Poll:Did either one of your parents smoke?

[street]

Since there was a poll on how many of us smoke. I thought it might be interesting to see how many of our parents smoked.

Times have changed and will be interesting to see the difference in numbers.

Yes my dad smoked and lived a very long life even after smoking 70 plus years.

 

[Dtail]

Both my parents smoked on a regular basis until about 40 years old. No noticeable effects.

 

[scrabbler1]

Street, how should we answer this if a parent smoked early on but quit when I was very young, say 5 or 6 years old? As far as I am concerned, my dad is a non-smoker.

 

[MRG]

DF did, a heavy 2 pack a day smoker. He quit cold turkey when they buried his DM. She didn't like him smoking. He quit about 50 and passed at 96. Didn't seem to slow him down.

 

[Oz investor]

yes my father smoked , but he died of an aggressive bowel cancer when i was 14

so it probably didn't impact on my ( non ) smoking decision later

 

[street]

Street, how should we answer this if a parent smoked early on but quit when I was very young, say 5 or 6 years old? As far as I am concerned, my dad is a non-smoker.

Well, if you feel or view that as a smoker then vote accordingly.

 

[swakyaby]

Father smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes 1-2 packs per day. Sister and I used to run around the house, jump up in the air, click our heels together, and chant "You've got to Kick the habit and join the unhooked generation!" from a popular 1960's commercial. He quit within 6 months of us doing that.

He passed at age 69 from colon cancer.

 

[rodi]

Dad smoked cigarettes - switched to pipes when he was about 30... and quit before I was 5 years old. I have vague memories of his pipes and the smell of pipe tobacco.

Mom smoked her whole life. (Also drank a lot). Ironically the cancer that killed her is completely unrelated to smoking and drinking risk.

Mom's smoking is why none of us kids smoke... none of us liked it... especially being in the car with her.

Being in California - smoking is very unusual in public. I had quite the culture shock when I moved to Philly in the 90's... Went to see a lawyer and the receptionist was chain smoking.... I was shocked. Also, turned out they'd banned smoking at your desk at my workplace only a year earlier. One manager, who's office was right by my cubicle, regularly smoked at his desk after hours, despite the change in policy.

 

[97guns]

Both my parents smoked for 15 or 20 years, mom a little less than dad. Dad developed COPD and passed from complications at 83, he was on oxygen at his end days, mom is 84 now and doing pretty good, she has slight emphazema but is still breathing ok without help, she will get winded if walking longer distances.

I have an aunt that’s in her late 80’s/early 90’s that’s got really bad breathing problems, she is on oxygen and still smoking a pack a day

 

[Clone]

Both of my parents were heavy smokers. Killed both of them in their early 70s.

 

[Texas Proud]

I fibbed a bit on the answer...


From what I was told, Dad smoked a bit when he was really young... but calculated out that over his lifetime he would spend more money than it would cost to buy a house.... he quit...


So I put down no since almost all of his life he did not... Mom never did...

 

[Katsmeow]

My father smoked. He started as a teenager. He tried to quit several times, but just could never do it. He died of lung cancer when he was 75. It was a shame since he was otherwise so healthy. He was very active right up until he was diagnosed.

 

[mamadogmamacat]

My mother never smoked. Grew up on a farm, so she was very active all her life, ate well, lots of meat and veggies and almost no sugar. Then she died in her mid sixties of the same type of brain cancer that killed off a lot of women in my maternal line of descent, including her mother and maternal grandmother. My dad smoked cigars and cigarettes, although he was not a heavy smoker, maybe one or two, perhaps three or four times per week. He lived into his early eighties and Alzheimer's is what killed him.

Genetics drove their fates, not environment or lifestyle choices. YMMV

 

[HadEnuff]

I distinctly remember my mom giving up the cigs when I was 6 years old. I don't think she ever smoked heavily. She walked the golf course nearly every day of my youth, and played golf nearly every day, until she died at the age of 75 of ovarian cancer.
My dad seldom smoked cigarettes, but smoked cigars until he was in his 50s. We finally shamed him into quitting, it was so stinky and gross. He lived to be 88, basically his body just wore out. He was quite strong and healthy until a series of bad falls slowed him down when he was 82-83.

I smoked from age 16- 21. I tell young people who smoke that quitting was the best present I ever gave myself.

