Dear J, my mother loved to smoke and luxuriated in it, even as she chewed chocolate and all other luxuries with each mouthful of eventually inhaled smoke.

She spent the last ten years of her life gasping, coughing and spitting sputum. And connected to a permanent oxygen line, that allowed her sufficient length to get from the bedroom to the toilet, bathroom and meal table.

I know because I was there 24/7 doing for her as and unpaid and disabled myself, carer. Not that I minded, given our history!

As for emphysema? I heard that at least one South Australian Surgeon seems to have had some success just cutting out the rotten bits of the rotting from within lungs. And with the bad bits removed, the rot stops spreading?

And formerly incurable cancers may benefit from Bismuth 213 therapy?

Largely unavailable here, because some green advocates and various politicians, will die in a ditch before we have a fair dinkum nuclear industry! AND SAFER, CLEANER AND CHEAPER THAN COAL! THAT'S SAFER, CLEANER, CHEAPER!

[Maybe a few high profile pollies have to get cancer first? And given the number of cigar smokers in those ranks, not too long perhaps?]

Even as a nuclear armed China becomes more assertive by the day as she helps herself to slices of other folk's former sovereign territory!

Who's next? Some sparsely populated country with muchco plenty mineral wealth?

Take too small a slice to get anyone seriously contemplating going to war with an nuclear armed super power. Consolidate and repeat? And repeat! And repeat!

Suggested reading. Super Fuel, subtitled green energy, by Richard Martin. A prize winning, investigative Journalist!

A very wise man once said, death smiles at us all, when he smiles at you, all you can do, is smile back!
Alan B.

Thorium toothpaste can eliminate bad breath caused by radium cigarettes.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/seriously-scary-radioactive-consumer-products-from-the-498044380?IR=T

At $20 + per pack you would have to have lots of money to smoke 80 per day now.

Who is making all the money in most Asian countries you can buy a pack of smokes over the counter for around 75 cents to $1 that is after the shop keeper and everyone else has made there profit.

$20 + dollars per pack someone is making a big profit.

Correct, Philip S,

It's the government. They've loaded up the excise charges to deter people from smoking. Clearly, that's not very effective, since there are still a lot of smokers. However, most of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the government and the anti-tobacco ideologues who work in the federal bureaucracy try to ramp it up every year on the basis of Australia's commitment to the UN's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Tobacco use is a complex and divisive issue. First, I'm not inclined to try to tell other people they should/must/ought not smoke.

But, on the other hand, smokers are generally self-obsessed scum. I worked in a building in Sydney a few years back. It had automatic sliding doors to the ground floor lift lobby, with a carpet square inside and out, under the door. Two metres from the door there was a cigarette butt waste bin attached to an external pillar.

But during winter, people who worked in that building would stand on the carpet square to smoke, without going out into the cold air. Then, rather than walk two metres to the cigarette bin with their butts, they'd thrown them on the carpet, tread on them and go back to their offices. By lunch time there'd be 40-50 butts on the carpet. Every day.

And everywhere smokers gather, tobacco litter is an issue.

Any body who can read bona fide published Authors like prize winning Author Richard Martin! Knows at least two things, that there's no radium breath and no thorium toothpaste.

The fact that both you Toni and no name numnuts, stalk me at every opportunity to try and make anyone advocating nuclear look as daffy as you pair? Might work on some fools and for a while?

Even as countless humans die needless deaths, because you and your ilk have successfully campaigned against bismuth 213! Judy could thank you for denying her and countless others by activists from hell! For your personal efforts to deny her and others bismuth 213.

Thorium tooth paste and radium breath Cuckoo, Cuckoo!

The stalling of nuclear energy may suit Mr Putin, and China's aspirations in our region? Your continuing campaign of stalking me may delay molten salt, thorium power by a few months? As still thinking folks begin to wonder what the hell are you so worried about?

Perhaps Mr Putin's hydrocarbon sales and the roubles that rolls into his personal bank accounts?

Go stalk someone else or risk having your privileges removed?
Alan B.

At least the Philippines President had the guts to do something. There is NO SMOKING inside all buildings, sports arenas, taxi's buses etc you want to smoke go outside even then in some public areas you can't smoke.

I've always thought and argued the Alan B's thorium fantasies are a load of BS. But it turns out that you might be able to create energy from this BS:

http://futurism.com/toyota-power-plant-clean-energy-manure/

The BS plant will be able to power 2000+ homes.

But if Toyota hired Alan B they'd be able to power the whole of California.