Dear Ann Landers,
It is not necessarily true that all smokers will develop emphysema. Not enough studies have been done to confirm this. The surgeon general classifies bronchitis and emphysema together as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (C.O.P.D.). Before smok-ing became common, these were rare diseases. Now C.O.P.D. is the fourth-ranking cause of death in the United States. According to the American Lung Association, smoking is responsi-ble for 82 percent of the C.O.P.D. deaths in the United States. (The remaining 18 percent are caused by air pollution, environmental fac-tors such as dust and asbestos and a rare hereditary condition.) The message is clear and irrefutable. Smoking is a crippler and a killer. My family has not been exempt from this problem. Here's a column from Sep-tember 1916.

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