Dear Pastor, I am 18 years old and I have a boyfriend. He is very good to me and I love him dearly. He is twice my age, but that doesn't bother me.
When I first took him to meet my parents, the only comment that my father made to me was, "He is a big man", and by that he meant that he was much older than me. My boyfriend is a chain-smoker. He is always smoking, and I have tried to discourage him from smoking.
He takes one cigarette to light the other one. Sometimes he smokes the weed, but he mostly smokes cigarettes. I do not smoke and neither does anybody in my family.
The doctor has told him that he should try and give up smoking because that can be a cause of death. It can cause lung cancer. Why are people smoking cigarettes if they are so dangerous because of nicotine and carbon monoxide and are harmful to everyone? My boyfriend says that he has been smoking from he was 15 and it has not hurt him.
He sits and works at nights, but he has to be smoking. I told my boyfriend that he is shortening his life. He said that I might die before him and I am not a smoker.
I wish for you to tell me what I can do to stop this man from smoking. E.C.
Dear E.C., This man does not believe that anything negative might hurt him from smoking cigarettes.
You mentioned lung cancer, but there are other types of problems one can also get, including cancer of the mouth, the throat, pancreas, the bladder, kidney, stomach and cervix. Your boyfriend is addicted to nicotine and that is not easy to ove.