WNTD - World No Tobacco Day

One of my earliest health related memories involves Dr J Lucian Weatherford explaining the long term effects of smoking to me in the Emergency Room at Richland Memorial around 1974.

One of the latest and most devastating memories involving smoking was the explanation of why my biological father would not likely survive because of all the problems he had incurred as the results of smoking.

His unsympathetic attending physician's office and nursing staff at the hospital where he died did not help matters, either.

You see, his was a lifestyle disease caused by choices he made during the course of his life. Therefore he was undeserving of any level of compassion by those individuals from what I've gathered from the way his attending physician's office treated my distraught mother and the indifference on the part of the nursing people in the coronary intensive care unit.
 

Today is World No Tobacco Day. It is held under the auspices of the World Health Organization and happens each May 31st in an effort to encourage abstinence from all tobacco internationally.

It draws attention to the prevalence of using tobacco products and emphasizes their cumulative negative health effects.

Current statistics place the incidence of mortality from tobacco at almost 6 million deaths with some ten percent of those being non smokers exposed to second hand smoke.

The observance began in 1987 and has been the subject to the full gamut of reactions from enthusiastic support through adamant opposition on the part of governments, organizations involved in public health, smokers, farmers, and the tobacco industry at large.

Ash trays holding fresh flowers are a common symbol of the day.

If you don't smoke don't start. If you do smoke then quit.