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Nobodies Opinion February 2015

Kneecap

By Billy “Kneecap” Braddock

February is the month of love. This year instead of giving flowers, candy, or jewelry give someone a life. “Your life”! If you are a cigarette smoker you are taking away from your loved ones the presence of your life. Let me explain my opinion. I’m not one that runs around screaming down with smoking. As a matter of fact, I disagreed with the law that takes away the right of a business owner to run his business like he wants. I hated it when they said that businesses that serve more than 10% food have to ban smoking. I’m sorry Mr. Obama that small business owner did “build that” and should be allowed to run his business in a way he feels fit. A smoking section in a restaurant was like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.

The reason I’m discussing this is that in December just before Christmas I lost my stepmother that I dearly loved. This awakened a lot of memories. January 11, 1964 the United States Surgeon General announced that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. By that time, I’d already been smoking for eight years. I wasn’t just a normal smoker. I smoked anywhere from 3 to 4 packs a day. I inhaled so hard that smoke came out of my big toenail. When I farted there would be smoke rings and I think those stains on my shorts were from nicotine. Cigarette companies even offered coupons that you could turn in for luxury items. If you could collect 10,000 coupons you could get an Iron Lung. All this did not dissuade me or anybody in my family from smoking. My grandfather died of heart failure brought on from smoking, my father died of throat cancer. My wake-up day came after 48 years of smoking when I woke up one morning couldn’t breathe and coughed myself until I almost blacked out. I went to the doctor who told me I had diminishing lung capacity and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). I’m not asking for sympathy I’m just explaining a point that this all could have been avoided. All statistics in the world will not get you to quit smoking. That has to come from you. All the helpers, medications, patches, and gums will not help until you get your mindset that you’re going to quit.

Cigarette smoking has been identified as the most important source of preventable mortality and premature mortality worldwide. Smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 433,000 American lives each year. Smokers die significantly earlier than non-smokers 13.2 years for men and 14.5 years for women. If you don’t care about your own life, think about the lives of the people around you. The ones who love you. The ones that will have to care for you when you no longer are able to care for yourself. The son or daughter who will not see their daddy or mommy at their wedding or at the birth of the grandchild. If you decide to commit suicide, don’t do it with cigarettes, it takes much too long.

They tell me that if you’re really afraid of spiders one will show up in your bedroom. I’m very afraid of Carrie Underwood.

Read more on my website nobodiesopinion.com

See you on the shiny side up tomorrow…

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