A study from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) reported in 1977 that the lung cancer rate among female smokers was 191.4 per 100,000 population and 392.9 per 100,000 among male smokers. Among nonsmoking females the rate was 9.4 per 100,000 and 12.5 per 100,000 among non-smoking males. This is very significant! The USPHS estimate is that nearly 75.000 of the 84,000 who die of lung cancer every year would not die if they didn't smoke. The cancer rate among female smokers is twelve times greater than it is among non-smokers and among male smokers it is thirty-five times higher than male non-smokers. That means that among smokers the lung cancer rate is 1 in 25 and among non-smokers it is nearly 1 in 10,000. Significant, isn't it?

The Framington Study of over five thousand subjects for sixteen years has demonstrated conclusively that cigarette smoking is extremely hazardous to health. The over-all death rate from all causes for smokers is twice that of nonsmokers in the same areas, in the same jobs and from the same backgrounds. The USPHS call smoking "the foremost cause of preventable disease and death in this country." The British Royal College of Physicians compares the effect of cigarette smoking to "the lethal power of great diseases such as typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis. "

Among adult men, the smoking rate is down 25% but among women the rate is up about an equal amount. The greatest increase is among pre-adult girls and boys. Most of the increase in consumption has been among women and the very young. This is tragic, especially when as much as 15% of those 12 years and under smoke. The smoking rate is highest of any age group among those between 15 and 21, both girls and boys. It is a paradox that the older and wiser and best informed segment of our population is decreasing smoking while the uninformed and least wise are the ones that are consuming the most and taking up the habit at an increasingly younger age.

The Christian should understand that his smoking can affect not only his health and cause early death, but it affects his children and those with whom he associates. Children whose parents don't smoke only have a 15% smoking rate but among children whose parents do smoke, 85% also smoke. So not only do smoking Christians endanger their own bodies and souls, but affect and influence others also.

The only bright side to this ugly picture is that it is possible to stop smoking! More than that, to stop causes a marked diminution in the health hazard and death risk. According to the American Cancer Society's study of more than a million subjects-the largest of the prospective investigations male smokers had up to twice the overall mortality of nonsmokers; the risk being greater according to the number of cigarettes smoked and the duration of the smoking habit. Women smokers also had a higher mortality rate but less than men. Those who had given up smoking before joining the study had death rates that decreased according to the length of time since they last smoked cigarettes.

Those who used to smoke 1 to 19 cigarettes a day showed a steady decline in risk, so that after 10 years, they had the same mortality rate as those who had never smoked. Heavier smokers (more than 20 cigarettes a day) began to reduce their risk five years after stopping, but even after 10 years, their mortality rate was higher than those who had never smoked. In the ACS and other studies, mortality rates in the first year after stopping tend to be higher than those of smokers, because it is often illness that makes the person quit.

The study of British doctors is frequently quoted to illustrate a beneficial effect of stopping smoking on total mortality. Male doctors aged 35 to 64 years showed a fall in mortality of 12.4% in the years 1962-65 compared with 1953-57, whereas in the total male population the fall was only 2.9%. Half of the doctors who smoked had given up smoking during these years while those in the general population were said not to have altered their smoking.

A recent report from the Framington study provides support in that "men who gave up smoking after entry to the study had half the attack rate for coronary heart disease, excluding angina, compared with those who continued to smoke."

All of this should be encouraging to those who have smoked and now desire to stop. Basically, if one stops now, in 10 years he has largely overcome the hazardous effect on his body. Of course, if one continues to smoke, they continue to run the increased risk of premature death.

Over 55% of all physicians have quit smoking and now less than 20% of all physicians smoke at all. In a recent survey of over 10,000 physicians, 98% answered yes to the question "Do you consider cigarette smoking as hazardous to health?" and 2% answered that they weren't sure yet. None answered the questionnaire that it was their opinion that there was no hazard to health in smoking. As the American Cancer Society poster says, "Maybe they know something you don't know." You could know and should know what a health hazard smoking is.

Anyone who thinks cigarette smoking is not harmful and hazardous to one's health can't read the label on the package and can't read the volumes of published material that is available. How many rational normal people would continue to eat cranberry sauce or tuna fish or candy if the package said: WARNING: consuming this material can be dangerous to your health! Yet millions go on inhaling cigarette smoke despite the warning. What would happen to the sale of tuna fish if it could be proved that one in twenty-five people who eat tuna fish would develop lung cancer. While there are other people who live in the same area and work at the same jobs but who do not eat tuna fish and the lung cancer rate among these people is one in 10,000. How many would continue to eat tuna fish?