In this century 1 billion people will die from cigarette smoking

Do you smoke cigarettes or cigars?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 28.6%

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    Votes: 35 71.4%
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jay gw

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A billion people will die from tobacco-related diseases such as cancer this century unless more are encouraged to quit, a UK expert warns.

In the last century the death toll was about 100m, including 7m in Britain.

Professor Sir Richard Peto told a cancer conference in Birmingham developing countries were likely to be hit hardest.

Many nations are cutting smoking, but rates are increasing in countries such as India and China.

Smoking currently kills about five million adults a year globally.

Each year, about 30m people take up smoking around the world, Professor Peto said.

He added: "If more than 20m of these continue to smoke and half are killed by their habit, then we are going to have more than 10m tobacco-related deaths a year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4309222.stm
 
Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. Everybody. They smoke anyway. That's their decision; that's what freedom is about. The only thing we should be doing about it is making sure that non-smokers don't have to pay the medical bills incurred by their self-destructive habit.

On the other hand, the resultant insurance rate hikes for smokers would probably do more to get them to quit than any number of government programs.

Jeremy
 
This should be good news for all the people that scream about overpopulation. India and China are claimed to be overpopulated so is it a coincidence that smoking is increasing there...or conspiracy?
 
jay gw said:
A billion people will die from tobacco-related diseases such as cancer this century unless more are encouraged to quit, a UK expert warns.
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Does he have a hypothesis of what they'll die from if they do quit?
 
And yet...they're legal! And a lot of other drugs aren't. To quote my favorite comedian (Chris Rock): "Cigarettes are the most dangerous product known to man. Cigarettes are so dangerous, they kill people that DON'T SMOKE! But its alright, because its all white. If the Phillip Morris family was a couple of jeri-curled n***a's from Missippissi, you'd get 60 years for having a pack of menthols!"
 
playing devil's advocate

toddjh said:
Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. Everybody. They smoke anyway. That's their decision; that's what freedom is about. The only thing we should be doing about it is making sure that non-smokers don't have to pay the medical bills incurred by their self-destructive habit.

On the other hand, the resultant insurance rate hikes for smokers would probably do more to get them to quit than any number of government programs.

Jeremy
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You know, this issue eventually shifts away from whether smoking is bad for you, and onto the always popular nicotine issue. I figured I would bring it up just to mess with shanek. We always have lovely conversations about this topic.


Santa
 
Freakshow said:
And yet...they're legal! And a lot of other drugs aren't. To quote my favorite comedian (Chris Rock): "Cigarettes are the most dangerous product known to man. Cigarettes are so dangerous, they kill people that DON'T SMOKE! But its alright, because its all white. If the Phillip Morris family was a couple of jeri-curled n***a's from Missippissi, you'd get 60 years for having a pack of menthols!"
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I like that quote.

To paraphrase from a John Grisham novel, The Runaway Jury, cigarettes are the only product on the market when, if used EXACTLY as designed, will kill you. How many other products can claim such notoriety?


Santa
 
Santa666 said:
I like that quote.

To paraphrase from a John Grisham novel, The Runaway Jury, cigarettes are the only product on the market when, if used EXACTLY as designed, will kill you. How many other products can claim such notoriety?


Santa
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If you are interesting in Rock's entire act on the war on drugs (where he talks about how dangerous alcohol and tobacco are, but how they manage to still be legal), I'll look around and find out which act it is. I'm sure you could find the video at some DVD rental place. It is a hilarious classic, for people like me who consider the war on drugs to be insanity, and who think Chris Rock happens to be the funniest person on the planet. Put those two together, and I nearly hurt myself laughing.
 
As a counterpoint - an oncology doctor once suggested that cigarette smoking actually provides an overall financial benefit to society by quickly killing off much of the populace at a much younger age and hence avoiding the massive health care costs of treating an older population with alzheimers.
 
Santa666 said:
To paraphrase from a John Grisham novel, The Runaway Jury, cigarettes are the only product on the market when, if used EXACTLY as designed, will kill you.
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Nonsense. My father-in-law smoked for 30 years; he quit, and now he's quite healthy (he wasn't at the time he quit; a heart attack prompted this).

