Good going anti smokers

Evil Dave

New member
Originally posted by sebrushworth
I smoke, and really wish I didn\'t. I\'ve tried quitting several times and it\'s a bitch. The drug addict inside you will do anything he/she can to keep you smoking.

I love the fact the smoking in bars and restaurants is banned here in Sweden now. It\'s great to be able to go home after visiting the pub without stinking like an ash tray. I don\'t think people have a problem stepping outside to smoke - most younger smokers don\'t smoke indoors when they\'re at home anyway.

90% of lung cancer deaths are related to smoking. Almost 10% of smokers develop lung cancer (which has over a 90% mortality rate), while less than 1% of non-smokers develop the disease. Smoking also increases the risk of cardiac arrest, cancers to all parts of the body, and causes emphysema, a degenerative lung condition which is eventually fatal. Smoking is the number one leading cause of preventable death in the western world. So why the hell do I smoke? Because I\'m an addict!

I question these numbers, not that i\'m calling you a liar, I simply question your source. I have read that the World Health Orginization has found that children in a home with both parents smoking, are 22% less likely to develop lung cancer, a fact that the WHO has tried to downplay. Whether this is true I have no idea.
 

finn17

New member
LOL....

Originally posted by Evil Dave
I have read that the World Health Orginization has found that children in a home with both parents smoking, are 22% less likely to develop lung cancer, a fact that the WHO has tried to downplay. Whether this is true I have no idea.
I am bereft of ribs....

You have got to post some evidence to back this up Dave! I would be delighted to see it.

I am not a loony anti smoker, I am an \'ex smoker\' and Mrs finn still smokes...But not in my bloody house:D:bouncy:
 

airhead

Coffin Dodger / Keymaster
Good one Dave. I had heard that on the other side of the fence - no death could actually be attributed to second hand smoke. But I never saw any in-print claim either way.

I like the line in the article. Asthma increasing while smoking is decreasing. Maybe it is our home which do not exchange air any longer and leave us exposed to fermaldihide and other bad thing?

Finally, if second hand smoke is so bad, why does it not show up in a blood test? You can set in a closed up car with a chain smoker and a pot smoker for hours and not test positive for either unless you put the cigarette or joint to your lips and inhale.

All said, I am glad I quit 2 and a half years ago. But my health is now endangered by the weight I gained after quitting.
 

Trevor

Brushlicker and Freak!
Life is fatal, live with it. I can show you facts and figures about all sorts of things that are bad for you (30 people a year are kileld in the US by elevators and escalators, around 20 are killed in the UK each year by Ecstacy {yes I know, not normalised for population, multiply the UK ecstacy numbers by around 4, point is its a similar ball park}).

The major difference I see is that smoking is so addictive, it removes your free choice (which is what many people object to their governmments doing by banning smoking). Yes chocolate or whatever can be bad for me, but it isn\'t addictive in the same way tobacco is, I\'ve never woken up thinking \"my god I need a mars bar\"* but many smokers really do need that cigarette. Too many smokers kid themselves that they are making a choice to smoke, when really it is the addictiveness of the drug that is making them want to smoke. Thats why governemnt intervention on smoking isn\'t quite as 1984 as it may seem.

* thorntons continental selection yes, mars bar no... ;)
 
S

sebrushworth

Guest
Just now, while standing outside smoking, I was set upon by a four year old telling me I should stop smoking!

When I\'m on the verge of a relapse I have constant arguments with myself. One side of my brain is saying \"So what?! you\'re going to die of something anyway, and you might get hit by a bus tomorrow\" and the other side is saying \"but if you smoke you\'ll probably die in your 60\'s\", to which the addict in me replies \"so, that\'s forty years in the future, live in the now\". Blabla, it goes on.

I wish I\'d never started smoking. Once you\'re addicted, most ciggies don\'t give you any pleasure anyway, but you still HAVE to smoke them. And this is not counting the almost constant sore throat and flegm, slavery to addiction which causes you to behave in strange ways, and the withdrawal you feel a large part of every day.

I don\'t think one or two studies that say second-hand smoke is harmless can be compared to the thousands of studies that say it isn\'t. I wouldn\'t be surprised if the tobacco companies are the ones financing this research. It casts enough doubt on the matter that many smokers can go on their merry way, without worrying so much about their health or that of others.
 

