Will Obama's former smoking impact health

These risks did not simply disappear when he quit smoking in February 2007. (Let me be clear, this is not an appeal to puritanical values — nor an endorsement of a candidate. This is about the long-term and sometimes irreversible consequences of smoking cigarettes.)

Yes, Obama claims to have quit — and by doing so, he did reduce his risk of smoking-related disease. But the science tells us that it is naive to think that quitting after years of smoking returns you to the state of health of a never-smoker. In fact, after enough smoking, some health effects are irreversible. How long and how much one smokes determines the extent of health risk after quitting. More than half of all lung cancers are diagnosed in ex-smokers. And it's not just lung cancer. Ex-smokers face long term risks for pancreatic, esophageal, bladder, and kidney cancers, to name a few.

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