What is Digg?68 Comments
- mkrygeri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Just the thing I needed to see.
/quit 5 days ago - awm4, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11That means that 3/4 of smokers die from something else. Do you feel lucky?
- truck87bp, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Met an old independent trucker yesterday that had a cigar in his mouth. I told him he was one of the few that had a job that allowed him to smoke. He said, "That's why I do what I do, too many pussies work indoors for some one else. Grandma smokes at 80 years old, coughs and spits and you don't ever hear her complain. She says most men today are all a bunch of skirt tethered pussies and they can piss off...I almost fell down laughing!
- NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yeah. Tabacco really fits schedule 1 drug type. "1. Has a high potential for abuse. 2. Has no current accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. 3. A lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
- tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -10/+17And given that smoking-related terminal illnesses are often long and painful, financially and emotionally damaging for all who love you, and allow a large space for a person to waste away smothered by regret, deaths from smoking are 100% equivalent to all other deaths!
The argument "gotta die somehow!" is for idiots who seem to assume that all deaths come in the blink of an eye. - jmzook, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Yes, life is a terminal condition. Smoking, however, makes your like suck, and gives you a long, painful death. Imagine being hooked up to an oxygen tank, wheezing for breath through tar-encrusted lungs. Doesn't that sound like great fun?
- repins, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Hemp is not legal because DuPont paid off a lot of politicians in the late 30s to make it so.
(at least in the USA) - tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"But the dude is right, why the ***** do you care how I kill myself ?"
In the UK it is important because we have public healthcare, so taxpayers have to foot the bill when a smoker gets ill (though I'm not ignoring the fact that smokers pay tax on the cigarettes in the first place). - xserver2003, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7scientists say all sorta things.. but this one needs to be considered. i will try quitting from now on.
- The_Red_Monkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think the real news is 3 out of 4 do not get lung issues, compare that information to what the likely hood is if you never smoke and your chances do not seem that significant. Besides my liver failure from the liquor abuse will get me first.
- xbasilx, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8In a related study, it was shown that 100% of smokers are gullible morons.
Suck the little white corporate penis, aka cigarette, SUCK IT! - doctechnical, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Gah... in other exciting news, grass green, rain wet.
Anyone who doesn't know smoking is bad for them after the first puff (or more likely does know but doesn't care) is pretty much Darwin bait as far as I'm concerned. There's a reason - a damned good one - why you almost coughed up a lung on that first puff.
How many people does tobacco kill? How many die from pot? And which is legal? I'll be damned if I can figure it out. - gr8one, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6It's not about how you live, it's about how you affect others around you. Not all of us are fortunate enough to live in a place where the government had the common sense to outlaw a behavior in pubs and restaurants that gives other people cancer.
It's beyond me how people think it's ok to smoke indoors around other people. Any other activity that posed such a threat to anyone else is alreay banned. "But I like to carry sharp knives in my hand, why can't I do it at a concert?" - AlexApetrei, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6in the UK smokers probably produce all the tax necessary to maintain the entire NHS. It's mr. Browns fault for not alocating the buget accordingly.
Simple maths. say the UK has 60,609,153 ( CIA world fact book )
of which 10% are smokers. Giving us 6,060,915 who smoke on average 2 packs a day
at the cheapest fags of £5 per pack that's £4 per pack that goes to the government
that's £8 per smoker per day, giving us £ 48,487,322 a day.
The NHS waiting list is something like 60,000 people, for whom the operations cost say £10,000 on averadge, that's a total of £600,000,000 ,
within a month, there would be £1,551,594,304 form the vice tax on tabaco alone. More than enough to cover that.
So as for non-smokers footing the bill for smokers in hospital, it just don't play out very well. - tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Everyone does die in the blink of an eye. There is no midway between life and death. While the condition of life may deteriorate, you're still alive."
I think you misinterpreted me, or I stated it poorly. It's not the flip of the switch to which I was referring, but the coming of death, the process and conditions of dying. Given the context of terminal illnesses, I'd think that was clear. - omaryak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I don't care if smokers want to kill themselves; just don't drag me down with you by smoking in public places where I have to breathe your smoke.
- tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5It doesn't necessarily mean that they all die from something non-smoking-related, though. COPD is just one illness (well, more of a group of illnesses).
- peasly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I've been trying to quit since i was 16..
A few years ago i thought to myself hang on a minute..
i have epilepsy, 'cause of this i may never work again, my medication gives me more
side effects than the seizures, and i can't go out anywhere by myself (except toilet.. :D)..
So.. i may as well stop depriving myself.. :D - AlexApetrei, on 10/12/2007, -9/+11Oh yea, oxigen tanks, mouth cancer, lung cancer is nothing to cough about.
