Well you say that… I would postulate that as smoking becomes more taboo, smokers will bond even tighter over their persecuted status. It matters who at the office, for instance, smokes. Where I work, about half of the managers and both of their bosses are smokers. The smokers hang out in the same area and when the butts are afire, the work hierarchy disappears. Meaningful socialization happens. When it’s time for promotions or pay raises, it’s only natural for those doling them out to prefer people they know well personally. Merit matters, but familiarity is frequently the tiebreaker.
It is not well understood but there are theories that smoking can help alleviate the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and that is why 80% of schizophrenics smoke.
I vaguely recall smoking being prescribed for stomach and intestinal trouble. It can help with constipation but I think I remember some other illnesses like ulcerative colitis.
That’s the whole point though. When I’m in a dorm with 400 people, I’m too shy/introverted to start up a conversation or randomly introduce myself to people. But when I walk outside and there’s 5 people smoking, it’s much easier. Also, as I stated earlier ‘Can I borrow your lighter?’ is a good conversation starter.
You may not see any (positive) social ramifications, but I do (and did).
Not really. What happens is that if you are addicted to nicotine, and you stop suddenly, you can get constipated for a day or so.
It has no gut health benefits.
Yes, it will definitely make you need to go to the bathroom. Like, if you really need to go, you’re not even going to finish the cigarette. A few puffs and it’s on it’s way out.
I know that’s not the case for everyone, but it is for many.
“Meta-analysis has confirmed that current smoking has a protective effect in UC *(ulcerative colitis), *the most recent of which has demonstrated that smokers have an odds ratio (OR) of developing UC of 0.58; (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.45–0.75) compared to non-smokers.14,15”
I don’t think that other study contradicts the basic premise (which is pretty well accepted, if not much publicized).
It’s true that the cost of dying is the most significant health care cost that the average person has, and each person only dies once. So smoking doesn’t make a difference there. But if a person dies at 70 versus 80, then that’s 10 years of health care costs saved. Relatively minor costs of health care, but health care nonetheless, and more than the average middle-aged person, let alone younger person.
But the thing is that health care costs are only a subset of the larger picture, and it’s a mistake to focus on healthcare specifically. The bigger picture has to do with the working lifetime to total lifetime ratio. If you look at society as a whole, the working lifetime (of the entire population, or each person on average) has to support the entire lifetime (of the entire population, or of each person on average). One of the problems modern society has is that as lifetimes have grown longer and working lifetimes have remained constant (or even decreased, possibly) the burden of supporting that non-productive portion has grown greater. This is most directly manifested in looming funding problems for SS and Medicare, where current funding levels grow continually inadequate, but it will also emerge as a problem in pension funding crises for many other government entities, and in other areas.
The upshot of the above is that anything which reduces the non-working lifetime but does not much impact the working lifetime has a financial benefit to society, in that it makes it easier to support the remaining non-productive members. Healthcare costs are only one example of this, but really it’s the entire cost of living, and nothing special about healthcare.
Don’t particularly want to get into an argument with a doctor, but:
Quote: Furthermore, it has been suggested that the protective benefit of smoking in ulcerative colitis…
I’m not a doctor, but I do have ulcerative colitis, and I discussed this with the treating doc (in a jokey kind of way - he wasn’t recommending it). He was quite clear that this was not to do with nicotine, but with the other gunk in smoke, which would make it a health benefit of smoking.
Am I wrong in thinking that this also crops up in one of Cecil’s columns?
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