When I quit smoking back in the seventies it was also because of the lung cancer scare. I never even considered oral cancer. My sister died from lung cancer and emphasema and she smoked right up until she died, alternating her oxygen mask with a cigarillo. Some of us NEVER get it and it kills us (God allows that to happen). Even in AA the popular notion is that alcohol MIGHT kill you but cigarettes will DEFINITELY kill you. My grandparents lived into their 80's but had problems attributed to tobacco use even though they didn't die from lung cancer. Strokes, breast cancer and heart attacks are linked to smoking. My grandfather had lip cancer from a pipe. Tobacco use is like sun exposure. You can be exposed for x number of years (around 25 to be exact) and then your risk of lung cancer remains unchanged even if you quit(although the risk from other diseases declines). Air pollutants also factor into this so that's why more people in their 30's (particularly women)are being dx'd earlier in life (and also kids smoking habitually at at earlier age).

Back when I was in the Navy one of the guys used to laugh and say "anyone can quit smoking - it takes a man to die of cancer". Needless to say my perception of that statement has changed somewhat since I COULD have died from cancer.

You're right about one thing for sure - it is practically almost futile to get someone to stop an addictive behavior. They have to WANT to quit. Maybe some kind of shock might work, but we all saw the "blackened lung" in the museum jar and other shocking things(remember "Mechanized Death" in drivers ed?)and it really didn't have any long term effect on us. Maybe you can show him the link from my post in this topic from September 20th if it is still there - it had pretty good shock value.

I watch my 2 step kids smoke and it's like they say with alcohol addiction - "cunning, baffling and powerful".

"...it's all in the numbers": The latest numbers are that 550,500 Americans (1,500 every day, including weekends and holidays) will die from cancer this year. 1 in EVERY 4 deaths are from cancer (and the 3 out of 4 who DON'T die from cancer are most likely the non-smoking, tofu eating heath nuts)- your numbers are better with Russian Roulette (at least you'd have a 1 in 6 chance)! Another 8.9 million Americans (like myself) are the "walking wounded", people either battling, in remission, in "complete response" to treatment or in hospice.

Gary, I totally agree with everything you said above. I would never want to say (type) anything that might upset or offend someone, and since I've never had cancer, and I cannot even imagine what it must be like to have cancer, I don't feel like I have a right to voice some of my opinions anyway. I just know from my own experiences with drinking and smoking how easy it was to believe that it could never happen to me, and how ignorant I was about oral cancer in general. My dad always told us (with smoking) "It's not IF it will get you, it's WHEN it will get you". Yet we continued to smoke. It wasn't until my gp and dentist showed concern about what they said was an ulcer that I came onto this website and for the first time in my life learned anything at all about oral cancer. I had NO clue about anything to do with it. Every time I'd go to a doctor for a health problem they'd ask my medical history and I told them I drank this amount each day, and smoked this amount.....they all said "you better quit drinking and tried to persuade me to get into a detox program. Not one of them told me to quit smoking. In detox we were only allowed six cigarettes a day (handed out by a nurse who also lit them) and they had to be "earned"......they were a "privelage" that you had to earn by attending all the classes they had in detox. How insane is that?! Needless to say, the majority of us in detox were also smokers, and we had one little room where we'd all have to go to smoke our two cigarettes (3 times a day) at the same time. You probably could have smoked in that room without even lighting up a cigarette, just from all the smoke from everyone elses cigarettes. I have since been told that this hospital will soon be taking away all smoking privelages. I also, do not agree with my sons "numbers" theory.....I do believe that everything happens for a reason that we may not always understand, and that a lot of it are things that we bring upon ourselves. I was almost afraid to go to the oral surgeons and ENT doctors I saw for fear that they'd lay into me and treat me bad, or like I was stupid, because I did smoke. Which, out of the three, only one of the oral surgeons did lecture me very sternly about smoking. The ENT doctor went so far as to tell me that the type cyst I have on my tonsil is not caused from smoking. When I was so terrified about the possibility of having cancer, I tried to tell myself that something good comes out of everything we do in life...if we pray our way thru it, so I decided that IF I had cancer, maybe the good to come of it would be that it may get my son to quit his chewing and drinking, and my son in law to quit his smoking and drinking. But, then again......that didn't work with my dad and us girls......which made me realize for the first time, how much it must have hurt him when my sister and I continued to smoke. so, I can only hope and pray that my kids will wisen up a lot sooner then I did.