Smoking Is Even Deadlier Than Previously Thought 365
HughPickens.com writes Who still smokes?" as Denise Grady reports at the NYT that however bad you thought smoking was, it's even worse. A new study has found that in addition to the well-known hazards of lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco. "The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health," says Brian D. Carter, an author of the study. "It's not a done story." Carter says he was inspired to dig deeper into the causes of death in smokers after taking an initial look at data from five large health surveys being conducted by other researchers. As expected, death rates were higher among the smokers but diseases known to be caused by tobacco accounted for only 83 percent of the excess deaths in people who smoked. "I thought, 'Wow, that's really low,' " Mr. Carter said. "We have this huge cohort. Let's get into the weeds, cast a wide net and see what is killing smokers that we don't already know." The researchers found that, compared with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure. "The Surgeon General's report claims 480,000 deaths directly caused by smoking, but we think that is really quite a bit off," concludes Carter adding that the figure may be closer to 540,000.
Or maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
People with lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease, stroke and significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments just have a higher desire to smoke. Correlation and causation, you know.
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But potentially true. An imbalance in the endocrine system, perhaps, that leads to seeking what nicotine gives you. This would hardly be unknown (eg. seeking sugar in preference to other food can be caused by low thyroid; a midlife shift to vegetarianism is associated with low estrogen in women). Likely doesn't initiate smoking, but may well be why some people just can't quit.
Also, there are parasites that cause behavior changes in their hosts, tho that's an unlikely cause in humans.
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You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, "Never go against a troll when frist ps0t is on the line".
just ban it (Score:4, Insightful)
If it is so bad then why not ban tobacco? The problem with tobacco is that it is so widely available, making getting off the stuff so hard. I certainly would not visit a dealer to get illegal baccy.
The reality is that governments are addicted to the tax income. 11 billion a year in Australia.
Re:just ban it (Score:4, Informative)
The reality is that governments are addicted to the tax income. 11 billion a year in Australia.
Why was this marked troll? If governments in the United States were not getting $17B [taxpolicycenter.org] a year in tax revenue would it still be legal?
I notice that if you blame big phrama (next entry down) you get modded "interesting". Blame tax revenues and you get marked "troll".
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I notice that if you blame big phrama (next entry down) you get modded "interesting". Blame tax revenues and you get marked "troll".
The way we get high taxes on the people and not on corporations is through corporate involvement in DC, notably the revolving door policy. So yes, blame big pharma for that too, along with big oil and so on.
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The reality is that governments are addicted to the tax income. 11 billion a year in Australia.
Oh, it's not just tax income. Consider the hit to social programs and public services if all the smokers (10-20% of the population, generally) stopped dying early. Having a significant percentage of the population suddenly living 10 years longer gets really expensive really fast.
Not so much (Score:2)
Re:just ban it (Score:5, Insightful)
Painfully facile. Smokers use no social programs and social services as they are going through treatment? Because chemo, surgeons and cancer drugs are free?
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Everybody dies. Your death is a sunk cost socially speaking. Smoking deaths are not more costly, just earlier.
The question is how many years of useless sucking on social security. It's less for smokers.
If smoking predominantly killed people still working it would change the math.
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Hand waving.
Cancer is one of the costliest deaths you can have. What does smoking bring on again? Hundreds of thousands spent on your surgery/chemo will buy a lot of years in a memory unit for alzheimers....20 years later on in life.
Why didn't you say you were a willfully ignorant sociopath to start with? Those people using the
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Painfully facile. Smokers use no social programs and social services as they are going through treatment? Because chemo, surgeons and cancer drugs are free?
The medical problems older people go through tend to be more expensive to treat than those caused by smoking (which tend to happen earlier in life also). There have been many studies which show both smoking and obesity end up saving money in the long term even if you only look at total lifetime medical costs. If you start factoring in social programs like Medicare and Social Security the savings become staggering.
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As much as I hate to admit it as someone strongly opposed to smoking, GP is right. While they do use some additional health care, the net effect is that smokers cost less because of early death. As far as I remember, the primary reason is that old-age health care is so very expensive and they statistically don't get there too often.
