Calling all smokers

Ke

Saturday, April 5, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

The Oregonian newspaper recently interviewed a woman who was quite frank about what cigarettes had done to her body. “How crazy could I have been?” Kathy Conn said in reflecting on her 33 years of smoking.

At age 48, Conn was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is almost always fatal. Radiation and chemotherapy so sickened her that she dropped to 82 pounds. Diabetes set in after her pancreas was removed.

Then part of her lung had to be cut out after more cancer appeared.

Now 54 and a nonsmoker, Conn has survived. But her father, mother and sister did not. Her father died of lung cancer in 1999, her mother died of heart disease in 2003 and her sister died last year of lung and brain cancer.

“My family is gone, from smoking. I have no family, other than my children,” she told the Portland newspaper, adding that her kids do not smoke.

The story’s main point was that from a health perspective, it is better — far and away better — to never begin smoking. Even a light smoker who quits after a few months will carry some lifetime risk of disease, given that any amount of tobacco smoke can damage genes.

But the story, paraphrasing health experts, also said: The fact that risk lingers long after the smoke from your last cigarette clears is no reason to keep smoking.

The sooner a smoker quits, the greater the chance for dodging what Kathy Conn went through.

But before smokers say, “I’ve tried, can’t do it,” they should log on to www.BecomeAnEX.org, a Web site launched this week by an alliance of national organizations and state health agencies.

This effort to help people become ex-smokers is the result of years of research and testing by the Mayo Clinic, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Legacy Foundation and other equally renowned groups.

For the sake of their bodily organs, and their lives, smokers should give it a try.