I believe MSMITH was closest to being right about this.
There are a lot of people who are just disgusted by being near people smoking, and they have made it social acceptable to stigmatize smokers in ways that no other activity (except maybe drug use) has. And of course the smokers themselves have done little to help their “cause”. I can remember the days when smokers wouldn’t think twice about bringing their lit cigs into elevators. Suppose someone decided to light an incense stick at a restaurant after a meal-- everyone else would go ape-sh*t, and for good reason. And that stuff is supposed to smell good!
People who smoke in enclosed, public places are just about the most inconsiderate people on this planet. Nobody wants to smell your stinky-ass smoke! Why is that hard to understand…?
I’m an avid cigar guy myself, but would never subject someone else to the side effects. My cigar smoking is pretty much restricted to my own backyard (even I don’t like it in the house).
It doesn’t matter if an unhealthy diet is physically addictive or not if ultimately it’s has hard to quit as smoking.
See above: the distinction is completely irrelevant if the success rate of dieters and wanna be ex-smokers are about the same. And they appear to be: I don’t have access to medical journals, etc. but several sites said that about 95% of smokers failed if they quit cold-turkey, another widely reported statistic was that only 5% of people who dieted to lose weight kept it off sucessfully. Maybe someone with access to more reference material then I can chime in.
Show us your stats, by all means, but keep in mind that you’re still trying to compare apples and oranges. Losing weight is a complex outcome, not a behavior change; the behavior changes that lead to it are incremental, not absolute. The barriers to eating less (the closest comparison to stopping smoking) are complicated, but are not related to physical addiction, and therefore we can approach these barriers culturally. We can’t remove the physical addiction barrier culturally: once the addiction is there, it’s a physical process, out of reach of propaganda.
Overeating is a poor analogy for smoking, and they therefore should be treated differently in public health campaigns.
Well, as a non-smoker, I get hounded by advertisements on billboards, in magazines, etc. trying to get me to smoke. (And, as a smoker, you get hounded by advertisements trying to get you to smoke their brand.) Does this bother you?
It seems like a rather small concession to make the advertisements and brand labeling of the product reflect some amount of truth-in-advertising.
*"Direct medical costs attributed to smoking have risen since the early 1990s and now total more than $75 billion per year.
Smoking results in productivity losses of more than $80 billion a year.
Each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States costs the nation an estimated $7.18 in medical care costs and lost productivity. "*
So in the U.S. that’s combined costs of 155 billion dollars due to direct medical costs and loss of productivity. State and federal excise taxes on tobacco products don’t make up more than a fraction of that amount. Conclusion: Non-smokers subsidize smokers.
All the other activities cited, by the way (eating, sunbathing, drinking alcohol etc.) are either good for you in moderation or necessary activities for daily living. Smoking fails on both counts, apart from its direct detrimental effects on those around you.
I am 61 years old, having been a smoker since 18. Have never been sick nor in a hospital due to anything remotely related to my 45 years of smoking. I do smoke in my house because my wife is also a smoker (we have no children nor anyone else living with us). I do not smoke anywhere it is not allowed. Even in Europe, where restaurants allow smoking, I get up and go outside to have my cig and come back to my seat with a mint or a piece of fresh lime in my mouth. I never throw my cigarette butt outdoors, and would never smoke anywhere at the vicinity of anyone who could possibly object to it.
I intend to continue smoking, even with increasing restrictions, because I simply enjoy it. It relaxes me, and helps me concentrate better on whatever is on my mind.
Now having said all that, I will never be able to retire because I will never be able to afford it. Unlike European countries (e.g. Scandinavia, Italy, France, Germany, etc.), there is no decent livable pension system in the US. You cannot even pay half of your rent with what the US Social Security pays you. These days, the employers in the US offer no pension plan except 401K, which is really your own savings. In the old time you had to be employed for 10 years with a company to become vested in their pension plan, but they invariably downsized and laid people off before people could reach the vesting stage. And since pensions (even the vesting period for 401K company match) are not transportable from one company to the other, you can easily end up like me, at 61, with no possibility of ever being able to afford retirement. So, I will have to work until the day I drop dead.
You may say that hadn’t I spent all the money for 45 years on buying cigarette (at $5 per day, that is $82K), and instead had invested it wisely, I could have looked to a comfortable retirement. I say baloney, because myself and many other people did save and put our money in investments, but somehow our choice of mutual funds did not pan out and we suffered a tremendous loss of our savings. What is left in the CDs, hardly returns over 2% interest.
