Smoking
Smoking is the practice of purposefully inhaling smoke from burning materials, typically a dried plant such as tobacco. The most common form today is cigarette smoking. While smoking has been a habit of many ancient and modern men, it fell out of favor due to association with various cancers - especially lung cancer.
Smoking and cancer
Smoking is a causal factor for various cancers such as lung cancer and cancers of the esophagus, larynx, mouth, throat, kidney, bladder, liver, pancreas, stomach, cervix, colon, and rectum, as well as acute myeloid leukemia.[1][2][3]
Religion, irreligion and smoking
See also: Atheism and smoking
The abstract of the 2012 International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine journal article entitled Religion and smoking: a review of recent literature indicates:
| “ | Tobacco smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke are a major threat to human health worldwide. The effort to prevent tobacco use should be regarded as an important public health strategy. Given the significance of religion and spirituality in the daily life of more than 90% of the world's population, the relationship of religion and smoking should be seen as a critical research area. Religions are many and varied, but most value human well-being highly and so do not approve of tobacco use, even though they do not prohibit it entirely. In recent years, researchers have shown more interest in the subject of religion and health, including drug and tobacco use. Differences of focus and methodology notwithstanding, most studies have ascertained a deterrent role for religion as regards tobacco use, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the negative relationship between religion or spirituality and smoking.[4] | ” |
The 2017 journal article Smoking and Religion: Untangling Associations Using English Survey Data published in the Journal of Religion and Health indicates:
| “ | Highest levels of smoking characterise people not professing any religion... An association between smoking and the absence of a religious affiliation is sustained. An understanding of the association between smoking and religion is essential to the development of tobacco control programmes.[5] | ” |
Famous smokers
- Marlene Dietrich
- Keith Richards
- Alex Turner
- Snoop "Doggy" Dogg
- Method Man
- Winston Churchill
- Ernest Hemingway
- Sitting Bull
- George VI
- Humphrey Bogart
- Ronald Reagan
- Nina Dobrev
- Olga Fonda
- Jack Black
- Anne Hathaway
- Megan Fox
- Ron White
- Rush Limbaugh
