Smoking Is Even Deadlier Than Previously Thought

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.

Comments

Re:just ban it

[Dragon Bait]

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 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".

Re:I blame the FDA

[fey000]

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 those in your vicinity to some degree as well). As a result, it's expensive as bloody hell to society, leading to a *deficit* in high-quality medical care socialist countries. Oh, and the nicotine itself, separate from ingestion method, also causes sleeping problems, gastro-intestinal problems, and headaches. So enjoy that.

For the poor epidemiologists around, smoking is a major pain in the ass, because it's a confounder in almost every damn longitudinal cohort study ever, meaning more math, more matching, more controlling for additional factors, and more tables.

On the plus side:
There are only two benefits that I know; the calming effect of nicotine can be helpful in reducing point stress (often negated by the *increase* in stress that comes from nicotine abstinence), and the *possibly* mild protection it offers from late-onset Alzheimer's disease. I say possibly because the evidence of this protection is no consistent.

Re:Smoke weed every day

[Ellis D. Tripp]

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?

Re:I'm I the only one

[Baloroth]

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. People don't start smoking because it's addictive: they start smoking because it's enjoyable.