But the dude is right, why the ***** do you care how I kill myself ?
I am no longer in your restaurants, your concert halls, pretty soon I wont be in your pubs, caffes or your clubs. - Septimus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7That and it makes you smell pretty rank.
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4AlexApetrei: I'm sorry, you've just made up random numbers you've pulled out of your ass to try and make a point. You're living in cuckoo land if you think the NHS costs £600million a year. Seriously. The new IT system they're (trying to) install in the NHS costs £18billion ALONE.
The more I re-read your post, the more retarded it sounds. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at your stupidity. - Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9My Great Aunt died from lung cancer (thanks to tobacco) a few weeks ago. She spent months in hospital, suffering. She became well enough to go home a few times, only to fall seriously ill shortly after. She eventually fell into a coma and passed away.
Thanks for trivializing cancer, jackass. - Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Lung cancer, throat cancer, heart disease, Buerger's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and plenty of other illnesses.
Pick your choice. - AlexApetrei, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The new IT system which they gave up installing, becasue it was ***** poorly managed, and the company gave back (most) the money ?
And if you cant understand maths, blame Ruth Kelly mate, she's such a ***** I wouldent be surprised if your schools dont go back to using an abacus and teachers that smack you with it.
Anyway , you poor wasted soul, that's a minimum £600 milion for all the waiting list. For which the tabaco vice tax produces £1.5 bilion A MONTH , that's £18 bilion a year - JUST FROM TABACO IF USAGE IS 10% at 2 packs a day , but the usage is more like 40% and like 3 to 5 packs a day.
DO SOME MATHS, it's realy not that hard, the tax on tabaco is 400% so if it costs £5 for a pack how much of that is vice tax ?
AGAIN this is just Tabacco, add to that alcohol and you prety much have the entire NHS coverd,
Let me give you more precise figures, the UK has a GDP of £968 Bilion, they have 6% of this alocated for the NHS that's ROUGHLY £60 BILION. Tabacco and alcohol vice tax produce A MINIMUM OF £120 Bilion , ergo having the ability to pay for the entire NHS budget as well as Police for the people who get a bit larry at the weekend.
What's happening now in the UK is huge presure from Big Pharma to sell people the cure for cigarets. A pack of nicotine gum is £2, think about it.
Also as the guy stated above, you dont need to pay state pension to dead people.
Also if 1 in 4 people smoking tabaco dies, you pay nothing to the NHS for at least a 1/4 of those people.
I love the UK , it's a cool country and there's cool people in it, too bad a few are just FUBARed. - rockefeller, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5What pisses me off most about smokers is that they feel they have the right to litter the neighborhood/city with their ciggarette butts. When did that become so accepted? It makes the city look like *****.
How would you like it if everyone threw their Taco Bell wrappers out the window of their car everyday?
Onto another topic....my mom and dad smoke like 2 packs a day. Sometimes my mom smokes as much as 3 or 4 packs a day. I was talking to my mom the other day and she's like "Dad feels like ***** today" and so I said "I wonder if it has anything to do with the cigarrettes he's been smoking for the past 50 years" and she responds with "No, I just think he's having a bad day", as if she honestly thinks there are no adverse health effects from smoking. She honestly doesn't believe it's going to kill her. And my dad finds exceptions like " I knew old man Smith, he smoked 2 packs a day and drank a fifth of liqour everyday and he lived to be 98 years old, strong as an ox" but he just ignores the statistics that show thousands of people die every year from smoking related illnesses.
I can't fault them too much though because they were young when they started and people didn't know any better. - thund3rstruck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4^^ Indeed, I agree that everyone needs a vice of some sort to calm the nerves and induce relaxation but tabacco is insidious. This product is extremely addictive. I don't understand how its justifiable to sell a product that provides no positive health benefits, is deadly to its consumers, and is exceptionally difficult to quit.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2oolitic, are you kidding me? You want to argue statistics and then throw out a term such as hardly significant? Oh really? Take a basic stats class and you will learn that with that sample size statistical significance means tiny practical significance can meet the criterion of p
- OnymousHero, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4What is even more worrying, is that smoking not only causes the traditional health problems (lung cancer etc) but also can cause genetic mutations. All it needs is a mutation in a sperm or egg cell and that person's offspring (and their offspring and their offspring's offspring etc etc) will always have that defect. So the attitude "its my body I can do what I like with it" should be more like "its my body and all my future generations, I can screw them up as much as I like".
