Jump to full article: Huffington Post (blog), 2008-04-18
Author: Jeff Stier
Intro: The fact that Sen. Obama was a smoker is old news, since he quit. Right? Think again.
The stories that have explored this issue all missed the point: Obama's history of smoking raises questions about his current and future health. . . .
But what of Senator Obama's health? It's not as if once you quit smoking, all of the health effects immediately disappear. In fact, after enough smoking, some health effects are irreversible. Consider just the arteries and lungs.
How long and how much one smokes makes a difference. . . .
He admits to having smoked up to ten cigarettes a day, but usually closer to five or six. Most people underestimate how much they smoke, but let's take him at his word. Let's also assume he really did quit when he said he did, in February 2007 (although he admits to having fallen off the wagon). That's about twenty-six years, given that we know he was smoking by the time he was a freshman at Occidental College. That's more than 55,000 -- maybe 70,000 cigarettes! Has this aspect of Sen. Obama's ability to serve really been explored? . . .
Just because he's young, looks great, and exercises doesn't mean he's healthy. Recall Jim Fixx. . . .
while the stresses of running may have contributed to Fixx's death, it was his years of smoking, not his running, that caused the plaque to build up in his arteries. . . .
The public deserves to know how long and how much Sen. Obama really smoked. Does he have other risk factors for heart disease? Compared to whites, for instance, African-Americans are more likely to die of a stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
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