[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
So you’ll stop when it quits being addictive all on it’s own, right? That’s the reason you “enjoy” it, you know.
[/QUOTE]
No, most of us addicts don’t know about the “self medicating” aspect of smoking. In short, it hurts to not smoke, so it “feels good” (relieves the hurt) to light up.
Maybe I can find a cite. But right now I need to go have a bite to eat.
[QUOTE=The King of Soup]
'Tisn’t, y’know. Nicotine is a fabulous drug. It makes you feel good, and more alert and capable, (rather than less aware and lethargic) and to some extent (some studies show) the brain on nicotine actually functions better, even though the rest of the body may suffer. Nuclear plant workers accept various partly-known risks in return for known benefits, and they’re not children.
Sure, stupid fucking kids. But kids and adults are stupid in a whole lot of ways – why pick on the one that gives a whole lot of second chances to get smart?
Don’t get me wrong – I still think of smoking as “the intelligence test I got wrong 20 times every day, despite knowing the answer.” However…there are a whole lot of bad decisions that, like starting an addictive habit, are difficult to reverse. And behavior is seldom improved by reshaping the argument into a moral issue. Czarcasm, you’re providing a great example of someone who knows what’s right and, by mistaking truth for morality, can drive everyone s/he encounters away from the path you wish people would follow. By the way, nicotine is a stimulant, and provides positive feedback long before withdrawal kicks in. That’s a fact, not a moral judgment. So keep up with the good fight, but if you’re serious about it, consider changing your tactics.
[/QUOTE]
Believe me, my tactic with kids is calm and fact based. My tactic with adults, on the other hand, that claim we are trying to infringe on kids so-called “right” to smoke, deny that advertising had any real effect on their starting their addiction or has any real effect on kids starting their addiction, and deny that smoking is both deadly and highly addictive, is to get right in their face and call them on it. If you don’t make those claims, and try to observe the rights of others not to inhale your smoke, I’ve got no beef with you at all.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
I wouldn’t mind a cite for that “40 a day” claim, and a little info about how long she’s been smoking.
[/QUOTE]
I tell a lie: 80 a day. Now I know that’s merely a claim. So here are more similar claims. This is a woman who has been on the front cover of a national newspaper hoovering up a fat line of coke, so I don’t necessarily disbelieve it. She’s 33 and presumably been smoking since her mid-teens. And is still beautiful.
I have been smoking 20 a day since my mid teens. I’m 40 in two months’ time, and most of my cow-orkers think I’m 30.
Of course it ruins many smokers’ looks, but not all smokers, and that’s the point I was trying to make.
[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
http://smokingsides.com/asfs/M/Moss.html
Scroll down for Kate Moss.
I don’t know how reliable the sources are, but there are several of them, at any rate.
If you google “kate moss smoking” there are articles commenting on how they are starting to affect her looks. If those cites are even half-true, it’s amazing how she’s managed to keep them thus far. Speaking from personal experience, smoking has had little effect on my skin/teeth/etc, but I’ve only been smoking for 3-4 years and half-a-pack is the most I’ll smoke on my worst days. (I know, I should probably quite while I’m ahead.)
[/QUOTE]
Your cite makes the claim that she has in the past occasionally sneaked a smoke, but has recently quit. Anything about her currently being a “40 a day” smoker?
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Your cite makes the claim that she has in the past occasionally sneaked a smoke, but has recently quit. Anything about her currently being a “40 a day” smoker?
[/QUOTE]
Nevermind-I looked at the wrong Moss on that page.
[QUOTE=The King of Soup]
'Tisn’t, y’know. Nicotine is a fabulous drug. It makes you feel good, and more alert and capable, (rather than less aware and lethargic) and to some extent (some studies show) the brain on nicotine actually functions better, even though the rest of the body may suffer. Nuclear plant workers accept various partly-known risks in return for known benefits, and they’re not children.
Sure, stupid fucking kids. But kids and adults are stupid in a whole lot of ways – why pick on the one that gives a whole lot of second chances to get smart?
Don’t get me wrong – I still think of smoking as “the intelligence test I got wrong 20 times every day, despite knowing the answer.” However…there are a whole lot of bad decisions that, like starting an addictive habit, are difficult to reverse. And behavior is seldom improved by reshaping the argument into a moral issue. Czarcasm, you’re providing a great example of someone who knows what’s right and, by mistaking truth for morality, can drive everyone s/he encounters away from the path you wish people would follow. By the way, nicotine is a stimulant, and provides positive feedback long before withdrawal kicks in. That’s a fact, not a moral judgment. So keep up with the good fight, but if you’re serious about it, consider changing your tactics.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t have time to dispute all this right now, but it’s my understanding that the effects you cite diminish greatly with the progress of the addiction.
I’ll be back.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
I tell a lie: 80 a day. Now I know that’s merely a claim. So here are more similar claims. This is a woman who has been on the front cover of a national newspaper hoovering up a fat line of coke, so I don’t necessarily disbelieve it. She’s 33 and presumably been smoking since her mid-teens. And is still beautiful.