- ryannerd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This text was written in 1977:
"It may surprise some people to know that the first reports linking tobacco and cancer were published in the 1920s. In the last forty years, literally thousands of medical investigators have studied millions of people and put together a picture of tobacco’s association with cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and chronic lung disease. 1
These conditions account for over half of the deaths in the United States annually. The first famous “Surgeon General’s Report” was published in 1964. By 1975, eight additional reports on smoking and disease had been prepared by government scientists; just these summaries fill more than 2,000 pages."
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Smoking and Health, Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964); U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, The Health Consequences of Smoking (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 - doctechnical, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I've never heard of anyone smoking tobacco with their loco weed - is this something new or just my general drug-culture ignorance?
Pot+tobacco sounds to me like mixing beer with piss. - rockefeller, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Yeah, that sounds like a good excuse...."I have an illness, may as well just make my situation even worse by smoking."
Therapy? - BabyWookie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Yes, life is a terminal condition. Smoking, however, makes your like suck, and gives you a long, painful death. Imagine being hooked up to an oxygen tank, wheezing for breath through tar-encrusted lungs. Doesn't that sound like great fun?"
*****. Smoking makes my quality of life better. I know all the risks and still choose to do it - not because I'm stupid or was brainwashed by cartoon camels as a kid, think that it "looks cool" or can't stop. I do it because it makes me feel good, gives me something to do when I'm bored and relaxes me when I'm stressed out. If it shaves a few years off my life span, so ***** what? Is longevity really that important? Are you really looking forward to spending those last 40 years alone in an old folks home? Why is our society so obsessed with prolonging life?
As far as being on oxygen and all that *****... Last time I checked, bullets were still pretty cheap and you only need one.
Just to clarify... I don't overdo it with the cigs, as 2 packs last me about a week. I also go out of my way to avoid exposing non-smokers to my smoke and to properly dispose of my butts. I don't even smoke inside my own house, as I think that it's nasty too. I step out the back door for a puff when I need to.
I still think it's ***** wrong of the government to step in and ban smoking in all pubs in my city. I think it should be up to the pub owners whether to allow smoking or not. We smokers deserve to have a place where we can go and light one up while having a cold brew. It's an issue of personal freedom. If the pub owner wants to cater to smokers, what right does the government have to prevent him from doing so? - Larke2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2if this was the 60's i might care. but this is 2006, so i don't really care what a smoker gets. they know the risks of lighting up.
- johnsto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I remember a conversation from two kids ahead of me as we were walking to school (years ago!) They were both puffing (and I was choking in the smoke) as they said this:
Kid A: Stupid warning on the packet don't do nothing.
Kid B: Can't stand anti smoking people, if they don't like it don't do it you can't stop us.
Kid A: If it kills me, it's better than being shot in the head or something.
Kid B: ...or being hit by a truck it's better than that. It's cool to die because of smoking.
Genius. - doctechnical, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like to wait at railroad crossing for a train to come, then run across the tracks at the last minute. I've done this since I was 16 and I'm in fine health....
Keep whistling past the graveyard. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yep, I don't really care how you kill yourself as long as you don't make me foot the bill, and yes, people should be free to do what they want to THEMSELVES; smoking in restaurants puts the choice to inhale smoke in the hands of others.
Anticipating the response that you have a choice to go into that restaurant, yes, yes I do, however, when we both go into a restaurant, I have no more right to spoil your experience or harm you as you have to spoil your experience or harm me. The purpose of a restaurant is an exchange of something of value for food and no, the business owner does not have the right to invite the public in for one food then spray their food with toxins. Most businesses get the benefits of government by becoming the government created entity "corporation." It is a live and die by the sword deal. You get the benefits and protections (if you want to call limited liability a protection) of the government, but then are also subject to their rules. Sorry, you can't have it both ways.... do away with government benefits and then the issue of not being subject to government restrictions is certainly called into question.
No such thing as a free lunch is an appropriate saying! - JackHallows, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://bash.org/?695850
- HalfNakedPappy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yeah... we should outlaw fat people too because they're a burden on the healthcare system.
- an0nymous, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3But ultimately a death from smoking is considerably less expensive than paying social security and medical for the additional 30 odd years that that person would have lived.
I'm not saying people should smoke, just that the "it's expensive for the taxpayers to have people dying of lung cancer argument" is a fallacy. It is expensive but not so much as the alternative.
Actually I take that back. People have a right to make decisions for themselves. even if they might be considered "bad" decisions. People should smoke a) if they want to and b) if they are fully informed. Just don't act surprised when it hurts a lot. Ever seen someone drowning? Their only thought is "how can I get more air? RIGHT NOW". Every other concern is suddenly very trivial. - zeiben, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@ Falcon19
This book - Allen Carr's "Easy Way to Stop Smoking". As cheesy as it sounds, it worked like a charm for me (but not for my wife - she's too pigheaded) - zeiben, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I suppose if you're not paying $100,000 over your expected lifespan for the privilege of killing yourself, that's at least a little less asinine, but only marginally. Other than getting to sit on your porch and imagine you're Gandalf (which I have to agree has substantial value), you still get NOTHING out of it and at the end of the day you're a slave to a demon weed that doesn't love you back.
