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Young Men Who Smoke Have Lower IQs
Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily reports on a study that has determined that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers. In the study, conducted with 20,000 Israeli Army recruits and veterans, the average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, and the IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90. (These IQs all fall within the normal range.) 'In the health profession, we've generally thought that smokers are most likely the kind of people to have grown up in difficult neighborhoods, or who've been given less education at good schools,' says Prof. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychiatry, whose study was reported in a recent version of the journal Addiction. 'Because our study included subjects with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, we've been able to rule out socio-economics as a major factor. The government might want to rethink how it allocates its educational resources on smoking.' Prof. Weiser says that the study illuminates a general trend in epidemiological studies. 'People on the lower end of the average IQ tend to display poorer overall decision-making skills when it comes to their health,' says Weiser. 'Schoolchildren who have been found to have a lower IQ can be considered at risk to begin the habit, and can be targeted with special education and therapy to prevent them from starting or to break the habit after it sets in.'"
People Who Require Scientific Studies To Prove Something Easily Intuitable Have Lower IQs.
And you are ignoring the fact that nicotine has pleasant effects, which is why people smoke at all. This is what always gets me about the anti-smoking crowd -- yes, smoking is bad for your health, but nobody ever bothers to raise the issue of why people smoke. It is not as cut and dry as "you try a cigarette and you are hooked for life," which is how most youth education seems to frame it. It is also not as simple as "no matter how often you smoke, it will lead to cancer, amputations, and heart attacks" -- smoking one cigarette a month is not a high enough level of exposure to pose a danger, whereas smoking a pack or more per day certainly is.
The problem, at least where I am (America), is that anti-smoking programs dumb everything down and treat people like idiots. Why not be honest with people, acknowledge that smoking has pleasant effects, and remind them that exposure to tobacco smoke is dangerous and that frequent exposure is very likely to cause severe health problems?
Really, you can substitute any drug in the above argument -- American anti-drug rhetoric is based on stirring up hysteria, and not on respecting anyone's intellect.
Palm trees and 8
How can a child with a smoker for a father not follow a fool?
How is this example *not* survival of the fittest?
Do you Gentoo!?
Then why didn't you think "this is killing me, making me loose the sensation of taste and smell and makes me smell bad as well as costing me an arm and a leg to feed my addiction"?
Hard to take a 10 year drug addict serious as a deep thinker.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...it's a sure thing. Bonus points for piercings, etc.
Then again, who wants to poke girls like that?
No sig today...