Letter: Smoking gave my dad a cruel and unusual death
Declarations that the recent Atmore, Alabama execution by nitrogen gas was cruel and unusual punishment bring back sad memories.
Sixty years earlier and about 150 miles east of Atmore in Dothan, Alabama, I witnessed many months of torture that my father — a WWII US Army drill instructor — received due to his years of smoking. As a child, I will never forget him crying to breathe from his unmerciful emphysema. I camped out next to his hospital bed watching as the machine sucked the black tar out of his lungs into a clear gallon jug. His only relief was under the hospital-filled oxygen tent (no portage oxygen).
Regardless of one’s perspective on execution by nitrogen gas, as a longtime fatherless son, I believe that nitrogen gas death would have been much more merciful to my daddy.
Ironically, Alabama just graded an “F” for 2023 Tobacco Control by the American Lung Association.
Mike Sawyer, a child/health advocate and activist since 1983 and a full-time long-term substitute teacher at a “high needs’ middle school, is the former mayor of Midland City, Alabama (1984-1988). He lives in Denver, Colorado.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Letter: Smoking gave my dad a cruel and unusual death