Avelorn

Sven Jonsson
Statistics is the mother of misunderstandings.

First of all from what I can tell there is one large study that show that there is no large effect (over 20%) in getting lungcancer and coronary heart disease. it does not say anything about any other form or cancer, asthma, reduction in lungfunction, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome etc. The thing about that study, is that it only focuses on people married to smokers. We\'ve allready had a discussion about considerate and non-considerate smokers. What they should focus on is people who are exposed at work.

But that\'s only the beginning. Sebastian was right:

\"The analysis was funded by the tobacco industry and supported by the now defunct Centre for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) - a group funded and founded by cigarette companies\"

\"We are appalled that the tobacco industry has succeeded in giving visibility to a study with so many problems it literally failed to get a government grant,\" said Dr. Michael J. Thun, vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research. \"The ACS welcomes thoughtful, independent peer review of our data, but this study is neither reliable nor independent.\"

http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/html/health_news/270503smoke.html

The most rescent studies published show that passive smoking is even more dangerous than people have thought earlier:

one study published in April 2005 states that:

\"Across the United Kingdom as a whole, passive smoking at work is likely to be responsible for the deaths of more than two employed people per working day (617 deaths per year), including 54 deaths in the hospitality industry each year. Each year passive smoking at home might account for another 2700 deaths in persons aged 20-64 years and 8000 deaths among people aged 65.\"

Published in the brittish medical journal.

Another study published in the BMJ June 2004 states that: \"Studies based on reports of smoking in a partner alone seem to underestimate the risks of exposure to passive smoking. Further prospective studies relating biomarkers of passive smoking to risk of coronary heart disease are needed.\" It says that studies earlier have accounted for a 25-30% increase of coronary heart disease but that is based on non-smokers married to smokers. The real figures are up to even 50-60%.

check them out here

I suggest you read through all 736 and see how many that say that passive smoking is not harmful.
 

DrEvilmonki

Active member
The problem with the arguement that we all die of something so smoking may as well be it, is the quality of life. My uncle smoked two packs a day and lived to 84. The fact that he could barely walk faster than a shuffle for the last 30 years AND was in almost constant pain for all that time as well AND suffered severe coughing fits where he bought up yellow mucus and sometimes blood makes me think that I would rather avoid such results.
 

airhead

Coffin Dodger / Keymaster
@Avelorn, still no hard numbers. \"Likely\" is a very subjective word.

Again, quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I think the whole industry is based on a lie. But the anti-smoking crowd cannot seem to come up with any FIRM data as to the effects of second-hand. We get results like \"The effects are likely to cause...\" Show me a valid scientific study with a 20% increase in a disease (lung cancer, emphazema, etc.) due to living with a smoker. As long as they cannot, it is smoke and mirrors and feel-good soft science.
 

generulpoleaxe

New member
the most harmfull thing about cigaretes is the chemicals they put into prepackaged filtered cigaretes.

ever wondered why a roll up will go out if you don\'t continue to smoke it, whilst a prepackaged cigarete will continualy burn once lit even if it not smoked?

that\'s where all the major harmfull chemicals are.

it\'s the same with petrol and diesal, diesal may be cheaper, but it puts out far more harmful pollution.

if the goverments gave a damn, they would control what goes into the product and not what goes into their pocket.
 

GreenOne

I paint my thumb.
@EvilDave: Thanks that was interesting reading, good to have an opposite opinion, which on the matter simply does not exist.

@Sebrushworth: If you can stop hating yourself for smoking, you\'ll surely find out it goes better for you. You do it to yourself, I say.

@Genrulpoleaxe: Sorry to pop it up, but the whole thing about added chemicals in prepackaged cigs is just an urban legend.
Condensed Inflamable material with an air intake will burn by itself unless the material holding it prevents it. Cigarettes burn cause there lighted up.
The chemical inside cigarette smoke is the result of combustion on the tobacco plant, nothing else. If you take a Tobacco cell and split it into free agents, you come up with arsenic, banzopyrene, and all that crap, It\'s basic physics.
You should see all the chemical produced by cooking...

Smoking is a bad habit, damaging for the health, and costy. That\'s it. The rest are equivalences to the boogey man\'s stories.
Nobody is concerned with your health, It\'s only just marketing. And most people will believe anything.

