Lesson 15

ge a package a day for 20 years will lose about eight years of their lives.
    Along with the increase in cigarette smoking, many scientific investigations
have been undertaken. Overwhelming evidence proves the danger and harm of smoking.

    Experimental, clinical-pathological, and epidemiological evidence indicates that cigarette smoking is the main cause of lung cancer.The risk of developing lung cancer increases with the number of cigarettes smoked per day and the duration of the smoking habit, and it diminishes with the cessation of smoking.

    Cigarette smoking was also found to be connected with other types of cancer. It is considered a major factor in causing cancer of the larynx and is associated with cancer of the esophagus. Smoking is a significant factor in the development of oral cancer, and pipe smoking alone or with other tobacco use, is causally related to lip cancer.
    Cigarette smoking is the greatest cause of chronic bronchitis. A person suffering from chronic bronchitis may have the disease and the cough connected with it, for many years, perhaps for the rest of his life.

    Cigarette smoking has also been found to be connected with pulmonary emphysema, a disabling disease of the lungs. The smoking of cigarettes increases the risk of dying from chronic bronchitis and from pulmonary emphysema.
    Smoking is associated with coronary heart disease. Nowadays this disease accounts for a high percentage of deaths annually. Cigarette smokers are much more likely to die from a heart attack than nonsmokers.

    Smoking injures blood vessels, speeds up hardening of the arteries and increases the work of the heart. It is one of the factors contributing to high blood pressure.
    What little we've mentioned above is sufficient to show that smoking is extremely harmful to health. Most peple throughout the.world have come to realize the danger. Nowadays some governments are taking practical measures against smoking. We sincerely advise those who have formed the smoking habit to stop and those who haven,t yet started not to. It is both for your own sake and for the sake of the next generation.    

 A recent survey report says that children exposed to parental cigarette smoke may be put at a higher risk of developing lung disease later in fheir lives. Passive exposure to smoke may. also interfere with normal lung growth in young children. There is a strong association between parental smoking and children' s pulmonary function. Children who recorded the weakest lung function were found to be smokers themselves and to have parents or brothers and sisters who smoked.
    So let us join together to launch a mass movement to break this harmful smoking habit, and build ourselves up, healthy and strong, to work hard for the four modernizations.

                     6. Call to Stop Offering Cigarettes!

    To the Chinese, who claim to have invented rules of etiquette, offering igarettes is a way of being hospitable to guests.
    When somebody calls, first of all, the host would offer him a cigarette and a cup of tea. In the countryside, hospitable, old men often allow visiting guests to share the long-stemmed Chinese pipe which they themselves are smoking. At wedding ceremonies, brides would offer cigarettes to all guests who came to eXpress their congratulations and light the cigarettes for.each of them one after another.

    All these were originally aimed.. at displaying the Chinese hospitality and respect towards the guests. But in recent years, the oId tradition has been used as a means to nurse good relations.
    Even those who never smoke have brand-name cigarettes in their pockets. Whenever they have to seek somebody's favour, they first offer him a cigarette, If the other party turns it down, he is being impolite. If he accepts it he has to do something, for courtesy demands a favour in return.

    Tobacco contains harmful substances. So offering cigarettes to somebody is equal to doing harm to him, gut neither people who offer cigarettes nor those who take them fully realize it.
    It is even more unhealthy for the host to pass the long-stemmed Chinese pipe or water pipe to the visitor after smoking it beforehand.
    Once I paid a visit to a relative who had just returned from abroad. He was smoking but did not produce one for me. Instead, he placed the cigarette packet on the table and told me: "Cigarettes produce carbon monoxide and nicotine. But if you don't mind this, take it yourself.?

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