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ORIGINAL: Wildfleurs

Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women.

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ORIGINAL: Zensee

Apart from being addictive enough to make people engage in proven fatality inducing behaviours, nicotine is also a powerful mind-altering substance. One side effect of smoking, which is often ignored, is a form of pathological rationalisation called T.A.L.E.S. (Tobacco Associated Lame Excuse Syndrome).

Symptoms are varied and may include: excessive use of apples and oranges arguments (banning smoking is like requiring seatbelts), fallacious comparisons (cars kill people, you must ban cars too), demonisation (if you favour restrictions on smoking you are a Nazi), the slippery slope defense (today cigarettes, tomorrow democracy), all or nothing excuses (if you can’t stop all sources of pollution you can’t stop me lighting up wherever I want), reductio ad absurdum (if you restrict smoking why not just execute smokers?) and emotional appeals to unrelated topics (abortion, flouridation, etc.).

Z.


PS: Why is smoking a right but clean air an imposition? Everyone has to breathe, only a few have to smoke.

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Fatal effects from second hand tobacco smoke are NOT theory

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wildfleurs



It would be so nice if people did some actual substantive research.

Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women.

From: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/research_data/health_consequences/mortali.htm

C~

if you said "pollution" in its entireity i would agree with you.

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The only way to do a test like that is to take people and have them live in a clean room of filtered air, pure filtered water, organic food, etc have one group smoke and the other not.  The problem is that we live in a dirty world and i assure that cigarette smoking was not the only factor in thier premature deaths.

i can equally say those deaths were eating related, drinking related, and toxic chemicals in our surrounding related.

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

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Fatal effects from second hand tobacco smoke are NOT theory

Fine - Prove it.

Your Nobel prize awaits in Stockholm.

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

You do know that this is untestable and unprovable and this is typical anti-smoking propaganda? If the US government really thought they could save 400,000 lives a year by banning smoking, they would be criminally negligent not to. Don't you think they would ban the purchasing of tabacco or are they quite happy to see so many American citizens dying?   In Holland findings put statistics of moderate smokers and none smokers suffering from repiratory and heart conditions as no different. From what I've been told and I don't know if this is correct but a report with similar stats was suppressed in Britain, which wouldn't suprise me, I can think of a couple of reports this British government suppressed because stats suggested government policy was ill founded.

The stats suggest industrial and traffic pollution are the biggest causes of asthma and other repiratory illnesses which have been going up while smoking is in decline.

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ORIGINAL: Wildfleurs

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

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Fatal effects from second hand tobacco smoke are NOT theory

Fine - Prove it.

Your Nobel prize awaits in Stockholm.

I think you need to talk to the US Surgeon General.

C~

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Meatcleaver: You do know that this is untestable and unprovable and this is typical anti-smoking propaganda? If the US government really thought they could save 400,000 lives a year by banning smoking, they would be criminally negligent not to. Don't you think they would ban the purchasing of tobacco or are they quite happy to see so many American citizens dying?

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

There is no proof - only theory. Read the labeling. In Australia I understand they even have pictures.

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Meatcleaver: You do know that this is untestable and unprovable and this is typical anti-smoking propaganda? If the US government really thought they could save 400,000 lives a year by banning smoking, they would be criminally negligent not to. Don't you think they would ban the purchasing of tobacco or are they quite happy to see so many American citizens dying?

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juliaoceania
People who smoke around their babies when compared with those who do not have a much haigher incidence of sudden infant death.
Their kids are sick much more often
They have asthma more often and allergies more often

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

Smoking tobacco is legal.  Why do people have to stop a legal activity to accomodate others?  That's the point.  Period.  If the product is so darn unsafe that even the wafting into someone else's space is a health hazard the product should be made illegal.  As long as the use of the product is legal, people should be allowed to use said legal product in the privacy of their homes and within the confines of their personal property.

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So if you can actually prove (with some sort of citation even) that the CDC is just fudging the mortality statistics that would be great.  Otherwise I'll take the CDC's word over a random collarchat poster.

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Merc N Beth - No. You prove it. :p

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ORIGINAL: Wildfleurs

Have you even bothered to look at the CDC's methedology for calculating deaths due to smoking?  It is not based off of a test, its based off of individual doctors reporting how their individual patient died on mortality forms that are then collected and synthesized by the CDC to provide annual mortality statistics.  Basically the person that knows that individuals health the best is the one reporting on what they died of - I'm not sure how you can get more reliable than that, but I'm certainly not going to take your word (without any backing) that all those deaths weren't due to smoking over individual doctors assessments of their patients (and yes the CDC provides actual guidance on how to do the assessment so its not just a "winging it" assessment).

So if you can actually prove (with some sort of citation even) that the CDC is just fudging the mortality statistics that would be great.  Otherwise I'll take the CDC's word over a random collarchat poster.

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth
By the way, if aspirin were introduced today - it too would not be approved. There are a long list of similar products.

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

If there were proof, unquestionable proof, scientific proof where an experiment can confirm the theoretical results of second hand smoking killing ONE person, or even a lab rat, or a republican if harming a animal is offensive; it would be illegal to light up.

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ORIGINAL: Zensee

Finding the balance between liberty and responsibility in a society is the ever changing challenge.

Z.

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: Zensee

Finding the balance between liberty and responsibility in a society is the ever changing challenge.

Z.

Exactly. Freedom? - yes, but at any cost? - no.

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most second hand smoke is sidestream smoke, coming directly from the burning tip and not filtered in any way.