# The Rationale for Quitting Smoking **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 21, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434 "2009-11-21T19:24:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/81 "2009-11-24T19:58:31Z")
The risk from the combination of smoking and hormonal contraceptives goes up with age. If you’re a woman who smokes, you might find yourself having to look for a new birth control method at age 35 or so. ---
**Author:** ![Lionne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Lionne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lionne)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/82 "2009-11-24T21:23:12Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Can I be denied a job because of smoking? Yes. Slight hijack - is this really true? What’s the basis for it, health concerns? Insurance coverage? On that note, what if I get asked whether I smoke during a job interview and I don’t know how to answer because I don’t know what the company policy is? It’s not an illegal question like asking if I’m married or what nationality I am, but it puts me at a disadvantage. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/83 "2009-11-24T21:51:24Z")
> [@Lionne](#): > > Slight hijack - is this really true? What’s the basis for it, health concerns? Insurance coverage? You can be denied a job because you’re left-handed in the US. Unless it is a protected class (and neither smoking nor handedness are) there’s no reason needed. And some companies have a strict no smoking policy for employees even when off the time clock. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/84 "2009-11-24T21:53:01Z")
> [@Lionne](#): > > Slight hijack - is this really true? What’s the basis for it, health concerns? Insurance coverage? In some states at least, yes. It’s because of the extra cost of health insurance for smokers, or at least that’s the reason the companies generally give. [Scott Miracle Gro sued by employee who was fired for smoking.](http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/11/30/off_the_job_smoker_sues_over_firing/?page=1) Quote from the article, from the lawyer representing the employee: > [@](#): > > “I don’t think anybody ought to be smoking cigarettes, but as long as it’s legal, it’s none of the employer’s business as long as it doesn’t impact the workplace.” Can you _imagine_ a lawyer for a plaintiff in, say, a sexual-orientation discrimination suit saying the equivalent? “I don’t think anybody ought to be having homosexual sex, but…” It would be all over the newspapers, just like when the justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to marry a mixed-race couple. And there would be even more of an outcry if a lawyer said the equivalent about religion. It’s socially acceptable to be anti-smoker, in a way that it’s not to be anti-gay or anti-(fill in religion here). ---
**Author:** ![heavyarms553](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/779978/32.png) [@heavyarms553](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heavyarms553)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/85 "2009-11-25T04:07:09Z")
Smoking is really, really bad for you. I’m a med student and one of the first things we want to know is if you smoke. It is by far the number one behavioral risk factor for a wide variety of diseases ranging from lung cancer to atherosclerosis to bladder cancer to emphysema to diabetes to… you get the idea. As an interesting aside, it reduces the risk that you will develop parkinsons, so… gl with that. Stop smoking. Edit: I just remembered something interesting from my days at the anatomy lab dissection tables. We had 20 cadavers in our lab, and as we were doing the thorax dissections, it was clear as day which ones had been smokers. The concept that smoking turns your lungs into shriveled black husks is not a fanciful tale meant to scare children. It is real, and it is disgusting. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/86 "2009-11-25T04:46:27Z")
> [@heavyarms553](#): > > Edit: I just remembered something interesting from my days at the anatomy lab dissection tables. We had 20 cadavers in our lab, and as we were doing the thorax dissections, it was clear as day which ones had been smokers. The concept that smoking turns your lungs into shriveled black husks is not a fanciful tale meant to scare children. It is real, and it is disgusting. I recall when I was a kid, at one point my school had a presentation where they passed around slices of lungs preserved in little double glass paned squares. One from a normal person; another from someone who smoked and got emphysema. Seeing lung tissue that looked like someone had take a blowtorch to it was a lot more convincing that a dozen ham handed attempts to convince us that smoking wasn’t cool. ---
**Author:** ![groo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@groo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groo)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/87 "2009-11-25T06:23:50Z")
Former smoker (knock on wood). Don’t try to explain anything good about smoking to non-smokers. They cannot conceive that it is in any way pleasureable. I would submit that one of the best things in the world is a cigarette and a hot cup of coffee, and non-smokers don’t know what that’s like. In order to stop smoking, I had to deal with the thought: “I will not be able to do this pleasurable thing ever again.” And it sucks. I don’t think that living several more years near the end of my life when I’ll be living on cat food and welcoming shoppers to Wal Mart is a good enough reason to stop. But there are shorter-term benefits, some of which have been given above (though they were worded as problems, they’re problems that get solved by quitting). > [@Sidney Evgeni Jordan](#): > > It reduces your fitness and stamina, e.g., your ability to walk up a couple flights of steps/play softball/tennis/golf/skiing > It makes your teeth yellow > It reduces your sense of taste > Depending on how much you smoke, you may have to plan parts of your life around your habit - finding a place to smoke after a long plane flight or while you are watching a baseball game or concert > Life insurance is more expensive > It takes up more time during your day than you think I agree with all of the above, though the fitness and stamina might not return as a near term benefit. