Smoking is bad for you, Mmmkay?

I went to one of the schools that the show South Park is based on. So I got the "drugs are bad" lecture from this guy (image courtesy of Comedy Central):


This unfortunate man does, in fact, exist, and his name has only one letter different from his South Park moniker. Anyway, he also gave my class the "smoking/tobacco is bad, mmkay?" lecture, which basically consisted of showing us lots of gross pictures of black and tarry lungs, and video of people who'd had cancer and therefore had parts of their faces and necks removed.

Well, I never smoked or chewed (ick!) but that's beside the point. All the nasty images in the world cannot prepare you for the reality. I sometimes come across samples from patients who claim not to smoke, when from examination of the white blood cells in their lungs I can tell that they are, in fact, BIG FAT LIARS. Or small skinny liars. Liars nonetheless. Today's sample takes the nasty tar and ash covered cake.
Can I just say EEW?! That, right there, is 14 million of the most tar- and smoke residue- filled cells I have ever seen. This person's lungs looked fairly normal on the grand scale, but when you get down to it, his or her poor little white blood cells may as well have been tarred and feathered.

Lets think about this for a moment. Your lungs have immune cells in them to keep you healthy. If you drown them in nasty tar, how the hell are they going to catch the bugs that make you sick?! Not very well, that's how.

I'll step down off my soapbox now.