It’s taken me a while to write this, because it’s not easy for me to personally speak about this subject but it needs to be said.

This subject isn’t funny, there are no pictures of naked ladies, stories of a man getting whacked in the balls, dirty jokes, sports talk or links to humorous websites in this. This is straight from my heart to your eyes.

It amazes me, daily we each see at least “Stop Smoking” advertisements/warnings on TV, radio and in newspapers. There are piles of medical evidence warning of its eminent deadly effects and almost every I know has had someone special in their life who has died of emphysema or lung cancer. Yet every minute of every day people still continue to slap down untold millions each year on cancer sticks and spark up just to die a little earlier.

I am reminded daily of my grandfather daily whom I LOST to smoking less than a year ago. My grandfather was without doubt the smartest person I ever met and if he was shown the same statistics earlier in life that we see today, he would have surely quit his bad habit earlier and still be with our family today.

He did finally ended up quitting, but that was less than seven years ago when conclusive medical evidence arrived. He had been smoking for decades and too much damage had already been done. Watching him go through the final days of his life on a respirator was the hardest thing I (and my family) have ever had to endure.

It’s a vicious circle that we have been locked into by the tobacco companies that have made millions off of selling their addictive poison. My mother, whom was affected greatly by her father’s death, still smokes today. She is still, in many ways, dealing with the loss of my grandfather - undoubtedly a very stressful situation. To calm her nerves her body needs that very same addictive agents that took ‘poppa’ him from us.

A friend of mine this weekend told me this weekend that he had gone 3 days without a cigarette. Hopefully at this point “Big Buddy” has made it 7 days. It requires strength, effort, determination and willpower and I wish him (and anybody else trying to quit) success.

I hope that Rhode Island soon becomes a smoke-free state, inconveniencing patrons by making them stand outside to smoke while temperature dips down into the teens is surely enough inspiration to stop.

If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for those grandchildren like me, that someday you will have. They don’t know it yet, but they are already wishing you would stop smoking.

Good Luck.