hdroadglide
BoM x 2, BoY 2011
TORONTO -- Winnie Langley figures she's just too old to butt out now.
She's managed to defy health worries and the standard limitations on the human form by living to 101 years old -- while smoking every single day.
"You gotta have some vice," the English widow told Sun Media from her home in South London.
"Some drink until it's coming out of their ears ... me, I smoke."
Today around the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting World No Tobacco Day as a way to highlight the estimated five million people who reportedly die annually from the effects of smoking.
Spry Winnie, who struggles to figure out how to turn down the TV so she can better hear questions, has smoked more than 171,500 cigarettes during her long and remarkable life.
She was just seven years old when she lit her first one in 1914 -- days after the First World War began.
She's felt the pressure to quit, but says the habit has helped calm her nerves and get her through two world wars.
"It's just one after every meal," she explains.
When she began, there weren't any health-warning labels or restrictions on where smokers could light up.
These days, she says most people have gotten the message on the dangers of cigarettes.
Not so, notes Dr. Geoffrey Fong, principal investigator of a 20-country study on the impact of smoking policies.
The Canadian expert warns tobacco is the number one killer in the world -- striking more people now than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
And the future only looks bleaker, he fears, estimating a billion lives could soon be lost from tobacco.
Reached while working on anti-tobacco projects in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the University of Waterloo professor of psychology and health studies adds: "As horrific as the tobacco epidemic is in developing countries, it still remains the fact that smoking is the number one single cause of death in Canada.
"The belief that smoking is a done deal or that we no longer have to pay attention to smoking is patently false."
Winnie actually agrees.
Asked what she would tell those who see her as symbol that smoking is alright, the straight-talking grannie points out: "Don't start -- it's just a bad habit.
"I put it to my lips, and it's a waste of money."
While never inhaling, she counts herself lucky her habit has never caused her harm.
So does Fong.
"We should draw no conclusions from the existence of a smoker who has lived to 90 or 100 in the same way as the existence of a soldier who survived the D-Day invasion on the beaches of Normandy should lead us to conclude that machine gun fire isn't dangerous," he says.
She's managed to defy health worries and the standard limitations on the human form by living to 101 years old -- while smoking every single day.
"You gotta have some vice," the English widow told Sun Media from her home in South London.
"Some drink until it's coming out of their ears ... me, I smoke."
Today around the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting World No Tobacco Day as a way to highlight the estimated five million people who reportedly die annually from the effects of smoking.
Spry Winnie, who struggles to figure out how to turn down the TV so she can better hear questions, has smoked more than 171,500 cigarettes during her long and remarkable life.
She was just seven years old when she lit her first one in 1914 -- days after the First World War began.
She's felt the pressure to quit, but says the habit has helped calm her nerves and get her through two world wars.
"It's just one after every meal," she explains.
When she began, there weren't any health-warning labels or restrictions on where smokers could light up.
These days, she says most people have gotten the message on the dangers of cigarettes.
Not so, notes Dr. Geoffrey Fong, principal investigator of a 20-country study on the impact of smoking policies.
The Canadian expert warns tobacco is the number one killer in the world -- striking more people now than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
And the future only looks bleaker, he fears, estimating a billion lives could soon be lost from tobacco.
Reached while working on anti-tobacco projects in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the University of Waterloo professor of psychology and health studies adds: "As horrific as the tobacco epidemic is in developing countries, it still remains the fact that smoking is the number one single cause of death in Canada.
"The belief that smoking is a done deal or that we no longer have to pay attention to smoking is patently false."
Winnie actually agrees.
Asked what she would tell those who see her as symbol that smoking is alright, the straight-talking grannie points out: "Don't start -- it's just a bad habit.
"I put it to my lips, and it's a waste of money."
While never inhaling, she counts herself lucky her habit has never caused her harm.
So does Fong.
"We should draw no conclusions from the existence of a smoker who has lived to 90 or 100 in the same way as the existence of a soldier who survived the D-Day invasion on the beaches of Normandy should lead us to conclude that machine gun fire isn't dangerous," he says.
