Personally I don't smoke, never have, and consider it an expensive way to gamble with your life. (They might cure cancer, they might invent cloned lungs, are you feeling lucky, punk?)
But truthfully, the reason I wish people would stop smoking is not from altruistic concern for them, and not for any personal fear - I just think it stinks. It's as foul as farting and has much less excuse.
I think you missed the entire point of the article: living is as much of a gamble as smoking, statistically speaking. You inhale carcinogens daily. Your mind is slowly decaying, along with all your other organs. You could die tomorrow crossing the street or next year from a random cancer, a blood clot in your brain, or the common flu. A friend's mother died while in the hospital recovering from a routine procedure, due to a drug allergy nobody knew about and no Doctor could diagnose quickly enough.
If all it takes for you to "feel lucky" is not smoking, you live a naive life indeed.
The point of the article is not about smoking at all, it's about bad science. The last paragraph:
"It may be argued that this is news about an old and settled subject. And who cares about smoking anyway. But smoking is really a secondary issue. The primary issue is the integrity of science. This has no use-by date. When the processes of science are misused, even if for what seems a good reason, science and its practitioners are alike degraded."
Driving a car is like force feeding me toxic exhaust when all I want to do is walk down the sidewalk. It's disgusting. Please stop driving everyone. I don't need to drive, why do you? I am within walking distance of everything I need; you should be too. This is my city and I want to walk in it without your dirty car offending my delicate nasal passages.
Yes, people should drive cars that don't produce such a large amount of noxious fumes, they should drive less -- cars are the number one accidental killer at 40k deaths/year in the US.
Both of these things would naturally occur if drivers were not free externalize the significant costs of their personal choices.
That's fine, but doesn't solve point 2, and doesn't take into account the "social" costs of car-dedicated community infrastructure.
Of course, these costs are really not "social" at all, as easily observed by reviewing the impact on surrounding neighborhood small businesses and property values in areas where inner-city freeways were erected in the 50s-70s, and then torn down again in the 90s or 00s. If you're interested in the pure social costs, there's always the increase of crime, in-cohesive communities, etc.
Cars aren't going anywhere, but that doesn't mean we should always optimize for them above all other concerns, though I agree that we should use more efficient (and less polluting) vehicles.
This is a bit off-topic on a discussion regarding second hand smoke -- my apologies.
If the costs were not externalized, market and political forces would dictate changes in both personal choices and infrastructure investment.
I don't see the rational for abdicating responsibility for the choices in where we both live and work, as disclaiming responsibility for the externalities incurred by these choices ensures that a more optimum "sociopolitical geography" will not be reached.
Car smoke is 1% as offensive as 'smoke' smoke IMHO.
Modern cars fitted with catalytic convertors etc aren't the ones causing the trouble. It's big diesel busses and lorries or very old cars.
Smoking isn't antisocial at all. Smokers are usually the most friendly people I know. Some of the best social things I have done is smoking a cigarette on a train station in a 3rd world country - it brings people together. If someone offers you a cigarette you would be an uppity idiot to decline.
You can walk up to a strange smoker and ask him for a light. Taking a smokebreak outside while there is a complete smoker outside turns strangers into friends.
Not anti-social at all - having a stick up your ass because you dislike smoking is.
There's the difference. We're in more developed nations where smoking is far less common now. You'd expect 3rd world countries to still be smoking.
And yes, I concede, it does bring people together. But drinking is a far better way to do that.
I don't have a stick up my ass because I absolutely hate the feeling of choking in disgusting smelly smoke.
Again - I don't dislike it for some wooly reason like I think it's "bad". I dislike it because it tastes horrible. It smells absolutely disgusting. It makes your clothes smell. Your kids cough. Choking isn't fun. (And this is just second hand smoke. I've never smoked personally).
The "3rd world country" line wasn't the point - I think you missed it altogether.