Re:just ban it (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah .. then we can ban alcohol. And Big Macs. And soda. Yeah .. that's the ticket. Let's put our health in the hands of the US government. Why don't we just remove all personal choices that slightly affect other people and let the government decide what's best for us. My mother died at 82 of a stroke. From what I can tell, she didn't spend any more on healthcare than lots of elderly people. Everyone dies eventually, and with today's practices, many suffer at the hands of extreme medical procedures because their insurance pays for it. Bring back caps on treatments and stop forcing non-profit hospitals to treat the terminally ill for free and a lot of these costs go away. Funny how making people responsible for their own debt can reduce the impact on society of such costs.
The reality is that many people enjoy smoking. I smoke cigars 3-4 times a week. It's very relaxing to sit outside and read with a cigar instead of being glued to the TV. Sure .. I could read without it. But I enjoy it. I enjoy a cigar or two when I'm out sailing. Or riding my motorcycle.
So .. to all those that want to ban cigarettes .. go fuck yourself. If you don't like it, don't smoke. Walking through a cloud of smoke outside is no more dangerous than driving to work for most people, so don't even start on that.
And don't give me all the bullshit about increased medical costs. If you weren't such a hypocrite, you'd also want ban marathon running and dozens of extreme athletic practices that drive up your medical costs. Then motorcycle riding. And cars.
The problem is, those that want it banned don't smoke, so it doesn't affect them. They are just self-righteous, selfish, useless idiots. They have no problem with taking things away from other people but would fight tooth and nail if the government took something away from them 'for their own good'.
Re:just ban it (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that worked really well last time....
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It worked just as well as banning certain drugs is working now....and for the same reasons.
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Agree completely. And have always thought that a lot of our (already dwindling) crime problems would evaporate if we stopped trying to do Prohibition II with recreational pharmaceuticals...
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I'm all for forcing banks and other debtors to eat the losses caused by making loans to people who can't pay them back with reasonable personal cost, rather than the current practice of allowing them to call upon society to ruin the debtee in a desperate attempt to cover up their own incompetence. No one should lose their home because they listened to a professional financieer, who can bloody well take res
Re:just ban it (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't we just remove all personal choices that slightly affect other people
slightly? Blowing poison gas into the air I breathe is not "slightly". Neither is the fact that zigarette smoke smells so badly, when you've been in a room with some smokers for even half an hour, you can wash all your clothes and shower yourself.
"Slightly" is when a guy on the train smells badly. Smoking is on a different level.
The reality is that many people enjoy smoking.
All addicted people rationalize their addiction. It is, in fact, one of the points that differentiates an addiction from a simple preference.
The problem is, those that want it banned don't smoke, so it doesn't affect them. They are just self-righteous, selfish, useless idiots.
You can smoke everywhere where it doesn't affect me. As soon as you're in public, and you light up, you're an antisocial asshole. It really is as simple as that.
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For the same reason a ban on any addictive substance leads to more crime but not to less substance use. It's addictive. First you have to get the addicts away from it, then you can outlaw it.
Re:just ban it (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly a century ago in the United States we tried the full scale prohibition of alcohol. It was a disaster that in some ways is still harming the country.
We have been trying a War on Drugs for some decades now. It was via Slashdot that I learned that back in the 1990s the politically and socially conservative National Review had come out against the War on Drugs, describing it as a failure that was harming the country.
Oh -- I don't smoke. I never have. I have even seen the harm heavy smoking can do to people. My wonderful Uncle John died from a heart attack at 65. What would I do though? Try to help the people like Uncle John with their problems rather than engage in another disaster like Prohibition of Alcohol or The War on Drugs.
Re:just ban it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a person who enjoys a pipe or a cigar once a month. I smoke alone on my balcony, so the smoke dissipates in the wind quickly and doesn't seem to bother anyone else. Any health effects incurred on me, I'm sure it's not as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I don't even inhale the smoke (with pipes and cigars you are not supposed to inhale, as I will explain below) so the health risks are even less. Given these, why would you want to take this small pleasure away from me?
Cigars and pipes are not as addictive as cigarettes, and there is a reason for that. Cigarettes are designed to be inhaled. Their smoke is engineered to be more acidic, with additives to the tobacco and such. The acidic smoke is more readily absorbed by the lungs. Pipe and cigar smoke on the other hand is more alkaline in its nature. It is not absorbed well by the lungs. Instead, it is more readily absorbed by the mouth's mucosal membranes. Therefore you don't inhale cigar & pipe smoke. The result of all this is a major difference in the smoking experience. With cigarettes, you get an intense nicotine spike that lasts 5 minutes and then leaves you unsatisfied and wanting more. (The surface area of lung's absorbing membranes is a lot more than the mouth's, as you would expect, hence the intense nicotine spike.) With pipes & cigars, you get a slow and steady absorption of nicotine for an hour or so. It is relaxing and meditative. And you don't feel like having another cigar immediately after, since you are already left satisfied. I have been enjoying my once-a-month balcony smoking sessions for 3 years now. I have no feelings of craving or addiction. If I was smoking cigarettes, I highly doubt I would be able to enjoy one once a month. Instead, I would end up smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
You may say let's just ban cigarettes then. Well, prohibition has worked so well in its history after all. Look at how nobody uses alcohol or drugs anymore, since we banned them back in the days...
