Learning to quit smoking

Women were taught to smoke largely as a means of weight control (perhaps that benefit is why our president is so elegantly slim). Thousands of ads from the 1920s through the '50s promised glamour and trim silhouettes to our grandmothers and mothers. Those ads helped persuade my mom to start smoking before she conceived me when she was 16, by which time she was already a nicotine addict. Even doctors joined in the campaign to get women to smoke, endorsing some brands over others and promising menstrual mood control and suppression of "nerves."

The social pressure to start smoking is less today than it was in Mom's day -- or mine -- but, every day, 3,500 Americans under 18 try their first cigarette, and 1,100 make it a habit, according to the American Cancer Society. Some are enticed by flavorings designed to attract the young. The tobacco bill passed last month bans most flavorings, though a political compromise exempted the one -- menthol -- that helped hook me. But overall, giving the federal government new powers to regulate tobacco is a good thing, likely to save lives.

Mark Twain famously said that quitting smoking was easy, that he'd "done it hundreds of times." I found it equally "easy," swearing off cancer sticks on an almost daily basis until I finally managed to smoke my last cigarette 15 years ago.

My mother quit a few months ago. It was "easy" for her too. She has lung cancer.