Loni Anderson Supports Smoker's-Lung Campaign

LOS ANGELES - Loni Anderson has had only one "cigarette scene" in her entire acting career. But she can speak from personal experience about smoking addiction. Her parents were heavy smokers.

Her father was so addicted, he smoked in the hospital.

"The sight of the nurse standing next to his bed holding his cigarette with tweezers, then passing it back to him when he was ready for a puff is embedded in my memory," Anderson said.

She recalled how cigarette smoking affected family life.

"Our alarm clock to get ready to go to school was dad coughing," she said. "He would wake up an hour early every day just to cough and clear his lungs. It became part of his lifestyle. He started smoking when he was 15."

Her mother began smoking when she was 11.

"My mom would just roll over and light up when we came to say good morning," Anderson said. "She was a chain smoker and had a cigarette in every ashtray."

Both parents has chronic bronchitis, she said. Her father, who suffered from chronic bronchitis for two decades, died at 54 of prostate cancer. Her mother died at 60 of liver and pancreatic cancer.

Anderson is the TV spokeswoman for the awareness of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, known as "smoker's lung." Public service announcements will run on some 400 stations nationwide for about a year.

COPD is a respiratory disease diagnosed when either chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or both are present. Symptoms include persistent cough with excess mucus production leading to shortness of breath. The average COPD patient is 50 and has smoked for at least a decade.

Dr. Dennis E. Doherty, COPD researcher and chief of pulmonary medicine at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center, said 110,000 people die from COPD each year. It is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, with up to 90 percent of the cases caused by smoking.

"I don't know if it is trendy to be anti-smoking," Anderson said. "I see so many young people smoking again, as if they don't know that it will kill you. My concern is with young people thinking it's OK. I have to keep reminding my son, and I thought it was my time to speak out. For a while it was not chic to smoke and now we're seeing (smoking) again."

Anderson's "cigarette scene" was in the 1985 TV movie, "A Letter to Three Wives," a remake of the 1948 film.

"I was supposed to smoke, all the dialogue was about it," she recalled. "So I held the cigarette a lot. I look so silly trying to smoke."

Anderson said it was a necessary scene for her role. "Being raised with smokers, I almost have an allergic reaction. My eyes water, I start to cough, it makes me nauseous."