So it's hardly the case that cigarettes will kill you. I know a lot of people who tried smoking once, and didn't like it, and never smoked again. They're fine.

All of these people used cigarettes exactly as they were designed, and the cigarettes didn't kill them.

And I'll go even further: all of the people who have died from smoking-related illnesses weren't killed by the cigarettes. They were killed by their own action in smoking the cigarettes. It's not like the cigarettes were lying in wait to off some unsuspecting victim...

Why is there such a desire to remove personal responsibility from these issues?
 
shanek said:
Why is there such a desire to remove personal responsibility from these issues?
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The human mind likes to control other people, regardless of how noble the point is, or not.


"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis

That is probably the last long-term barrier to peace on earth. It fuels the evolution of oppressive laws in democracy.
 
shanek said:
Nonsense. My father-in-law smoked for 30 years; he quit, and now he's quite healthy (he wasn't at the time he quit; a heart attack prompted this).

So it's hardly the case that cigarettes will kill you. I know a lot of people who tried smoking once, and didn't like it, and never smoked again. They're fine.

All of these people used cigarettes exactly as they were designed, and the cigarettes didn't kill them.

And I'll go even further: all of the people who have died from smoking-related illnesses weren't killed by the cigarettes. They were killed by their own action in smoking the cigarettes. It's not like the cigarettes were lying in wait to off some unsuspecting victim...

Why is there such a desire to remove personal responsibility from these issues?
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I am certainly not attempting to dismiss personal responsibility from the issue. I am simply stating that cigarettes are not your run of the mill harmless product whose users die from incorrect or careless usage. The tabacco industry is not solely to blame, but it does share some cupability in keeping people smoking. For a moment, I will venture into old territory and mention nicotine. It is all about the nicotine. Nicotine is addictive, we all know this. Nicotine does not kill (at least in the case of cigarettes), carcinogens in the cigarettes do. Remove the nicotine, you remove the addiction. Remove the carcinogens, remove the health risk (at least partially). I am fully aware I have brought up a subject that is always debated here, but really, it is the heart of the issue.

On a side note, what happened to your wolves and sheep sig, shanek?


Santa
 
Santa666 said:
The tabacco industry is not solely to blame, but it does share some cupability in keeping people smoking.
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No, it doesn't, because all it's doing is giving people what they want. If you were to get rid of the tobacco companies, there would just be a black market that springs up in their place.

On a side note, what happened to your wolves and sheep sig, shanek?
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It made the thing way too long. It was one thing when I could reduce the size of the font; apparently, with this new version, you can't do that, or at least, I haven't figured out how. The present size is apparently as low as it can go.
 
shanek said:
No, it doesn't, because all it's doing is giving people what they want. If you were to get rid of the tobacco companies, there would just be a black market that springs up in their place.
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I would argue the people want them because they are addicted. People know they are dangerous, but do not quit because of the addiction. I would not say to get rid of the tobacco companies, but why not eliminate the carcinogens that kill people? At least at that point the nicotine addiction would have a much lesser impact.


Santa
 
Santa666 said:
I would argue the people want them because they are addicted.
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Did they or did they not make the choice to start? They made the choice to start smoking, and so their addiction is their own responsibility.

I would not say to get rid of the tobacco companies, but why not eliminate the carcinogens that kill people?
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That's a good question. I know a lot of this has already been done, but I don't know what they're doing to try and eliminate the rest of them.
 
Whether it's Darwin or Allah, it's Nature's way of saying 'Quit smoking, stupid.'

(Don't ask me to explain it.)
 
shanek said:
Did they or did they not make the choice to start? They made the choice to start smoking, and so their addiction is their own responsibility.
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Sort of. People start eating hamburgers, they like it and eat more of them. As far as I know they are not physically addictive.

The tobacco companies added stuff to the cigarettes to make them more addictive, making it a lot more difficult to stop smoking than it was when cigarettes were made of tobacco only.
 
Everybody's got to die of something. Me, I'd rather choose a more pleasant way to go. Cheaper, too.

For the smokers out there, check to see if your family has a history of macular degeneration. Smoking worsens that condition greatly. It could mean the difference between being an old person with thick glasses, and being stone blind. Watching "Matlock" sounds horrifying, but only being able to listen to "Matlock"? Shudder.
 
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