Smoking has a bit of a culture - when you're smoking somewhere, and someone else is smoking, that's something you can physically talk to them about. You can saunter up to them and say "Virginia blend, eh? Never tried that" and you immediately have a conversation, provided they're not an asshole. It can be something that brings a group together: "Hey lets stop watching this movie and go outside and smoke." And it is very social: it's tough to NOT talk if you're just sitting around with some guys smoking. It can also just be something to do with your hands - for me, at least, it gets rid of the anxious foot-tapping or knuckle cracking and lets me just sit back and smoke and enjoy someone else's company.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that today we are caught up by "interactive distractions" rather than actual human interaction. Smoking socially changes that. </rant>
>> " when you're smoking somewhere, and someone else is smoking, that's something you can physically talk to them about."
Agreed. Just like if you've both had a leg amputated, you have something in common and can also strike up a conversation. But it's not a good reason to purposely cut your leg off. That's probably why you believe smokers to be some of the most friendly people you know - because they have something in common with you.
Personally, most smokers I see around are pretty unfriendly.
Drinking is better for lowering the barriers to social interaction IMHO without making everyone smell horrible and choke. Also a bit healthier.
Also I'm sure it depends on where you live. In the UK the culture is very much anti smoking.
Is smoking (outdoors) really that offensive? I agree that stale smoky clothes smell gross, but I'm never bothered by a crowd smoking outside a bar or club, or people doing it while they walk through the city. It's just a neutral city smell to me.
Yes. With the UK's "no smoking indoors in public" laws, you get a ton of smokers emitting a choking cloud under the awning outside train stations, etc. I hold my breath to walk through it.
Plus just plain walking closely downwind of a smoker on the street is nasty. I have to pay visual attention to avoid getting a lungful of breathed-out smoke. Not fun.
Try a city that has tougher anti-smoking laws. All of our bars/clubs (except the casino high-roller room) are non-smoking. It is much nicer for those of us who don't smoke. (Most have some form of al-fresco area / patio / etc where smoking is allowed. While it once felt part of the experience - I've grown to love it's absence. //Melbourne Australia
I live in a city with extremely tough anti-smoking laws. I came here from a city where smoking indoors was also illegal, but many bars found ways around it or disobeyed the law.
I think it's more fair for the employees, which is why I support it; I don't find cigarettes to smell particularly bad. The only places where I miss it are little dives where cigarettes smell nicer than stale beer.
Anyway, to each his own. I do think smokers should be courteous in public even if most people don't find the smell offensive; waving a flaming stick around carelessly in a crowded place is dangerous.
If this paper weren't biased, it would mention the chief source of evidence in favor of the idea that smoking damages your lungs: Men who smoke die of lung cancer at 23 times the rate of nonsmokers.
Now, that may not be from a randomized trial. But nonetheless, I think that's an important explanandum. See Judea Pearl's Causality if you don't think it's possible to get important data off of mere observational studies.
It just seems really unlikely that, you know, future lung cancer would cause people to start smoking now, or that some common cause makes people decide to start inhaling carcinogens and tar and then causes them to get lung cancer later at 23 times the base rate.
But if anyone actually believes that, we can get a group of 1000 of them together and have 500 of them start smoking with proper random assignment, and see what happens.
He didn't quite say that smoking doesn't damage your lungs, he said that quitting doesn't improve your lifespan. For example he wrote that other forms of cancer apparently are more common among quitters. Of course there are lots of plausible explanations for that, among them that ceasing use of a stimulant causes increased obesity which from what I understand increases risk of many cancers.
Actually I read that really quickly. I hope I'm not completely wrong about what he said.
At this point I think it is well known that quitting smoking doesn't have much health benefit. I think it is exaggeration to call this a "scandal". I recall this was talked about on television a lot back when Peter Jennings died - he had quit smoking many decades earlier, but he still died of lung cancer.
However, here is the important fact: smokers die of lung cancer at a higher rate than non-smokers. The above essay makes a big deal about the fact that quitting seems to have no benefit. That does seem to be true. But never, ever smoking does clearly have a health benefit. This should not be forgotten.
At this point I think it is well known that quitting smoking doesn't have much health benefit.
I don't think this is true. In fact, this strikes me as a lie (not an error) on two fronts: there are health benefits, and there are widely believed to be health benefits.
"The immediate health benefits of quitting smoking are substantial"
"Quitting smoking reduces the risk of cancer and other diseases..."
"Quitting smoking substantially reduces the risk of developing and dying from cancer, and this benefit increases the longer a person remains smoke free."
