at his peak he was smoking as many as 40 cigarettes a day

Did you know that both Senator John McCain and his rival for the presidency of the United States Barack Obama were both at one time heavy smokers? Barack Obama stopped smoking quite recently following pressure from his wife who said that she would only support him in his campaign to become president if he quit his habit completely.

Senator McCain on the other hand hasn’t had a cigarette for almost 30 years now but at his peak he was smoking as many as 40 cigarettes a day. He claims to be passionate about antismoking measures and recently met up with the famous cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong to put out the message that educating people about preventative measures were the best way forward to keep American citizens healthy. Senator McCain said that he will work with industry and insurance companies so that programs designed to stop people smoking will be supported by the government. 

Lance Armstrong explained that he would also be asking Barack Obama about his plans to deal with issues relating to cancer. Smoking is the single largest cause of preventative disease in humans and kills millions of people every year. Ninety percent of all lung cancer patients are smokers. Despite the overwhelming statistics showing that smoking is extremely dangerous people continue to smoke. 

Governments all over the world can be extremely effective in getting the numbers of people smoking down in different ways such as by taxing cigarettes, initiating health campaigns and banning smoking in public places. Money spent on reducing the number of smokers in a country is not only a great health investment in its citizens, but also will show excellent financial returns in the future in the form of considerably lower health bills for many different smoking related illnesses.

Despite some American States such as New York banning smoking in public places other states have still yet to introduce legislation to do this.