Cigarette use is already in the decline. Instead of taking completely useless prohibitionary measures, if we wait long enough, cigarette use will be completely replaced by vaper use. And there will be the occasional esoteric cigar & pipe smoker like me, who quietly enjoys his cigar in his balcony, porch, or at the local tobacconist.
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There is a huge distinction between someone who has the odd cigar in the privacy of their own home and someone who smokes a pack or two a day. I would say that it would almost make you qualify as a non smoker (I'm a non smoker and have the odd
I blame the FDA (Score:5, Interesting)
If the FDA wasn't so damn corrupt, smoking would be a thing of the past. Vaping works. Harm reduction works. It's only because the FDA's overlords, Big Pharma, can't compete with the technology that it isn't approved and pervasive in our society.
Openly accepted electronic cigarettes could make smoking as niche as, say, religious snake handling in a decade, but noooo. Gotta protect that status quo and the pharmaceutical industry's pocketbooks.
Re:I blame the FDA (Score:5, Interesting)
One year vaper, previously 20 year smoker. I've had the medical labs done to show how much damage was undone in just one year.
At 41, I can run farther and faster, keep up with young folk better than most of my non-smoker friends of the same age. 3 years ago this was not the case.
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I tell you what, I quit smoking with vaping back in 2011 on gear that's now laughably obsolete. If I could send an inexpensive, modern rig back in time to myself to make the switch even easier, I'd send a 20-watt eLeaf iStick with a Nautilus Mini tank, and 24mg juice (to start) of a good, non-tobacco flavor.
The iStick is versatile, small, simple, and inexpensive. The Nautilus tank performs great, is simple to use and maintain, and looks pretty good sitting on top of an iStick. You may think the taste of tob
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So, the FDA is why California is trying to ban vaping? I think not.
Far as I can tell, the real problem is that the anti-smoking nazis are really the new generation of prohibitionists - if someone enjoys something that they don't, it must be evil, therefore vaping
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Far as I can tell, the real problem is that the anti-smoking nazis are really the new generation of prohibitionists - if someone enjoys something that they don't, it must be evil, therefore vaping is evil....
This, a thousand times, this!
The level of moral crusading against vaping is astonishing.
I don't know what the real risks are of vaping -- it wouldn't surprise me if there were some, perhaps mostly tied to certain kinds of flavorings, sub-ohm/high-wattage vaping setups that produce hotter vaping temperat
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Wrong.
It's not about what drug you care to consume or how much pleasure it gives you. It's about the method of ingestion. The problem with "vaping" is that, like smoking, it is a means of ingesting your drug-of-choice that inflicts it on others as well as yourself.
Swallow a pill. Have a drink. Chew some gum. Have an edible. Slap on a patch. Stick a sugarcube or piece of blotter under your tongue. Use a straw (or $100 bill) to suck some powder up your nose. It's all 100% A-OK hunker-dorey in my book
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No, it really doesn't. I'm vaping right now and I'll bet you didn't know until I told you.
Even if I was right there next to you, you wouldn't know if I didn't want you to.
But taking the common situation where the vape is visible, it is substantially different from cigarette smoke. For one, it isn't laced with fine particulates and carcinogens. It has little nicotine left in it and it doesn't smell like burning tobacco. It contains no sticky tars.
As for what it does contain, that would be water and glycerin
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so by your "logic", we should ban cars and trucks that use petrol or diesel - both of which cause far more damage to people forced to breathe the exhaust fumes than smoking or especially vaping. diesel exhaust is especially dangerous - highly carcinogenic.
btw, even for actual smoking, second-hand smoke has no health effect on casual exposure. there has been a small effect proven for people forced to work for long hours in extremely smoky environments (like bars were before smoking bans) - workplace regulat
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But that's the general problem with many toxins: They are often toxic because they are so similar to a very important compound that's quite necessary for us, and they poison us, because they are nearly, but not completely right.
