①By the late forties and early fifties no one rolled his own tobacco in cigarettes anymore (and few women smoked) in my hometown. ②The tobacco industry, coupled with Hollywood movies in which both male and female heroes smoked like chimneys, completely won over people like my father, who were hopelessly hooked by cigarettes. ③I do not remember when he started to cough. ④Perhaps it was unnoticeable at first, a little coughing in the morning as he lit his first cigarette upon getting out of bed. ⑤By the time I was 16, my daughter’s age, his breath was a wheeze(喘息声)， embarrassing to hear. ⑥It was not unusual for him to cough for an hour. ⑦My father died from “the poor man’s friend”, pneumonia, one hard winter when his lung illnesses had left him low. ⑧I doubt he had much lung left at all, after coughing for so many years. ⑨He had so little breath that, during his last years, he was always leaning on something. ⑩When I travel to Third World countries I see many people like my father and daughter. ⑪In these poor countries, money that should be spent for food goes instead to the tobacco companies; over time, people starve themselves of both food and air, ually killing themselves. ⑫I read in the newspaper that the ends of cigarettes are so poisonous that if a baby swallows one, it is likely to die, and that the boiled water from a bunch of them makes an effective insecticide(杀虫剂). ⑬There is a deep hurt that I feel as a mother. ⑭Some days it is a feeling of uselessness. ⑮I remember how carefully I ate when I was pregnant(怀孕的), how patiently I taught my daughter how to cross a street safely. ⑯For what, I sometimes wonder, so that she can struggle to breathe through most of her life feeling half her strength, and then die of self-poisoning, as her grandfather did?