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tamaka -> RE: Legalized Pot: Still A Good Idea? (1/4/2017 9:20:21 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr
Between the people that just didn't understand the premise and the butt-hurt little minds that just came here to call names, the point of the initial post has been missed:
Two years ago, when Colorado (for example) was fixin' to be one of the first states to legalize pot, there were some of us (myself, included) who warned that there were things that we didn't know about that would become issues.
I have been conflicted on this issue because I believe it's none of my business what you put into your body (I'd like to suggest large amounts of arsenic for some of you).
That said, thanks to the way our society is headed, it IS my business what you put into your body because of how it affects me (insurance premiums, etc.).
I would call kidney failure a pretty serious condition and, when someone is locked in the grip of addiction, saying something like: "All they have to do is stop/cut down on their usage" seems pretty logical to most. To an addict it sounds like: "All you have to do is stop breathing" to the rest of us.
Moral equivalency isn't going to work. I'd be in favor of getting rid of alcohol, also.
Why is it though that a large portion of people can't see past their own nose? "I like getting high so, you're not taking this away from me, but I'll take your shit away from you"?
Simple minds = No discussion/solution.
Michael
You smoke cigarettes. You just proved yourself to be a fucking hypocrite.
19, 2014 | 3:47 PM EST
Cigarette smoking costs weigh heavily on the healthcare system
By Madeline Kennedy
(Reuters) - Of every $10 spent on healthcare in the U.S., almost 90 cents is due to smoking, a new analysis says.
Using recent health and medical spending surveys, researchers calculated that 8.7 percent of all healthcare spending, or $170 billion a year, is for illness caused by tobacco smoke, and public programs like Medicare and Medicaid paid for most of these costs.
“Fifty years after the first Surgeon General’s report, tobacco use remains the nation’s leading preventable cause of death and disease, despite declines in adult cigarette smoking prevalence,” said Xin Xu from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who led the study.
Over 18 percent of U.S. adults smoke cigarettes and about one in five deaths are caused by smoking, according to the CDC.
Xu and colleagues linked data on healthcare use and costs from the 2006-2010 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to the 2004-2009 National Health Interview Survey for a nationally-representative picture of smoking behavior and costs.
Out of more than 40,000 adults, 21.5 percent were current smokers, 22.6 percent were former smokers and 56 percent had never smoked. The researchers used prior data on smoking-related disease and deaths to calculate the proportion of healthcare spending by each person that could be attributed to smoking.
They also adjusted their figures for factors like excess drinking, obesity and socioeconomic status, and calculated the proportion of spending by payer.
In that analysis, 9.6 percent of Medicare spending, 15.2 percent of Medicaid spending and 32.8 percent of other government healthcare spending by sources such as the Veterans Affairs department, Tricare and the Indian Health Service, were attributable to smoking.
Of the $170 billion spent on smoking-related healthcare, more than 60 percent was paid by government sources, they wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Smoking-related healthcare costs affect most types of medical care, said Kenneth Warner at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “Smoking infiltrates the entire body, through the blood stream, and causes disease in many of the body's organs,” he told Reuters Health in an email.
Along with lung and heart problems, smoking can cause eye disease, skin problems and many cancers including pancreatic and bladder cancer, noted Warner, who was not involved in the new analysis.
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