Manny Coronilla: Dangers of smoking are overblown

I’m going to write on a very controversial and unpopular subject. I would like to say that I am a 72-and-a-half-year-old male. My health is excellent – no heart problems or lung problems or problems with any other vital organs. I don’t have diabetes, throat problems or cancer.

My point is that I have been smoking since 1960, a little over half a century. I believe that cigarettes are still on the market because there is no 100 percent proof that smoking causes cancer or heart problems; cancer is just another way people die, like a stroke or a heart attack. Claiming second-hand smoking causes cancer is a joke.

I truly believe that those “green people” who want to keep our planet clean, as if God couldn’t do the job, manufacture these fabrications about the horrors of smoking. They should be swept off our planet. My cousin died of cancer four years ago; never smoked a day in his life.

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Manny Coronilla: Dangers of smoking are overblown."