I have been smoking 20 a day since my mid teens. I’m 40 in two months’ time, and most of my cow-orkers think I’m 30.
Of course it ruins many smokers’ looks, but not all smokers, and that’s the point I was trying to make.
[/QUOTE]
I’m glad you look so good for your age. I do hope, however, that you are doing a lot better healthwise than she is, according to the websites you’ve linked to.
[QUOTE=mangeorge]
I didn’t say “don’t”, I asked “why”.
Don’t lecture me on choice until you learn how to intrepet what you read.
Kids under 18 who smoke are criminals in must communities. So are those who provide (sell or give) tobacco to them.
Why do you hate kids so much that you would encourage them to smoke?
[/QUOTE]
The illegal aspect is a problem, sure. But still, even kids under the age of 18 have been repedeatly told the harms a cigarette can cause, and they still continue to do so.
It is IMHO that it is actually better for a kid to smoke cigarettes underage than it would be to drink alcohol underage. With cigarettes you don’t act in a stupid manner, the same can’t be said about alcohol.
Now, I ask you, why the heck would you consider them to be criminals IF they smoke and are underage, law aside?
I mean, you do realize that laws are made by lawmakers and they are by no means an absolute on the way people ought to behave…
Likewise, and I do not smoke, I find those anti-smoking campaings to be a true pain in the ass. You only live once, and even though cigarettes may be harmful to your health, if you like them, and are aware of the health problems they may cause, go ahead. I find the anti-smoking campaigns in the US in general to be waaay excessive…
blows smoke in this thread
Smoking is unhealthy. Smoking also produces a pleasureable sensation. People do unhealthy things for pleasure all the time, and life goes on.
Seeing people smoke just to look cool does annoy however, so I agree with that part.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Believe me, my tactic with kids is calm and fact based. My tactic with adults, on the other hand, that claim we are trying to infringe on kids so-called “right” to smoke, deny that advertising had any real effect on their starting their addiction or has any real effect on kids starting their addiction, and deny that smoking is both deadly and highly addictive, is to get right in their face and call them on it. If you don’t make those claims, and try to observe the rights of others not to inhale your smoke, I’ve got no beef with you at all.
[/QUOTE]
Nifty. But even adults, recent or long-term, are susceptible to persuasion of both positive and negative varieties, and some of them may be worth saving too, no matter what wrong thoughts they may currently be harboring. You’ll catch me smoking again long before you hear me spouting off about some mythical “right” to smoke (or, for that matter, some mythical “right” to avoid ambient smoke). But we live in a society somewhere between T.H. White’s imagined formic extremes: not everything that is compulsory is forbidden, and not everything forbidden is compulsory. Politically speaking, this should be enough to allow poor choices as a necessity of freedom.
I admit, addiction is a gray area White didn’t cover, and because it dresses a compulsion as a choice (and rationality is therefore out the window) there might be room in a liberal society for some limited coercion in this area, along the same lines allowed when dealing with mental illness or other situations wherein the individual is understood to be operating under a suboptimal, subrational paradigm. But we normally restrict freedom only when the threat to others is real and imminent, rather than statistically possible or even probable. To do otherwise might criminalize activities currently not only sanctioned in our society, but admired.
I read, and considered, The King of Soup’s three links alluding to the pleasures of smoking. I didn’t go in with a completely open mind, because after over 35 years of smoking I can’t say I derived any real pleasure from the habit. Neither did any of the other long term smokers I talked to about it. Relief, yes. But no true pleasure.
On the second page of the first linked article the authors speak of the brain’s developing resistance to the drug, and the increasing amount of it to maintain the addiction, which is pretty much as I said.
The second article talks about nicotine’s effects on alertness and spatial attention in non-smokers. We’re talking about smokers here. This might be germane to why we start, but not much as to why we continue.
The third article I don’t have the neccessary education to follow.
All this is as I remember from about three years ago when I finally quit. I never did, and to this day don’t, miss any of the claimed pleasures of smoking, but I did feel the “sick” of a junkie. Still do sometimes.
I asked my 35 yr/old daughter, who’s smoked for maybe 10 yrs, if she gets any sort of pleasure from smoling and she said no but that she gets very agitated and does feel bad when she doesn’t have a cigarette for a while.
So I guess my question should be “Why do you still smoke”, which is essentially what it does ask.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
I’m glad you look so good for your age. I do hope, however, that you are doing a lot better healthwise than she is, according to the websites you’ve linked to.
[/QUOTE]
I would stop using her as an example. In my experience a coke habit does in your looks a lot quicker than cigerettes. Too many variables to tell which is doing her in.
[QUOTE=Loach]
I would stop using her as an example. In my experience a coke habit does in your looks a lot quicker than cigerettes. Too many variables to tell which is doing her in.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, as does meth. Methrot, I call it.
[QUOTE=mangeorge]
I don’t have time to dispute all this right now, but it’s my understanding that the effects you cite diminish greatly with the progress of the addiction.
I’ll be back.