Re:I blame the FDA (Score:4, Interesting)
Nicotine is only distantly related structurally to the vitamin nicotinic acid (aka vitamin B3 or niacin). While nicotinic acid is an intermediate in tobacco's biosynthesis of nicotine, the final nicotine molecule also has an N-methylpyrrolidine ring not present in the vitamin. Nicotinic acid is the active form of vitamin B3, but the amide derivative (nicotinamide, as the parent notes) is also a bioavailable form, as it is converted in the body to nicotinic acid. Nicotinic acid is not named for a direct biological relationship to nicotine, but rather a synthetic chemical relationship. Nicotinic acid was first prepared synthetically by reacting nicotine with nitric acid; it was only later that nicotinic acid was isolated from biological systems, and was eventually found to be essential in the prevention of pellagra.
The physiological effects of nicotine are for the most part not due to its similarity with the vitamin niacin, but because it can bind to and activate a certain type of acetylcholine neuronal receptor: that is to say it mimics a neurotransmitter. Notably, nicotine does not bear much structural similarity to acetylcholine, but its agonist activity at these particular receptors is an identifying property of their type, to the point where they are called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.
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Not sure if troll or srs...
Smoking is pretty close to the worst thing you can do if you wish to lead a long and pleasant life (including the endgame).
Smoking has an unwanted effect on almost every cancer probability (including cervical/breast cancer for you women), every bronco-, cardio-, aortic-, pharyngeal- (all kinds), and endocrine- disease available (to name *but a few*). If this wasn't enough, the damage caused is from the smoke, meaning that second hand smoke is just as bad (and therefor affecting th
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I would like to know about how smoking pot compares to smoking tobacco.
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Erh... no. Not really. Not even close. Not outright and totally a case for the looney bin, but as a general answer about as incorrect as it can be.
Tobacco has some beneficial effects. Yes. If, and only if, you happen to suffer from exactly what that side effect counters. I have forgotten which ones they may be, but oddly enough it had to do something with heart diseases. But it's a bit like with a few powerful drugs, if you don't happen to have the disease, taking the medication is probably not going to do
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anyone who works at cigarette (which contain arsenic, btw, amongst other things) companies, at least at the executive level, should face manslaughter up to capital murder charges.
Move to a dystopian tyranny then. False advertising, marketing to the incompetent, meddling with research, concealing known hazards -- these are the things that companies should be liable for. If we charged every producer with murder for the hazards of their product, you would either starve, or have to grow your own food. In a rational society we know that nothing is without risk and the injustice is when we do not insist those risks are divulged to the consumer.
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In a sensible, enlightened society, you'd be absolutely correct.
Now let's return to the US court system where your own stupidity can easily be blamed on anyone else, preferably someone with deep pockets.
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If it turns out that tobacco users have lower lifetime healthcare costs do we send them the money?
I'm willing to be their shorter lives far outweigh any increase in the cost of dying related to smoking.
I'm also willing to bet their (total paid in - total cost) / lifespan is greater then non smokers of the same income.
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that finds it odd that we allow companies to sell a substance who's sole purpose is to be addictive?
If you think the sole purpose of nicotine is to be addictive, you are sorely misinformed [wikipedia.org]. People don't start smoking because it's addictive: they start smoking because it's enjoyable.
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People don't start smoking because it's addictive: they start smoking because it's enjoyable.
Which, given how rewards in the brain work, are close relatives.
Some folks are not quitters. (Score:2)
it seems unlikely a longer list will cause cigarette sales to plummet.
"I was okay with heart disease and lung cancer, but shit Mabel, now there claiming links to kidney and intestinal problems!"
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"I was okay with heart disease and lung cancer, but shit Mabel, now there claiming links to kidney and intestinal problems!"
If they ever promote the link to erectile dysfunction, tobacco companies will lose half their customers.
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The UK already does.
California also does this. We have ads on billboards with guys holding limp cigarettes in their mouth. The anti-smoking ads in California are funny, and very effective. Smoking rates here have fallen dramatically. Only Utah has a lower rate of smoking [gallup.com]. Telling rebellious teenagers that smoking is bad makes them do it more. Convincing them it is uncool works.
it isn't the best thing for your health, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish the media would stop amplifying everybody's state of fear.
I wish people would do studies as to how many of those diseases are caused by tobacco itself and how many by the additives pumped into the cigarettes and commercial tobacco and how many by the sheer pollution of our environment.