The Australian government (this is an Australian paper being referenced) seems to take a similarly strong line, and has a version of tobacco packaging warnings with the simple tagline "Quitting Will Improve Your Health": http://www.health.gov.au/internet/quitnow/publishing.nsf/Con...
"Quitting smoking at any age has short and long term health benefits. Quitting will reduce the risks for diseases caused by smoking and will help to improve your health in general."
If the government is lying about these facts, then this would be a scandal. But this really isn't the 'scandal' referred to in the title of the paper. From the closing paragraph: "But smoking is really a secondary issue. The primary issue is the integrity of science. This has no use-by date. When the processes of science are misused, even if for what seems a good reason, science and its practitioners are alike degraded."
The point of the paper is the using misleading statistics and cherry-picked data to prove a point, even if this point is certain to be true, even if it can be established by other means, is a scandal. Apologizing for this practice by rationalizing that "everyone knows" only compounds the problem, and makes their point even sharper.
at hand as I type this, and there is no recommendation of nicotine for any patient there. I'm quite sure that "mood stabilizer" is an incorrect characterization of the drug effect of nicotine. Nicotine has very harmful effects on the personalities of long-term users. I've seen too many examples in the previous generation to recommend it to anyone in my generation.
One study on harm of smoking:
Socioeconomic Status, Smoking, and Health: A Test of Competing Theories of Cumulative Advantage
# Fred C. Pampel and Richard G. Rogers
# Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 306-321
One study on personality factors interacting with nicotine use:
Nicotine dependence, psychological distress and personality traits as possible predictors of smoking cessation. Results of a double-blind study with nicotine patch
Abstract
Updated findings on the relationship between nicotine and depression are presented. Clinical and preclinical research on nicotine use and depression suggests that nicotine may have some properties in common with antidepressants. Updated findings involve the comorbidity of smoking and major depressive disorder (MDD), the influence of depression during withdrawal on failure to quit smoking, the course of MDD without nicotine and the neurobiology of smoking and depression.
Actually to the best of my knowledge nicotine is a stimulant that increases stress. However it alleviates withdrawal symptoms, that are generally causing even more stress.
Seeing a cigarette as stress relief is like thanking a guy for stopping hitting you on the head while he's amusing himself by whacking you in the shoulder instead.
"Bottom line: a randomized trial suggests a large smoking harm on bad lungs, which can explain the entire apparently average smoking harm seen elsewhere. My best guess: smokers die ~10-30% more on average, living about 2-6 months less, but there’s much less net harm to strong lung folks."
Yes, but are the claims true? Have studies failed to show stopping smoking doesn't help you live longer?
And the Japanese _are_ fairly heavy smokers yet have very long lives.
That's not to say I don't thinking smoking is really bad for you. It's an addictive drug, reduces lung capacity and I've known people being treated for emphysema in their 30's etc. But the article makes some interesting claims about how politically charged the issue around smoking is, real science is getting squelched, people ask earnest questions and have their sanity questioned.
Don't know if any of it's true, but with the Global Warming "science" we've been seeing lately, it wouldn't surprise me if the risk of cigarettes has been way oversold.
"The subjects were 1445 male smokers, initially aged 40-59 years" ... 20 years later "total mortality was 7% lower" for people who stopped smoking (7% is barely significant given the sample size)
How about people who start smoking in their teens, and then stop in their early/mid twenties? The effects of quitting smoking then would probably far more beneficial than a smoker who's been smoking for 30 years and then quits.
Based on a variety of things including an statement by my favorite professor, I think it's not so much that smoking is deadly by itself, but smoking and most anything else is, e.g.:
He said smoking in the context of a city's pollution was very bad, that e.g. Kansas wheat farmers had problems related to the wheat farming but were otherwise OK (he was an M.D. and smoked, BTW, took lots of Vitamin A and so on and he'll turn 90 next year...).
It's well established (to my satisfaction, at least) that radon is mostly dangerous in the context of heavy smoking (which after all is where the initial study came from, of uranium miners).
The risks of smoking and lots of things like birth control pills are well established.
I'd also note that there's going to be genetic variability here that will make smoking much worse for some fraction of the population.
(On the other hand, as someone with severe allergies, I'm not entirely unhappy with the results of the US crusade against smoking....)