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Smoking makes you stink and accidentally light assorted items on fire. > It litters. > It drops the value of your car and your home. > It costs money. > It crinkles your skin and stains your teeth, hands and mustache. > It makes you look like a dope standing outside in the cold. > > Some of the secondary health consequences, such as a prematurely soft weenie, are underappreciated, in my experience, but I realize you want to leave those out. > > Most of all, it limits your acquaintances to those willing to hang around smokers. In the business world and in life in general, this can have substantial consequences. > … I don’t agree with accidentally starting fires, littering, decreasing the value of your car or home; those are only relevant to absent-minded litterers who smoke inside their cars and homes. But if these apply to you, not smoking will remedy them in short order. Aging your skin absolutely happens, but quitting will not yield a short-term benefit, so let’s deemphasize that one. The big ones are that smoking exacerbates other health problems and allows all non-smokers to treat you like a second-class citizen. Smokers are one of the few groups that everyone can dump on, socially, financially and legally. Now they’ve gone outside of buildings and are writing legislation prohibiting smoking outside in some public spaces. Some companies are testing job applicants for nicotine, and denying them employment because of the higher cost of health insurance. And they’re not going to stop. Unlike your experience, I rapidly increased my fitness level after quitting, and generally felt like I had more energy. Quitting also opens up a larger segment of the population who are willing to have sex with you. Regarding the “planning” in the first quote block, if you get involved with something wherein you just can’t get away to have a smoke, you might be going ten hours without a cigarette, and you’ll be getting more and more irritated at everything and not enjoying whatever it is you’re doing. That sucks. Another benefit: you get calmer. Nicotine is a stimulant (that makes you feel relaxed), and within a week of getting it out of your system, you may note that you’re just not as anxious as when you smoked. Because you’ll be a little bleary, but the bleariness is a good thing. Also, the prematurely soft weenie comment above is not my specific experience, but I’ve heard anecdotally from some ex-smokers who say that sex got better after quitting. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/88 "2009-11-25T11:58:52Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t think that living several more years near the end of my life when I’ll be living on cat food and welcoming shoppers to Wal Mart is a good enough reason to stop. The thing about this argument is that it misses a critical point. Life is like a boat - they don’t get longer at the ends - they get longer in the middle. Your increase in lifespan isn’t an extension of additional years of decline. It is an extension of the best and most healthy and productive years of your life. You put off the time when your body and income starts to decline. So a non-smoker gets more years in the peak of health. Smokers get an early decline in health, fitness, and general quality of life, as if they prematurely age. Mostly because they do prematurely age. Of course if you are dead broke and living on cat food, well that is more a problem of financial management than health. Probably because you had to quit work earlier, and you have had such appalling medical costs. ---
**Author:** ![groo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@groo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groo)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/89 "2009-11-25T12:37:30Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > The thing about this argument is that it misses a critical point. Life is like a boat - they don’t get longer at the ends - they get longer in the middle. Your increase in lifespan isn’t an extension of additional years of decline. It is an extension of the best and most healthy and productive years of your life. You put off the time when your body and income starts to decline. So a non-smoker gets more years in the peak of health. Smokers get an early decline in health, fitness, and general quality of life, as if they prematurely age. Mostly because they do prematurely age. Of course if you are dead broke and living on cat food, well that is more a problem of financial management than health. Probably because you had to quit work earlier, and you have had such appalling medical costs. I was being a little flippant, but **in my case,** I needed to come up with a list of reasons that I could feel with a sense of urgency, because they were what I’d have to think about a couple of dozen times a day when deciding not to smoke that one cigarette. For anything with benefits more than six months away, I couldn’t feel the sense of urgency. Whether they were a few more years in my “still healthy-ish” state or during my decline, they were still too far in the future. So I came up with a list of all of the shorter-term benefits, and mentally read through that list whenever I