I wish people would have the wisdom in differentiating between the above and stop fearing every single thing.
I would also wish alcohol would be just half as stigmatised as tobacco is, although I consider it a lot more dangerous and harmful. Nobody killed people by driving and smoking, for example.
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Sorry, but that's not true. [kfor.com]
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I meant driving under the "influence" of tobacco products. There is no cure for stupidity, unfortunately.
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The insurance industry has known for many years that smokers have a higher accident rate than non-smokers. It's thought to be due to the driver having to split up their attention while smoking. Much like cell phones.
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It's thought to be due to the driver having to split up their attention while smoking. Much like cell phones.
Wait a sec.
Cell phones smoke?
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No. It's that, at least in the old days. Just about every drunk smoked. Note: I did not say 'every smoker was a drunk'.
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I'd say the risk of setting one's crotch on fire counts as an "influence", wouldn't you? Or you might even run over your own head! [kdvr.com]
I know a kid who wrecked his motorcycle when a bee flew under his faceshield. Freaked out and lost control. I guess in your world, he was under the influence of bees?
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Make them pay (Score:4, Interesting)
Smokers should be charged much higher premiums for health insurance.
Former smokers should be charged slightly more than they are
That will encourage them to quit.
Never-smokers could recieve lower premiums.
Of course there would have to be a law change to allow this.
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Smokers already pay a higher premium, numbnuts. And if you want a law change to mandate pricing on people's behavior, then it better include clauses for alcohol consumption, unprotected sex and not praying. Because there are plenty of peer-reviewed studies that show those affect health in a negative fashion too.
Now, if you read what I just wrote and said to yourself, "yeah, that makes sense" then I've got a shiny 12" dildo you can shove up your self-righteous ass.
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Brace Yourselves: false equivalencies are coming.
A glass of wine a day is healthy for you - cigarettes are not. Unprotected sex might land you with a new set of obligations for the next 20 years, but it's not going to give you cancer in 30. The only comparison there is if you get AIDS, but the infection rates for that are far lower than smokin
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Not going to specifically defend what the AC said but perhaps the statement was related to alcohol's benefits being walked back recently:
http://www.bmj.com/content/350... [bmj.com]
Coupled with the resveratrol marketing scheme over recent years, it's getting very difficult to make any unequivocal comments about the benefits of alcohol consumption.
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Umm.. unprotected sex can get you cancer in 30 years. HPV or genital warts are highly associated with cancer.
The rates for smoking induced cancer is actually low per smoker. It only appears high when you compare the number of cancer patients who have a smoking history. Those are not the same thing either.
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No reputable study has ever found any benefit to prayer.
It helps to calm the superstitious and should not be banned. But paying for someone does exactly nothing.
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Sure, smokers die early. But the typical reasons for a smoker to die are quite cheap for health insurance. Yes, lung cancer is nasty, but you are dead after half a year. A healthy non-smoker with just a tad high blood pressure gets fifteen years of treatment until he dies.
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Yes, lung cancer is nasty, but you are dead after half a year.
How much of that time is spent in hospital? How much does that cost us?
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The same sort of "studies" that show that Prius is worse for the environment than a Hummer. Otherwise known as lying with statistics.
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With all the lying with statistics that goes on, your going to have to do more then boldly assert it.
How? What # was manipulated. Because you are wrong.
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Smokers should be charged much higher premiums for health insurance.
Good idea. Nw give us a family history based on cause of death, and report for genetic testing. You'll then have the choice of paying more in order to cover illness you are likely to get, or not being covered for them.
Be careful what you wish for.
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Smokers should be charged much higher premiums for health insurance. Former smokers should be charged slightly more than they are That will encourage them to quit. Never-smokers could recieve lower premiums.
Of course there would have to be a law change to allow this.
Most insurance providers in the US already do this.
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Smokers should be charged much higher premiums for health insurance.
They should also pay lower rates of social security taxes, since they won't be around to collect the benefits.
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It turns out that never smokers cost more to insure than smokers. They tend to decline and die fast when it all catches up with them. The non-smokers tend to hang on longer at the end when they have many healthcare expenses. You'll be happy to fork over that higher premium now, won't you? Because fair's fair, right?
"Linked To" (Score:2)
"Linked To" does not equal "Definitely Causes." Cmon, this is slashdot, we're supposed to be smart and see through the weasel words.
