“SMOKING kills”, declares the message on my packet of cigarettes.
Yet it has not killed me.
I became addicted to smoking fags on being conscripted into the army in May 1941, a week before my 20th birthday, when the habit was ‘de rigueur’.
I have since puffed my way through about 500,000 cigarettes, much to my financial disadvantage, admittedly, but with no health problems – apart from a smoker’s cough and some congestion of the chest.
I still smoke more than 20 daily.
I have not the least wish to advocate an addiction, but can the medical profession explain why I have survived into old age, whereas so many other unfortunate smokers have not?
WN BAYLIS, Kingston Road, Oxford
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