[/QUOTE]
Testimony on the pleasures of smoking from a former ten-year, pack-a-day smoker:
[ul]
[li]The first cigaratte after abstaining for a couple of days is a great high. Sublime, even.[/li][li]The second and following cigarettes allow you to feel nearly OK.[/li][li]Don’'t smoke, Opal.[/li][/ul] The mantra I used for quitting “I’m not getting on that merry-go-round again.” I had a choice when I started to smoke, and I had a choice when I decided to quit, but when I was smoking I didn’t have a choice whether or not to have a cigarette.
[QUOTE=SoCalled]
Testimony on the pleasures of smoking from a former ten-year, pack-a-day smoker:
[ul]
[li]The first cigaratte after abstaining for a couple of days is a great high. Sublime, even.[/li][li]The second and following cigarettes allow you to feel nearly OK.[/li][li]Don’'t smoke, Opal.[/li][/ul] The mantra I used for quitting “I’m not getting on that merry-go-round again.” I had a choice when I started to smoke, and I had a choice when I decided to quit, but when I was smoking I didn’t have a choice whether or not to have a cigarette.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you!
Can any heavy (20+/day or so) testify to a continued real pleasure, not relief, from smoking? I expect that at least a few can.
I enjoy maybe one or two cigarettes a week. The rest are merely serving the addiction.
I enjoy maybe one to two cigarettes, cigars, or pipes a month. Because they’re the only ones I smoke.
I don’t understand a pack a day habit (hell, I make over $50k a year and I don’t think I could afford it!) but I also don’t understand the idea that all smoking is bad and addictive.
Czarcasm in particular I’d like to hear from as to whether he thinks I’m only “enjoying” it because it relieves my “addiction”. I rather enjoyed the cigar I had yesterday. No coughing, either. Maybe next week I’ll clean out my pipe for the first time in a few months. Note I haven’t smoked prior to this since…hrm, a party in May.
[QUOTE=Zeriel]
I enjoy maybe one to two cigarettes, cigars, or pipes a month. Because they’re the only ones I smoke.
I don’t understand a pack a day habit (hell, I make over $50k a year and I don’t think I could afford it!) but I also don’t understand the idea that all smoking is bad and addictive.
Czarcasm in particular I’d like to hear from as to whether he thinks I’m only “enjoying” it because it relieves my “addiction”. I rather enjoyed the cigar I had yesterday. No coughing, either. Maybe next week I’ll clean out my pipe for the first time in a few months. Note I haven’t smoked prior to this since…hrm, a party in May.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve known a few who smoke like that. As it turns out, they (not one of three) never actually inhaled. Which is cool, because at least they don’t get addicted. I assume that’s the case with you.
I don’t know how someone could smoke that infrequently and inhale because the smoke is so foreign to your throat and lungs in you’re not inured to it. Even now, after having smoked for so long then quitting, if I try to inhale cigarette smoke I gag and cough almost uncontrollably.
I think you’re a bigtime exception to the rule, Zeriel…if only most folks could limit their smoking to that extent, it wouldn’t be such a major public health problem.
Marketing guy who has worked on a cigarette account checking in here…
I also just quit smoking (again) and haven’t had a cigarette for almost a month. Maybe it will stick this time.
My biggest problem with the perception of smoking is that the entire country thinks that we’re doing huge damage to cigarette companies through the American Legacy Foundation and its anti-smoking ads. Think about this for a sec - how many other marketers do you know of that can make money when ads that tell people not to use their product are widespread? The Truth can advertise in media that have been off-limits to tobacco advertisers for decades, and has a huge ad budget and some of the coolest, hippest ad agencies working on creating anti-smoking ads. Wanna know why this anti-smoking crusade fails?
Because teens have very sensitive radars that tip them off to people and organizations that try to manipulate them and their behavior. They have very low tolerances for propaganda. They are very aware of organizations and campaigns that have an agenda.
Even if The Truth runs ads that are the coolest things anyone has ever seen…Even if they manage to slip something under the radar like whudafxup.com…Even if they hire the edgiest ad agency on the face of the planet… The Truth will still be a part of “the establishment” that tries to influence kids’ behavior. Many kids will tune them out on that basis alone.
I don’t know the inner mechanics of how the American Legacy Foundation funds The Truth, but there should be some sort of audit process to see if the hundreds of millions of marketing/advertising dollars being spent are moving the needle with respect to attitudes toward smoking. We may see a shift in perception, but whether or not those ad dollars are being used efficiently enough to justify the degree to which teen attitudes toward smoking are shifting is definitely a question I’d like to see answered. IMHO, this money is being spent inefficiently.
Basically, what this boils down to is that tobacco brands seem to be a hip, cool choice while anti-smoking messages are seen as uncool because they’re aligned with “the establishment.” I’m not saying this applies to every kid, because certainly a good number of them are intelligent enough to understand the manipulation going on behind the scenes. But plenty of kids make the choice to smoke cigarettes based on emotional and not rational factors. Yet, the American Legacy Foundation funds ads that appeal to kids on the basis of rationality? Makes little sense to me.