Remember, these are the same people trying their damndest to convince the world vaporizers are just as bad or worse than tobacco, even with a complete lack of evidence.
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Do you have evidence for that last statement?
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Thank you.
A small part of me died when I saw the headline. Slashdot is definitely (d)evolving into a mindless click-chasing news aggregator like all the others are.
Worst about this is that the (classic) misunderstanding is actually explained in TFA:
"Correlation does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, so this kind of research is not considered as strong as experiments in which participants are assigned at random to treatments or placebos and then compared. But people cannot ethically be instr
It is just pay back man! Karma is a bitch or what! (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a colleague who had tried everything from pot, cocaine, etc. The only thing he was not able to kick off was tobacco, he and wife were trying to use the nicotine patches. What really scares me is that, tobacco was not this addictive when it was originally introduced. Tobacco was a rich source of tax revenue and profits. Government and free market funded so much of research dollars into agricultural R&D that kept increasing the nicotine content of tobacco to such an extend it made it a lot more addictive than the plain old tobacco.
This is the trajectory pot might take. Marijuana is mostly illegal, and so it does not produce taxes either. So most of the pot you get are natural, and experimental cultivars are hit and miss affairs done by ordinary farmers. Make it legal, give it regular legal source of funding, you will let lose all the genetic engineering agricultural scientists know. If the Government gets its cut, it will look other way. Monsanto and other big agricultural firms will lobby the government and push the R&D. What took tobacco centuries to achieve, pot will do in decades.
It will do well for "legalize pot" to make sure it is not taxed and to make sure modern science is not used to increase addictive elements in it. It will be big disaster if pot follows the commercial success trajectory of tobacco.
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This is the trajectory pot might take. Marijuana is mostly illegal, and so it does not produce taxes either. So most of the pot you get are natural, and experimental cultivars are hit and miss affairs done by ordinary farmers.
It's the trajectory it's already taking. Who wants low-THC cannabis?
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Translation please (Score:3)
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That's amazing how some developed countries don't care much about tobacco, medical cost and deaths linked to it. Take Japan for instance, where people smoke almost anywhere, like a 3rd world country. The law is still lenient in this regard.
I know of no one here that won't die some day, and won't have medical costs.
My parents both smoked. Mother lived to be 80, and died of a massive heart attack. She went in 5 minutes. Father died of COPD at 85. He went over a period of months. Neither of them cost society much.
My mother in law on the other hand, lived a very healthy lifestyle, didn't smoke, didn't drink, ate right, and ended up in a nursing home as a dementia patient, and during the last two years of her life, racked up almost 700 thou
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Do you also poo-poo the relevance of parachutes to the health of a skydiver, because Nicholas Alkemade, [wikipedia.org] because anecdotes? If not, why not?
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Because you're ignoring that arguing-by-anecdote is a logical fallacy.
Many people have been shot in the head [50centnews.com] and suffered no lasting consequences. Yet, others [ketv.com] have died [komonews.com] after a single punch [nydailynews.com] to the head. Therefore: being shot in the head is no big deal, but boxing should be banned immediately.
Logical. Fallacy.
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There's been a lot of experts (people who legitimately seem to know something, AFAICT) linking diets high in sugars and other simple carbohydrates to Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
A lot of the people who have "eaten right" over the last 40 years have equated eating right with limits on fat and cholesterol which almost always results in significant increases in carbohydrate consumption, especially when you consider the ingredient components of "low-fat" products and the general tendency of most processed
I always knew (Score:2)
Because money ... (Score:3)
... I was involved in some of the tobacco litigation (we hit several billion dollars) and the gist of the fight was this:
Anti-tobacco: "Cigarettes are bad."
Big tobacco: "Jobs."
Ok, ok. (Score:4, Funny)
I get it. I'll quit already. And not tomorrow. Today.
I'd run out of smokes this morning anyhow.
Tax and more tax (Score:2)
As already stated here, if tobcco is _that_ serious, ban it. But then that will cause a black market underground whereby the smokers still smoke, but the tax man gets nothing.
Also, cynical as it may sound, the Governments think that by keeping people alive longer results in more tax, as like here in the UK, the retirement age keeps getting pushed up to longer and longer lifetime ages - luckily I am 55 now, and my retriement age is now 66 (i
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Bans don't work. Like you said if you ban it the black market takes over and then the problems become worse. You get criminal activity that you wouldn't get otherwise and you can't even measure the problem properly because the whole distribution network is underground.