was having a strong craving. Seriously, **for me** it was easier to focus on not feeling like a second class citizen, because I could experience that benefit immediately. ---
**Author:** ![Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/90 "2009-11-25T13:00:18Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > Can you _imagine_ a lawyer for a plaintiff in, say, a sexual-orientation discrimination suit saying the equivalent? “I don’t think anybody ought to be having homosexual sex, but…” It would be all over the newspapers, just like when the justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to marry a mixed-race couple. And there would be even more of an outcry if a lawyer said the equivalent about religion. It’s socially acceptable to be anti-smoker, in a way that it’s not to be anti-gay or anti-(fill in religion here). Yes, you are correct. It is socially acceptable to be anti-smoking. That is how unacceptable smoking is. Do you have a problem with that? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/91 "2009-11-25T13:38:41Z")
> [@groo](#): > > …smoking…allows all non-smokers to treat you like a second-class citizen. Not to single out this comment to the exclusion of some valid points in your post, but anyone who came of age before the big turnaround in attitudes towards public smoking would have to laugh at this. It’ll take quite awhile before the “injustice” you cite comes anywhere close to the second-class status of nonsmokers whose right to decent indoor air quality was subordinate to the demands of smokers for so many years. > [@](#): > > I don’t think that living several more years near the end of my life when I’ll be living on cat food and welcoming shoppers to Wal Mart is a good enough reason to stop. Not hauling around an oxygen tank or wasting away on a ventilator is some incentive. > [@](#): > > Quitting also opens up a larger segment of the population who are willing to have sex with you. Observations like this need to be emphasized more. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/92 "2009-11-25T13:40:43Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > Can you _imagine_ a lawyer for a plaintiff in, say, a sexual-orientation discrimination suit saying the equivalent? “I don’t think anybody ought to be having homosexual sex, but…” Curiously I can imagine just that. That seemed to be pretty much the “People versus Larry Flint” line. Laywer basically saying that his client was a repulsive slimball, but that there was no law against, and indeed constitutional protection for, his particular version of slime. Lawyers do and say what they think will win the case. That is what they are paid to do. If someone was representing a client in a gay rights case in a right wing backwoods, this might actually be the best tactic. On the other hand, such behavior does indeed make headlines. Especially if the lawyer wins the case. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/93 "2009-11-25T18:12:16Z")
> [@groo](#): > > The big ones are that smoking exacerbates other health problems and allows all non-smokers to treat you like a second-class citizen. Smokers are one of the few groups that everyone can dump on, socially, financially and legally. Now they’ve gone outside of buildings and are writing legislation prohibiting smoking outside in some public spaces. Some companies are testing job applicants for nicotine, and denying them employment because of the higher cost of health insurance. And they’re not going to stop. You wanna know something else about smokers? Their tears smell like ashtrays, so I have little patience for their crying, too. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/94 "2009-11-25T18:23:42Z")
When I stop at a bar, my wife bitches about the smoke in my clothes . I have to change and wash them separately. Smoking reeks. Lung cancer and emphysema are horrible and expensive ways to die. My dad died of lung cancer, my mother emphysema. Both took time and they suffered a very diminished life style ,for years. Being hooked up to a oxy tank slows your life down. loosing half a lung is a terrible thing to go through. I would not want anybody to go through that just to suck on the end of a burning weed. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/95 "2009-11-25T18:36:32Z")
> [@groo](#): > > . > > Quitting also opens up a larger segment of the population who are willing to have sex with you. > > . You havent been getting those “people of Walmart” photos that are making the internet rounds these days have you ? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/96 "2009-11-28T13:58:51Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > I can always tell if a woman over 35 smokes. They tend to look as if they’ve lived hard lives out on the frontier somewhere. Ironically, frontier women and subsistance farmer folks everywhere spent much of their time in very smoky surroundings. Similar stress, similar response? ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/97 "2009-11-28T16:10:50Z")
I live in a state where smoking is not only not allowed inside of buildings, but also not within 25 feet of an entrances to buildings. And our weather sucks. I see smokers, outside, in the middle of parking lots in the rain. (My last office rigged up a little plastic tarp without sides for them to huddle under.) They never look happy. It simply doesn’t seem to be a pleasant way to spend 5 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434/98 "2009-11-28T18:37:20Z")
> [@groo](#): > > Quitting also opens up a larger segment of the population who are willing to have sex with you. I’m not a smoker. Never have, never will, but this right here would be way more than enough reason for me to quit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rationale-for-quitting-smoking/518434.md?page=4)