Anyway, we will never agree. To make us believe there useful for something, they will keep on making half-baked theories that only wait to be half-baked conter-theorised,
anything to keep us confused, and unnhappy.
I only hope they will change to another subject soon, cause this one is getting very very redundant.

On this, I\'m out to smoke.
 
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sebrushworth

Guest
Greenone: I think you\'re misunderstanding, I don\'t hate myself for smoking, I hate being addicted. I think you sound very much like an addict who is trying to rationalise his addiction in order to feel \"ok\" about it. I think this because I\'ve been there myself. It\'s very common behaviour in drug addicts.
 

GreenOne

I paint my thumb.
Hmmm. I think you\'re misunderstanding...
By hating your addiction, you do something that you HATE 12-25 times a day. Now, I don\'t need to be a new-age freak to know that living with this kind of stress every day has as much phisycal repercussions as the smoking itself.
Yet again, you know better than me about your feelings... but you made it sound like it was so painful and hating, so I though I had to say it.

I\'m a very addicted person by nature ( Pot, Smoke, coffee..) and I live with it, the only bad moments are when I run out of something, which I make sure never happens.
The rest of the time, I\'m quite pleased with my coffee and smoke in the morning, like I am to share a joint after lunch, etc.
After 8 years smoking pot and 5 years cigarettes, I don\'t caugh, don\'t spit, don\'t have a sorethroat. So maybe it does make a difference.
 

Avelorn

Sven Jonsson
Originally posted by airhead
@Avelorn, still no hard numbers. \"Likely\" is a very subjective word.

Again, quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I think the whole industry is based on a lie. But the anti-smoking crowd cannot seem to come up with any FIRM data as to the effects of second-hand. We get results like \"The effects are likely to cause...\" Show me a valid scientific study with a 20% increase in a disease (lung cancer, emphazema, etc.) due to living with a smoker. As long as they cannot, it is smoke and mirrors and feel-good soft science.

Well if you click the links and read the studies I provided the numbers are there. Statistics can\'t prove anything, that\'s why they use likely. Living with a smoker might or might not cause lungcancer simply because of the fact that it depends on how considerate the smoker is.

Some sources:

First read this text

here\'s the link again to articles about passive smoking

Some abstracts from BMJ:

Link to one abstract

Link to another

A third abstract

Fourth link and the one I was discussing above that showed that the risk of passive smoking has been underestimated in most studies.

There are of course other sources of medical stuides that BMJ.. but I\'m lazy!

@Greenone: this topic is bound to have some discussions. As with politics or religion or anything else. I however enjoy discussing very much. And as long as people don\'t agree and don\'t agree that they cannot agree no topic is redundant. :p

But generally with this topic some smokers get annoyed. As topics of excersise can sometimes annoy me, I know why they do. Because I fit into the group of people who almost never excercise regulary except taking walks. and those topic makes it sound like you\'re stupid if you don\'t.. and in a way I am. I know I should excercise more, but as it is now I\'m not up for it.

A good thing about quitting is that it\'s positive for your health whenever you stop. As I get positive health benefits when I finally find the motivation to start training again.
 

airhead

Coffin Dodger / Keymaster
@Avelorn, nice links. I stand corrected.


I still think that if the government really wanted to get rid of cigarettes, they would quit subsidising the tobacco industry. A few million paid to help the tobacco farmers results in billions of taxes that they cannot turn down.
 

GreenOne

I paint my thumb.
@Avelorn: As with smoking, screw the statistics. Walking is the best exercise there is,
if you do it seriously. Being healthy is about a combination of many little things and state of mind, not by imposing short term discipline and bying machines.
If you walk for a year, you\'ll be more healthy than if your train intensely for a month, then stop.
 
S

sebrushworth

Guest
Ok, sorry, I don\'t mean to sound preachy, although it may have come across as such. I just get a bit annoyed when people try to downplay the risks of smoking, for example by pointing to bullshit studies conducted by tobacco companies. I think, if you want to smoke, do it, but be aware of the health risks, and don\'t pretend there aren\'t any. I don\'t think this has to be the same thing as being a \"self-hating smoker\".
 

Ebonbuddha

Active member
Hey Dave...am I cute too?lol

Originally posted by Evil Dave
Originally posted by ipaintminis
for those that saw me at the GD, you know I\'m not exactly a skinny girl. far from it, matter of fact. and I am technically \"overweight\"

Yeah, maybe, but you\'re still cute as a button.:p
 
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