> And the Japanese _are_ fairly heavy smokers yet have very long lives.
That's funny because I was going to write "I don't know how much truth is in what he writes about all those studies, but that statememt is complete bullshit".
I've lived in Japan for a year, and my personal experience is that the Japanese smoke very little.
Probably because their diets are vastly superior to everyone else's. So people predisposed to live longer are going to live longer, even if smoking takes a few years off their lives.
People who have trouble considering this idea because of all the conditioning can take a couple of hours online to investigate the scientific evidence for the dangers of second-hand smoke. When I did, they fell into the noise ... within statistical error.
What is the measured, documented percentage of smokers who contract lung-cancer? I never found that number. Furthermore, what other environmental factors were controlled for?
These numbers may even exist somewhere. My point is that they never come up as part of the arguments. Because "everyone knows" ...
>>take a couple of hours online to investigate the scientific evidence for the dangers of second-hand smoke [fell into statistical noise when I investigated]
"Several studies have documented health and economic benefits related to smoking bans. In the first 18 months after Pueblo, Colorado enacted a 2003 smoking ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped by 27% while admissions in neighboring towns without smoking bans showed no change."
(I saw larger claims in a BBC article sometime for the smoking bans in British pubs, but was too lazy to go find it.)
Edit: 20 more seconds.
>>What is the measured, documented percentage of smokers who contract lung-cancer?
"Specifically, meta-analyses show that lifelong non-smokers with partners who smoke in the home have a 20–30% greater risk of lung cancer than non-smokers who live with non-smokers. Non-smokers exposed to cigarette smoke in the workplace have an increased lung cancer risk of 16–19%."
Edit 2: I went and found the BBC article (or another with the same content :-).
"Smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third, two studies report.
This "heart gain" is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10% figure recently quoted by England's Department of Health.
[...]
The studies appear in two leading journals - Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
[...]
But the latest work, based on the results of numerous different studies collectively involving millions of people, indicated that smoking bans have reduced heart attack rates by as much as 26% per year."
Edit 3: Who votes up the parent comment?! :-) Less than a minute with Google shows his claims to be totally wrong.
Wikipedia and BBC are NOT scientific studies. I followed up some of the (VERY FEW) links from the Wikipedia article to medical papers, and they were just what the original article said - studies that claimed improvements on this or that scale with no evidence of actual life extension.
I don't see any need to invoke conspiracies. Most probably they are just reading somewhat uncertain and vague data to support what they think is true (confirmation bias?).
So, it is not a conspiracy theory to assume the world's complete collection of newspapers are totally wrong in their description of the research consensus? Despite decades of big advertisement budgets from tobacco companies, saying differently?
There is no doubt that there is propaganda on both sides. First, the govt taxes a pack of cigarettes at the rate of 85% over the actual cost of production, distribution and advertising with profit margin included. Since it is harmful for you, we will make you pay more for it - but we won't ban it because we want to give you the freedom of choice. On the other hand, the article goes on great length describing studies trying to find correlation between life expectancy and smoking, debunking the govt's claim along the way; However, it steers clear from talking about the high association found between lung cancer and smoking. Even if lung cancer deducts only a few months from your life, it still is a cancer and has effects OTHER than causing early death.
I'm curious about the points about inhaling---not being a smoker, I just always assumed that (nearly) all smokers inhaled the smoke. That's why Bill Clinton's pot claim ("but I never inhaled") was such a joke, right? Or is there something more going on there?
When smoking a cigar or pipe most smokers don't inhale deeply like one does with a cigarette. There are still health risks for heavy cigar smokers like mouth cancer, IIRC.
Compulsory smoking in schools? Apparently yes, in the 1666 plague some schools like Eton made students smoke as a preventative. Huh. But the original post seemed to imply a broader requirement everywhere; this is all I found in a hasty googling.
At this point even Sarah Palin believes in global warming, she just doesn't think it is caused by humans.
I will accurately quote her.
"SarahPalinUSA
Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng
2:57 AM Dec 19th from TwitterBerry"
But truthfully, the reason I wish people would stop smoking is not from altruistic concern for them, and not for any personal fear - I just think it stinks. It's as foul as farting and has much less excuse.
Just stop, please.