I'm fine with them increasing the retirement age as people live longer. I'm still waiting for the fabled robotic utopia and leisure society that will never come though.
OMFG! (Score:2)
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Don't forget, if male, erectile dysfunction. If female always remember birth defects if you desire to have children.
Re:Smoke weed every day (Score:5, Insightful)
Cannabis smoke contains many of the carcinogens as tobacco smoke and can lead to some of the same afflictions.
Mostly not, as shown by UCLA study.
The fact that someone has associated the term "medicinal" with cannabis means that someone needs to go to jail for crimes against humanity.
The fact that we're making plants with medical value illegal and telling lies that they have no medical value is a crime against humanity. This action has probably harmed as many human lives as any other in history, due to both primary and secondary effects — both of which were wholly intentional.
Re:Smoke weed every day (Score:5, Informative)
Cannabis smoke contains many of the carcinogens as tobacco smoke and can lead to some of the same afflictions.
Doesn't seem to cause lung cancer:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html
Doesn't cause any of the other pulmonary issues that tobacco does either:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/marijuana-smoking-does-not-harm-lungs-study-finds/
So what exactly are these dreaded "afflictions" that you are trying to blame on pot? The munchies? An appreciation for the music of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead?
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Those require acid. Lots and lots of acid.
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A number of reviewers have concluded that the scientific evidence does not support smoking marijuana as a medicine because of problems with dosing and the variable amounts of any one compound that might be delivered. "
It goes on to list a number of other side effects, including loss of intelligence, impairment of driving, paranoia, low
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong question. The question should be "Who wants others to live forever?" Because that's the actual problem we're facing today: We're getting too old. It would be less of a problem if we got old and stayed healthy (it would still be one, but a lesser one), but we get old and spend the last decade or so as dependents, some even longer than that. If you now factor in childhood, you get about 30 years of lifetime per person where people are a burden rather than a boon for society. That's a third of a person's life, if we're really generous. The half of it if we feel less generous.
That's not going to work out, people. What we used to have is people who needed 15-20 years of nurturing and education, then spent about 40 years productively and maybe had 5 or 10 years left where they were more or less healthy enough to at least be no burden (or if they were we had those funky 50s style ataractics that kept feisty gramps in a stupor 'til he finally croaked). Today we keep our kids unproductive 'til they are well into their 20s (because of the all important college education the cost of which you'll never in this or any lifetime recover), work 'til they're like 60 (if that) and then spend another 20-30 years dependent on drugs and care. Fuck that "half your lifetime being productive if you're not generous", it's half your lifetime that you're productive if you are generously speaking.
And you want people to stop smoking? To stop drinking? To eat healthy? Fuck that! Let them smoke, snort, shoot and gobble down anything they want. The less healthy, the better! Yes, terminal lung cancer is quite care intensive, but it's terminal! It's one year of intensive care instead of 10+ years of hogging that respirator.
Re:Productivity is in the eye of the beholder (Score:5, Insightful)
And what is productivity? Are you productive if you work in an office selling insurance? Or writing software used by people in other offices to support people in yet further offices? When we talk about leading a productive life we don't tend to think of that in terms of worker productivity. I don't know how that relates to the above posts, but it doesn't make me feel that happy.
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Yes, I'm cynical. But you get that way if you spend too much time in this world.
And what's productive is easy: Whatever pushes the GDP. So an investment banker is productive, a housewife is not.
My definition would be a little different and I know who could rather do without, but that's how the world works.
Re:Productivity is in the eye of the beholder (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. My wife does a more important job than I do. I could write software for any company, and I could be replaced by any software engineer. Only she can be the stay at home mother to our children, any replacement would be different and probably detrimental.
My father died recently of a heart attack. He was mid-sixties and, apart from smoking, very healthy and active. Of course, nobody can say for sure it was the smoking that caused the heart attack, but it doesn't seem unlikely. His retirement years were his most happy and I'm sure he'd have swapped smoking for 10 more years of that. Not that I think he could have been able to stop, he tried to kick it in so many times, and the only thing that worked for him were the new drugs that became available year before he died.
It seems to me that the working years of your life are the least productive for many people. You're a replaceable cog in a replaceable money machine. Childhood, study and retirement are where it's at.
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I wouldn't buy that for a dollar.
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By that argument we should encourage depressed elderly people to commit suicide, then tax their estate.
The problem is that while money is a pretty good proxy for human welfare, it's not a perfect one.