So, hansel, if my Senator or Congress person or even the next US President wants to show zealousness to improve the world around them and get a big payback from going after us smokers, I am going to tell him/her that he/she better start to do something about the lousy pension system in the US. In the mean time, I will continue smoking happily as I know that it will most likely reduce whatever is left of my working life. I will never be able to afford to pay $5,000 per month to a nursing home. Meanwhile, cigarette smoking is my best bet, especially since I enjoy it.
And next time in the US, anyone who tries to hassle you because you smoke, tell them to go and do something about the pension system here, so that one has an incentive to prolong one’s life span by quitting smoking.
*"Direct medical costs attributed to smoking have risen since the early 1990s and now total more than $75 billion per year.
Smoking results in productivity losses of more than $80 billion a year.
Each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States costs the nation an estimated $7.18 in medical care costs and lost productivity. "*
Well, the first and last parts are good reasons to not pay these peoples medical bills.
I always hear the medical cost used as an excuse to try to get rid of smoking; never as an excuse to cease paying the medical bills of smokers.
The economic effect on the rest of us not only of smoking but also of drinking and obesity is a consequence of design, not nature. If the consequence of this design is to give people an economic incentive to interfere in other peoples life choices, then it would seem the design needs to be changed.
Eliminating public funding of healthcare costs directly attributable to these lifestyle choices is just as valid a tactic as trying to prohibit these lifestyle choices - more so, considering that since we ostensibly live in a free society, we should conceivably err on the side of individual freedom.
You wanna smoke, drink, and eat boiled animal fat? Go for it. Youre on your own.
Two things have combined to create the latest anti-smoking atmosphere.
One: revelations of the suppression by the tobacco of both scientific evidence as to the damaging and addictive nature of their product and their record of upping the nicotine content.
Two: Widespread publicity of studies showing the harm of second-hand smoke.
Prior to these two developments, smokers could consider themselves part of a daring, democratic brotherhood, ignoring the government labels forced upon their product to engage in behavior that, as far as anyone knew, didn’t hurt anyone but themselves. Those who were annoyed by their actions were regarded as fascists, and had little to resort to but calling the smoker an asshole behind their back.
With these revelations, it becomes more clear. Smokers are dupes of corporate greed and subterfuge. And the disgusting cloud of used cigarette smoke that hangs in the middle of the bar after being exhaled from the moribund lungs of someone else, has, surprise, surprise, not been magically converted into something benign by contact with thick, yellow and black lung mucus. We may now justly call the smoker an asshole to their face.
Prior to this, anti-smoking campaigns had to focus, in the name of respect for smoker’s rights, on the health benefits of a smoke-free life. Now that we know smokers are just a bunch of desperate addicts, no better a contibutor to society than the odd highly functional heroin user, I belive we will see an increase in anti-smoking messages that basically state: Kill yourself on your own time and in your own place, dickhead. Leave my air out of it.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
According to the American Lung Association:
*"Direct medical costs attributed to smoking have risen since the early 1990s and now total more than $75 billion per year.
Smoking results in productivity losses of more than $80 billion a year.
Each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States costs the nation an estimated $7.18 in medical care costs and lost productivity. "*
This has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. 100 percent of smokers will die of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, some other disease or old age if they don’t die of an accident. But it is also true that 100 percent of non smokers will die of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, some other disease or old age if they don’t die of an accident (although perhaps later in their lives than the smokers). Or is someone going to contend that all nonsmokers die quietly and peacefully in their own beds at the age of 101???
But they’re less likely to 1) suffer from the chronic diseases to which smokers are prey, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema, having to take time off work and working less productively, sucking up tons of health care dollars in the process, and 2) less likely to need invasive procedures to diagnose their various cancers, definitive surgery to remove their cancers, umpteen scans and films to document the return and progression of their tumors, consults and second opinions, radiation and chemo to treat their tumors, etc.
It is of course debatable whether someone dying of lung cancer at 60 will be more costly to society due to all of the above than someone who develops serious heart trouble at age 75, and lasts a few more years with medical intervention. I’d bet on the lung cancer patient.
I probably should refrain from commenting about the consequences of smoking. After all, it provides me with a not insignificant proportion of my income (I’m a pathologist).
Non-smokers subsidize bungee jumpers, mountain climbers, overly promiscuous people, and dangerous drivers too. What’s your point?
Er, no… widespread hyperbole, actually. The EPA study which kicked off the anti-secondhand smoke crusade showed that non-smokers routinely subjected to secondhand smoke incurred a 1 in 30,000 risk of contracting a smoke-related disease. The smoke hanging above a bar may be unpleasant to you, but it isn’t going to hurt you.
