Editor's Note: More than a half million African Americans have died from smoking-related diseases over the past decade. That’s enough people to fill the cities of Atlanta, New Orleans, Kansas City, Mo., or Cleveland, Ohio. Yet, “cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States”, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Then why are so many Black people dying from cigarettes and why is it so difficult to quit? This eight-part series - ''Nicotine Addiction'' - seeks to explore these questions by featuring real people, real circumstances, and real answers.

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Once upon a time, Wayne Greer of Richton, Park, Ill., would spend more than $30 a week on his “pack-and-a-half-sometimes-two-pack-a-day” cigarette habit.

Recalling the more than $65,000 he spent on the 42-year habit this week, Greer scoffs humorously, “I would be rich.”

Maybe not rich, but, there is a whole lot he could have done with that money.

According to a special report by the Centers for Disease Control, “the money that African American smokers spend on cigarettes in a single day could send more than 2,500 Black students to college for an entire year.”

The 41-page report, “Pathways to Freedom, Winning the Fight Against Tobacco,” also states that in one week, smokers could save enough money to pay for two Cds, get a manicure and pedicure, a full tank of gas, pay a cell phone bill or buy a ticket to a sporting event.

In one year, it states, a smoker could save enough money for a new computer, a vacation for two, a down payment on a new car, or an entertainment system for the house or car, the report states.

It adds, in 20 years, a smoker could buy the latest sports car or have enough for a down payment on a house.

Instead, Greer had made a down payment on cancer.

“I had been going back and forth to the doctor for five years,” he recalls his life three years ago, trying to convince medical experts that his “sweating and breathing hard” were not normal. “I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.”

The doctors insisted they could not find anything, he says. Finally, an intern, seeing his frustration, gave him a CAT scan.

“She found it. She found a tumor on my lung,” says Greer. “It’s still there.”

That was three years ago. Greer has been fighting for his life ever since.

“They gave me two to seven months to live,” he recalls. Through chemotherapy, natural herbs, prayer, and love and care from his wife, Bobbie, he is now in his third year since the prognosis.

“I couldn’t believe it. All the time I quit and that stuff still comes back on me,” says Greer, who quit 15 years ago after smoking for 42 years. But, even then, he saw the signs.

Ever since he started smoking at 12 years old, enticed by the suave, macho images of Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne in the movies, Greer had been in love with the drag.

“It was a cool thing,” he recalls almost euphorically. “Everybody smoked. All my friends smoked. It was the thing…Then one day (about 15 years ago) I was driving - me and a friend of mine coming home from the job - and I was just coughing and I told him, I said, ‘Man, I’ve got to be a fool. I’m setting up here and these cigarettes are making me cough.’ I’m just coughing away,” recalls the now 71-year-old. “I just threw the whole pack out the window, just like that. And I never smoked again.”

By then, it was too late. Among his favorite pastimes now is insisting that his family and friends quit smoking and get cancer screenings of all kinds. The CDC reports that smoking-related diseases cause 45,000 deaths a year in the Black community.

“I talk to them all the time, I say, “Y’all don’t want to be like me.’ This is really, really a heck of a thing. People really don’t know what the stuff will do to you. And they don’t know what chemo and radiation will do to your body. It tears you apart,” he says. “I like talking to people about it because I don’t want to see anybody go through what I went through. It’s really a bad thing. You really suffer a lot.”

Even as he tries to convince his friends, Greer and other advocates for quitting smoking have enemies who are just as determined.

“Tobacco companies sell billions of cigarettes and cigars in Black communities. One reason is because of target marking. That’s when a company picks out certain groups and uses ads to get their attention, says a chapter in the CDC report titled, “Tobacco Products: They Sell, We Buy”.

It continues, “No community should ever be targeted with a product that kills. Tobacco companies reach the Black community with glitzy ads that give the wrong message – especially to children. Tobacco ads show only beautiful people. They never show people who become sick and die because they smoked.”

Greer, through faith and good humor, speaks freely of his plight even as he prepares for yet another bout with cancer.

On Feb. 14 this year, he was leaving a restaurant after lunch with his daughter when he reached for his seatbelt and his arm snapped.

“It went, ‘pow!’ Just like that,” he describes.

The lung cancer had spread. He was diagnosed with bone cancer and is preparing to start new rounds of chemotherapy this week.

Whether the 15 to 25 cents he once paid for a pack of cigarettes or the five and six dollars that some people pay today, “I look at these people…They’ve got to be out of their minds,” he says. “I’m going to tell you something. I hate to see anybody smoke.”

Hazel Trice Edney is an NNPA Washington correspondent.