 

[Amethyst]

I can barely remember my Dad smoking cigars, and he smoked cigarettes too. He quit cold turkey when I was about 4; he would have been in his early 50's. He had a mild heart attack and the Dr. scared sense into him. He died at 87 of complications from a car accident.

My Mom smoked till the end of her life, though she greatly reduced the # of cigarettes with age, the climbing cost of cigarettes, and moving in with my sister and BIL, who did not allow smoking inside their home. In her 50's, she already had symptoms of COPD although she attributed them to "allergies." Around age 70 she was finally diagnosed with emphysema, which was listed as her cause of death at 84.

 

[Richard4444]

My parents both smoked at least a pack a day and at 76, Dad passed from metastatic bladder Ca which is heavily correlated with smoking. Mom, nine years younger than Dad, quit that day cold turkey but smoking didn't seem to affect her longevity. She passed at age 91 due to 'failure to thrive' but did live with bladder Ca as well (very odd) since she was ~ 52 y o.

Rich

 

[FIREd]

Both parents smoked. My mother was a “social smoker” (she only smoked around other smokers, often at the end of a meal). But my father smoked about a pack a day until his late 40’s, when he quit (his own father was a tobacconist so he grew up around tobacco and started smoking at a young age). So far neither one of them, now both in their 70’s, seems to suffer any adverse effect from it.

 

[harllee]

My father was a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer at age 55. It was a horrible death. I hated that he smoked all my life and I have never touched a cigarette my self.

My mom never smoked and she is age 86, doing great, living in an independent apartment in a Continuing Care Retirement Community.

 

[JoeWras]

Mom: yes about 50 years. Peer pressure in high school, 40's. Died from it early (heart disease). Suffered from it greatly due to PAD. Smoking and PAD go hand in hand. You do not want PAD.

Dad: yes, about 40 years, lighter than mom. Probably no major effects, although CHF caused his death near 90. Heart failure may or may not be related. He lived a full life.

Dad was a WWII vet and started then. He basically said that all the guys had the same thought: "I may die, so let's see what this is like." WWII tobacco company marketing dream.

 

[Dawg52]

My Dad quit smoking in his mid 40's. Died at 84 unrelated to smoking.

 

[athena53]

No, but my maternal grandparents did. I think that's what turned Mom off of smoking. She said when she was a kid they'd be in the car to visit her grandparents (about a 45-minute drive) and the car would fill with smoke. Later, after she married and had us, she said she could smell cigarette smoke when she changed the diapers of whoever was at that stage after we came home from a visit. When Grandma was in the hospital after a heart attack, one Aunt was smuggling cigarettes and martinis in to her.

Grandma died of metastatic breast cancer at age 74, but I think she'd deliberately ignored the symptoms and figured her time was up. She died two weeks after the diagnosis. Grandpa may have quit in his later years but lived until 95.

 

[Bamaman]

And emphysema from smoking put my mother in the hospital time and time again in her last years.

Smoking also ages people dramatically and often takes 10 years for their life. Notice how wrinkled they look? I can spot a smoker a mile away.

 

[ocean]

Both parents smoked heavily when I was a child. Thank goodness we lived in a locale where the windows were able to stay open much of the year for some of those years. Both ended up having triple bypasses.

I never smoked and am sensitive to smoke from cigarettes. (Ask me about the time I broke my mother’s nose when getting into a tussle over my distress over smoke coming into my bedroom one day when I was a teenager. D-: No, I mean don’t ask...lol)

 

[ocean]

^^ It was an accident btw

 

[Another Reader]

My father started smoking at boot camp during WWII. There was a bowl filled with cigarettes at the USO. I vividly remember Walter Cronkite announcing the results of the surgeon general's report linking smoking to cancer on the news around 1963. My father got up, threw the rest of the pack away, and never smoked again. He died of complications from Alzheimer's at 82.

My mother took it up at about the same age. She was very addicted and did not quit until 1984, although she tried several times. She smoked unfiltered Pall Malls. She died of the aggressive small cell lung cancer at 71, twelve years after she quit.

I had asthma as a child and my lungs still show the signs of smoke exposure. I never smoked or drank. Both felt like you were poisoning yourself to me. I could not understand why someone would deliberately ingest poison.