BUTTHEAD JOHN HAS KIN FUMING!
Mellencamp ignores pleas to quit smoking
ROCKER John Mellencamp refuses to quit smoking — and sources say his loved ones are terrified he’s headed for a cancer crisis as a doctor warns the butthead’s shortening his life by at least a dozen years!
The 70-year-old Jack & Diane singer has been firing cigarettes up for decades and his voice has grown raspier and his breathing harder, spies snitch.
“He’s been smoking so long he’s hoarse and his breathing sounds labored and heavy. He coughs a lot too,” dishes an insider. “There are legitimate fears he’ll get lung cancer, but he doesn’t seem too concerned. His loved ones are afraid he won’t be around to see his grandkids grow up.”
Incredibly, the Hurts So Good bad boy recently boasted he digs his raspy singing voice and swore he’d never give up smoking even though “it will surely kill me.”
As GLOBE previously revealed, sources claim his chain-smoking was a sore issue between him and onetime fiancée Meg Ryan.
The 60-year-old Sleepless in Seattle beauty finally dumped the rock ’n’ roller in 2019 after a bumpy onand-off relationship.
“She tried to get him to quit smoking, but he wouldn’t do it even for her,” dishes the insider.
His puffing was also a turnoff to real estate agent Natasha Barrett, who kicked the crooner to the curb last summer.
Florida-based Dr. Gabe Mirkin, who doesn’t treat Mellencamp, warns the star’s “at significantly increased risk for dying.”
More than 90 percent of lung cancer deaths in America are caused by cigarettes, says the doc.
Smoking also causes cancer in every organ, heart disease, strokes, lung diseases, diabetes, eye diseases, rheumatoid arthritis and other health problems.
Mirkin notes “one packa-day smokers die 13 years before people who have never smoked.”