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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.
People with lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease, stroke and significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments just have a higher desire to smoke. Correlation and causation, you know.
If the FDA wasn't so damn corrupt, smoking would be a thing of the past. Vaping works. Harm reduction works. It's only because the FDA's overlords, Big Pharma, can't compete with the technology that it isn't approved and pervasive in our society.
Openly accepted electronic cigarettes could make smoking as niche as, say, religious snake handling in a decade, but noooo. Gotta protect that status quo and the pharmaceutical industry's pocketbooks.
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
I wish the media would stop amplifying everybody's state of fear.
I wish people would do studies as to how many of those diseases are caused by tobacco itself and how many by the additives pumped into the cigarettes and commercial tobacco and how many by the sheer pollution of our environment.
I wish people would have the wisdom in differentiating between the above and stop fearing every single thing.
I would also wish alcohol would be just half as stigmatised as tobacco is, although I consider it a lot more dangerous and harmful. Nobody killed people by driving and smoking, for example.
Yeah .. then we can ban alcohol. And Big Macs. And soda. Yeah .. that's the ticket. Let's put our health in the hands of the US government. Why don't we just remove all personal choices that slightly affect other people and let the government decide what's best for us. My mother died at 82 of a stroke. From what I can tell, she didn't spend any more on healthcare than lots of elderly people. Everyone dies eventually, and with today's practices, many suffer at the hands of extreme medical procedures because their insurance pays for it. Bring back caps on treatments and stop forcing non-profit hospitals to treat the terminally ill for free and a lot of these costs go away. Funny how making people responsible for their own debt can reduce the impact on society of such costs.
The reality is that many people enjoy smoking. I smoke cigars 3-4 times a week. It's very relaxing to sit outside and read with a cigar instead of being glued to the TV. Sure .. I could read without it. But I enjoy it. I enjoy a cigar or two when I'm out sailing. Or riding my motorcycle.
So .. to all those that want to ban cigarettes .. go fuck yourself. If you don't like it, don't smoke. Walking through a cloud of smoke outside is no more dangerous than driving to work for most people, so don't even start on that.
And don't give me all the bullshit about increased medical costs. If you weren't such a hypocrite, you'd also want ban marathon running and dozens of extreme athletic practices that drive up your medical costs. Then motorcycle riding. And cars.
The problem is, those that want it banned don't smoke, so it doesn't affect them. They are just self-righteous, selfish, useless idiots. They have no problem with taking things away from other people but would fight tooth and nail if the government took something away from them 'for their own good'.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Yeah, that worked really well last time....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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?
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And what is productivity? Are you productive if you work in an office selling insurance? Or writing software used by people in other offices to support people in yet further offices? When we talk about leading a productive life we don't tend to think of that in terms of worker productivity. I don't know how that relates to the above posts, but it doesn't make me feel that happy.
I'm a person who enjoys a pipe or a cigar once a month. I smoke alone on my balcony, so the smoke dissipates in the wind quickly and doesn't seem to bother anyone else. Any health effects incurred on me, I'm sure it's not as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I don't even inhale the smoke (with pipes and cigars you are not supposed to inhale, as I will explain below) so the health risks are even less. Given these, why would you want to take this small pleasure away from me?
Cigars and pipes are not as addictive as cigarettes, and there is a reason for that. Cigarettes are designed to be inhaled. Their smoke is engineered to be more acidic, with additives to the tobacco and such. The acidic smoke is more readily absorbed by the lungs. Pipe and cigar smoke on the other hand is more alkaline in its nature. It is not absorbed well by the lungs. Instead, it is more readily absorbed by the mouth's mucosal membranes. Therefore you don't inhale cigar & pipe smoke. The result of all this is a major difference in the smoking experience. With cigarettes, you get an intense nicotine spike that lasts 5 minutes and then leaves you unsatisfied and wanting more. (The surface area of lung's absorbing membranes is a lot more than the mouth's, as you would expect, hence the intense nicotine spike.) With pipes & cigars, you get a slow and steady absorption of nicotine for an hour or so. It is relaxing and meditative. And you don't feel like having another cigar immediately after, since you are already left satisfied. I have been enjoying my once-a-month balcony smoking sessions for 3 years now. I have no feelings of craving or addiction. If I was smoking cigarettes, I highly doubt I would be able to enjoy one once a month. Instead, I would end up smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
You may say let's just ban cigarettes then. Well, prohibition has worked so well in its history after all. Look at how nobody uses alcohol or drugs anymore, since we banned them back in the days...
Cigarette use is already in the decline. Instead of taking completely useless prohibitionary measures, if we wait long enough, cigarette use will be completely replaced by vaper use. And there will be the occasional esoteric cigar & pipe smoker like me, who quietly enjoys his cigar in his balcony, porch, or at the local tobacconist.