For the record, I question Left Hand’s distinction between nicotine addiction and food addiction. Smoking is not a “physical addiction” in the sense that depriving an addict will lead to seizures or death, as it can with opiates or alcohol. Food and nicotine can both lead to psychological addictions, resulting from spiking levels of dopamine in the brain, and can be equally powerful. Deprivations lead to mental anguish, not life-threatening medical conditions.
That said, I agree completely with the OP. The U.S. has gone nuts with warning labels, advertising restrictions, and disclaimers everywhere, and I don’t see what difference it’s making. Smoker friends of mine often quip that they are going to go get some cancer as they excuse themselves for a smoke. People already know about this.
If anything, I think the warnings only make it more attractive to minors who want to be rebellious. I respect what the Truth! folks are trying to do, which is to prevent kids from ever starting the habit. But does anyone really see their ads and think to themselves that those people are cool? Maybe if you were the type of person who would never start smoking anyway. The rest of us (including me, who hates tobacco) think, “What a bunch of self-righteous hipster goody-goodies.”
I know there are many reasons for wanting tobacco use completely eliminated, but it’s just not going to happen anytime soon. Current medicine doesn’t have good tools for overcoming these addictions. And actually, there’s evidence to suggest that switching to smokeless tobacco is a good choice for a smoker who can’t quit. The nicotine spike that comes from chewing is comparable to that from smoking, and oral cancer rates among chewers are about the same as that of smokers, while the incidence of all other cancers plummets. But with all the anti-tobacco fervor, it’s unlikely that this option will be suggested to many addicts. And indeed, new smokeless products that are, shall we say, less disgusting to use are being faced with bans or severe marketing restrictions by anti-tobacco crusaders, even though they could conceivably prevent untold numbers of premature deaths.
The “Truth!” is that a lot of smokers want to quit but are unable to. Extra-disgusting warning labels and higher taxes are not the solution. Open exchanges of information and free markets hold the most promise. What are the pros/cons of the patch vs. nicotine gum vs. smokeless tobacco? It takes some work to find this information due to hysteria about tobacco in all its forms.
Until medicine comes up with a better solution, throwing money at the problem in the form of warning labels only results in people having less money to throw around.
" People get cancer from too much sun-bathing, yet no pictures of rotting skin on sunbeds"
Here in Australia we do get ads about skin cancer actually, showing scalpels slicing into skin and the like, they’re pretty graphic.
I suspect the main thing stopping obesity ones is finding a way to talk about it without discrimination issues coming up, given you can end up obese through medical conditions, which isnt true of smoking. Or it could be its still growing to a level where similar campaigns will start, I see more and more articles about it every month.
I’m all for education, but I think scare-tactics and gross-out tactics are going too far. The written warnings are fine - tell people what the risk is when they smoke. IMO, that’s a good place to draw the line. I don’t know about the UK, but in the US, food is required to be labeled with its nutritional content when purchased in a store, and fast-food restaurants have such info available, and in fact often post it inside the restaurant.
No. Non bungee jumpers subsidise bungee jumpers. Non mountain climbers subsidise mountain climbers. Non promiscuous people subsidise promiscuous people.
Some one correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the alcohol maufacturers pretty much say from the word “go” – that hey;" This shit will kill ya…" Where as the tobaco industry pretty much tried to sweep that fact underneathe the carpet. Thus making them look like the “Big Bad Wolf”
If the above is indeed true I’d say this makes them an easy target.
I spoke of the UK, which has 21% of the population of the US and a higher proportion of smokers. Yet the direct medical costs are less than 4.4% of those in the US at the current exchange rate. Perhaps inflated US medical costs are distorting the comparison here? Note also that the UK is the most expensive place in the world to smoke, at around $10 per pack of 20, vastly increasing the revenue therefrom.
I struggle to understand how this figure is arrived at: Surely they do not merely multiply the time spent on smoking breaks and smoking-related illness by the average wage?? If so, then we must ask what “chatting to colleagues” costs us in terms of taking a break from work and increasing the probability of airborne viral transmission. In any case, one major factor which we are further ignoring here is the fact that smokers tend to die not long after they have stopped working, thus shedding an enormous pension load.
For whatever reason, it may be the case that in the US non-smokers slightly subsidise smokers. However, that case is very difficult to make in the UK (as specified in the OP) where medical costs are (somehow) lower and tobacco duties far higher.
is that a lot of smokers want to quit but are unable to. Extra-disgusting warning labels and higher taxes are not the solution. Open exchanges of information and free markets hold the most promise. What are the pros/cons of the patch vs. nicotine gum vs. smokeless tobacco? It takes some work to find this information due to hysteria about tobacco in all its forms.