makes that assessment as the take their first puff? If you wait to start smoking, the odds are vastly better that you never will. “Only the young die good”? Millions of native Americans perished as European ancestors invaded North America… but did these dispossessed aboriginal people ultimately kill more invaders (and their progeny) than their own losses by introducing these white devils to tobacco? A fitting revenge.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Joe Camel’s humps may well have been very large tumors!