Before Marlboro identified with the cowboy ads appealed to moms

Women have caught up with men.

Women and men share the same likelihood of dying from smoking. We’ve closed the gap.

But the scary thing is the risk and the odds. Smoking will increase your risk of death by 25%.

In what other pursuits will you get such favorable odds?

The New England Journal of Medicine reports this week: “Smoking causes 25% of deaths among men and women 35 to 69 years of age” (Jan. 24, p. 341).

Yikes.

And while smoking is down among adults—dipping to a low of 19%–the smoking rate for youth is steady with no change from 2004.

In other words, while adults continue to quit smoking altogether, folks in their teens and twenties held the same pattern for the last decade.

The Journal notes that one thing is true: no matter when you start, the effects stay with you.

Kids may figure that they can quit later and then reap the healthy benefits, but the report says that you can’t erase years of smoking.

Quitting lowers your risk of dying from lung and heart disease compared to smokers. But the healthiest folks are those who never smoked.

[Marlboro ad from the 1950s downloaded from http://www.creativepro.com/article/heavy-metal-madness-we-ve-come-a-long-way-maybe%5D