I thought cigarettes caused cancer?

source: http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=62323

You hear all the time about the dangers of smoking. The smoking horror stories have frightened some people to the point where if they see someone smoking they turn and run in terror from fear that second hand smoke will give them cancer instantly if they even get near a lit cigarette.

Winnie Langley has been smoking since she was a 7-year-old and has just celebrated her 100th birthday. 100-year-old woman, smoking since she was 7-year-old, where’s the cancer?

An iron-lunged pensioner has celebrated her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigarette from a candle on her birthday cake.

Winnie Langley started smoking only days after the First World War broke out in June 1914 when she was just seven-years-old - and has got through five a day ever since.

She has no intention of quitting, even after the nationwide ban forced tobacco-lovers outside.

Speaking at her 100th birthday party Winnie said: “I have smoked ever since infant school and I have never thought about quitting. There were not all the the health warnings like there are today when I started. It was the done thing.”

Winnie, from Croydon, South London, claims tobacco has never made her ill.

Winnie Langley goes on to say that she started smoking before World War One to help calm her nerves.

Are Smoking Related Illnesses Psychosomatic?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating smoking and I do not believe that smoking has no adverse side effects on your health. I believe many of the negative health problems of smokers are psychosomatic. Years and years of relentless negative propaganda about how cigarettes will kill you cause people to believe since they are smokers they are going to grow giant tumors in their lungs and drop dead at any moment.