Surgeon General’s report highlights numerous health risks of smoking

(Photo by Geierunited)

A new report released by the Surgeon General of the United States warns that smoking causes a lot more health problems than increasing the risk for lung cancer:

January 17, 2014

A new report by the U.S. surgeon general warns that smoking cigarettes causes more health problems than previously thought.

The study, released on Friday, follows the 50th anniversary of the surgeon general’s landmark report that first confirmed smoking causes lung cancer.

The latest report said smoking can also cause conditions such as liver and colorectal cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and even erectile dysfunction.

Since the 1964 announcement, which led to the start of the anti-smoking movement, U.S. smoking rates have gone from 42 percent to their current level of 18 percent.

Acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak said the government may not reach its goal of reducing that rate to 12 percent by 2020, warning there is still a “major catastrophe going on.”

The report found that smoking has killed more than 20 million Americans in the past 50 years, and another 5.6 million of today’s children will die prematurely because of smoking, if current trends hold.

It also said there is not enough information about the long-term effects of increasingly popular electronic cigarettes. Some have used the so-called e-cigarettes to stop smoking. However, critics warn that they are deceptive, still dangerous and not effective as a cessation tool.

Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable deaths in the U.S. The report said the U.S. spends more than $289 billion ever year on medical care and other economic factors linked to smoking.

Secondhand smoking was also identified in the report as increasing the risk of stroke by 20 to 30 percent. http://www.voanews.com/content/cigarettes-cause-more-health-problems-than-just-lung-cancer-report/1832001.html

Every day more than 3,000 children try smoking for the first time, according to Tobacco-Free Kids–about 1/4-1/3 then get basically get addicted to it.

If people realized how harmful many behaviors, and not just smoking, were, there would be a lot of positive benefits for society. And that will come more fully in the kingdom of God.

As far as smoking goes, here are some comments about it by the late Hebert W. Armstrong from his Autobiography:

In order to keep up with the job, due to inadaptability and resultant slowness, it became necessary to work nights. I established a system. I worked alternately one night until ten, the next until midnight, rising at 5:30 every morning. Time had to be taken out to walk the one or two miles from my room to the mill, and also to walk over to the boarding house where I took meals. I kept awake on the job nights by smoking a pipe — my first habitual smoking. In just six months this overwork and loss of sleep exacted its toll, and I was sent to the hospital with a very severe case of typhoid fever…

I had taken up pipe smoking during those long and frantic night hours at Wiggins, Mississippi, as an aid to staying awake while I worked over the books. I had smoked, moderately, ever since. However, I will say that I was never a heavy smoker. Never more than one cigar a day, or three or four cigarettes in a day. That’s the reason I did not have the battle many men have had in breaking the habit, when I saw that it had to be broken…

{Later} I was baptized, the matter of smoking had to be settled. Of course the Quaker church, in which I had been reared as a boy, taught that smoking was a sin. But I had been unhappily disillusioned to see that in so many basic points the Bible teaching is the very opposite of what I had absorbed in Sunday school. “I’ve got to see the answer to the tobacco question IN THE BIBLE!” I said to myself. Until I found the answer in the Bible, I decided I would continue as before — smoking mildly. I had continued to smoke lightly, averaging three or four cigarettes a day, or one cigar a day. I had never been a heavy smoker.

Now I had to face the question: Is smoking a SIN? I wanted the BIBLE answer, for I had learned by this time that Christ had said we must live by EVERY WORD OF GOD. The BIBLE is our Instruction Book on right living. We must find a BIBLE reason for everything we do. I knew, of course, there is no specific command, “Thou shalt not smoke.” But the absence of a detailed prohibition did not mean God’s approval. I had learned that GOD’S LAW is His WAY OF LIFE. It is a basic philosophy of life.

The whole Law is summed up in the one word LOVE.

I knew that love is the opposite of lust. Lust is self-desire — pleasing the self only. Love means loving others. Its direction is not inward toward self alone, but outgoing, toward others. I knew the Bible teaches that “lust of the flesh” is the way of SIN.

So now I began to apply the principle of God’s Law. I asked myself, “WHY do I smoke?” To please others — to help others — to serve or minister to or express love toward others — or only to satisfy and gratify a desire of the flesh within my own self? The answer was instantaneously obvious. I had to be honest with it. My only reason for smoking was LUST OF THE FLESH, and lust of the flesh is, according to the BIBLE, sin! I stopped smoking immediately.

This beginning of overcoming was not too difficult, for it had not been a “big habit” with me. Once weaned, I was able to see it as it is — a dirty, filthy habit. And today we know it is a serious and major contributing cause of lung cancer! God designed and created the human body. He designed the LUNGS to take in FRESH AIR to fire and oxidize the blood, and at the same time to filter out of the blood the impurities and waste matter the blood has picked up throughout the body. Befouled smoke, containing the poisons of nicotine and tars, reduces the efficiency of the operation of this vital organ.

The physical human body is, God says, the very TEMPLE of His Holy Spirit. If we defile this TEMPLE — this physical body — God says He will destroy us! God intended us, if we are to be COMPLETE, to live happy, healthy and abundant lives, and to gain eternal life, to take in HIS SPIRIT — not poisonous foreign substances like tobacco.

Hebert W. Armstrong died on January 16, 1986, at age 93 1/2. His reasons for quitting smoking make biblical sense to me. People should not smoke. It harms them and others around them.

He concluded, correctly, that Christians should not smoke.

(Those interested in learning more about Herbert W. Armstrong, should read the article Who Was Herbert W. Armstrong? How is He Viewed Today?)

Notice some of what the New Testament teaches:

19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

37…”‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Consider that smoking does not glorify God in your body–it harms your body. Consider that smoking also does not show love towards one’s neighbor–it harms your neighbor. Smoking is a sin against the body, and sometimes more than that.

Smoking is wrong, it is harmful, and it kills people. God wants people to change/repent (Acts 17:30)–which means that, despite its difficulties it can be done (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:13). The sooner one starts the better one will be. Christians should strive to not smoke.

Several items of possibly related interest include:

Is Smoking a Sin? What does the Bible teach? What have COG leaders written? Can smokers change?
Living as a Christian: How and Why? In what ways do Christians live differently than others. What about praying, fasting, tithing, holy days, and the world? There is also a YouTube video related to that also called: Living as a Christian: How and Why?
Who Was Herbert W. Armstrong? How is He Viewed Today? Includes quotes from the 1973 edition of The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong and explains how he is and should be viewed today.
Overcoming Sin What is sin? How are Christians suppose to overcome it? Here is also a link to a video titled How to Overcome Sin.
How to Prevent Sin This is an article by Herbert W. Armstrong.
Just What Do You Mean Conversion? Many think that they are converted Christians. But are they? Would you like to know more about conversion. Herbert W. Armstrong wrote this as a booklet on this important subject.