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 tEie 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 1976.
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Dear Readers, , in fact, I’m considered sort of a mouse. I did turn on, in an innocent or stupid way, and now I know what drugs can do-even to a person who isn’t looking to freak out. My weight was getting out of hand, so I went to a doctor. He gave me a diet and some pills to curb my appetite. I was supposed to take one pill a day. To make sure I killed my appetite real dead, I took an extra pill when-ever I felt like it. Soon I ran out of pills, and asked the doctor for a refill. No problem. Suddenly I found myself crying for no reason. I’d go into a depression and want to jump out the window. Then I began to have dizzy spells and I felt like I was floating. Once when I was driving on the highway my eyesight be-came blurred and I almost ran into a kid on a motorcycle. I knew I was zonking out on the diet pills, but I was losing weight and get-ting whistled at for the first time in my life, so I didn’t want to stop. Then one day I hit a “bummer.” I went into a laughing jag, then a crying fit, and finally I passed out. Lucky for me I was at home in my own room. When I came to, I swore I’d never touch another pill-ever. I flushed all the pills down the toi