- 83457, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3My mom would always mention how her grandfather smoked a pipe until he was 80 anytime I brought up smoking being bad as a kid. I'm in my mid-twenties now and we had a discussion about him recently so I asked her how he died. It turns out it was lung cancer. This whole time I thought it was natural causes.
Oh, and anyone else a nicotine baby? My mom loved her cigarettes more than unborn me. - jefflundberg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Why don't people who want to quit smoking simply stop buying cigarettes? Let's suppose you're at the counter with packs of cigarettes behind it. What is making you ask the sales person to get you a pack? Before you ask, why not NOT ask? Instead, just make your regular purchase and move on. Focus on not buying cigarettes instead of not smoking them.
The craziest thing to me is when people say they're trying to quit, yet they have a pack of cigarettes with them. That makes no sense. Why are you making cigarettes accessible to yourself when you've supposedly quit?
I've never smoked before but I'm not sure I feel bad for people that do. It's obvious it's bad for you, and expensive. Why start? I personally think smoking makes someone appear less intelligent, regardless of their actual intelligence. - tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2My apologies if I'm being ignorant, but I don't really know how these things work. But you're comparing deaths from smoking and pot, saying it's bizarre smoking is OK but pot isn't, but don't most people smoke pot with tobacco anyway? So surely any negative effects of smoking are also felt by pot smokers...?
- tabula, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am a smoker and i smoke 40 cigs a day...but please do not lump me in with some of the smokers in here...
i DO NOT believe it is my right to blow smoke is any ones face
I DO NOT believe it is my right to force someone to breath my smoke
I DO NOT believe it is my right to smoke in public places..especially confined spaces like restaurants, bars etc etc... up until relatively recently i could, so i did...but in hindsight it is a terrible thing to impose on a non-smoker. I even hate the smell of the bloody things.
If someone stood up and farted in my face, tho nowhere near as smelly and as harmful as cigs smoke, they would get a quick smack in the mouth. Yet us smokers have been doing this to non-smokers for years. I wont be doing that anymore...not because i cant...because i have grown up and realized it is a bloody awful thing to do.
I smoke in the privacy of my own home...usually in the back yard...don't want it stinking the house out.
I can't understand why smokers STILL hold this attitude that it is some fundamental freedom to expose non-smokers to that danger. I used to hold that attitude and to this day i still don't know why i did.
and that guy AlexApetrei...god...I would hate to be ur friend. Hell of a lot of anger there mate. Maybe u should stop smoking...it certainly isn't calming you down. - zeiben, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Agree about vice, but smoking isn't a vice, it's exploitation of you by the tobacco companies. If you think about it, you get absolutely NOTHING out of it except for momentary relief of the withdrawal that your previous cigarette is causing. At least with drinking, gambling, and whoring, you are deriving some objective, albeit base, pleasure. smoking doesn't give you a high, doesn't clear your head, doesn't calm you down, it just alleviates withdrawal pangs, which you wouldn't have if you didn't smoke. That relief creates the illusion of calm, but that illusion quickly fades as soon as the nicotine starts filtering out.
I smoked 3 packs a week for 15 years and one day happened to pick up a silly self-help book just to see what the gimmick would be. Thank goodness I'm easily brainwashed, because I finished the book and haven't smoked since (almost 5 years). Can't even comprehend the appeal anymore.
But go, enjoy the "freedom", if being the indentured slave of phillip morris is your idea of "freedom". Unless you're in jail, you definitely have a few other freedoms left that are at least on par with this one. Meantime, big tobacco will keep adding nicotine, as it has been for years, making you ever more their bitch and giving you nothing in return for your loyal service but a pine box and a whole bunch of nails. - AlexApetrei, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2http://www.ash.org.uk/html/smuggling/html/budget05.html
There you go wanker,
To make it easer for you I will quote the paragraph.
3. Smuggling
The measures taken by HM Customs and Excise are clearly taking effect[6]. The critical factor in recent reductions in tax losses has not been tax cuts, as called for by the tobacco industry, but the improved enforcement systems put in place by HM Customs and Excise, and the increased co-operation from manufacturers to prevent smuggling of their product.
The illicit market share has fallen from a peak of 21% in 2000-1, to 15% by 2003-4, with a PSA target of 13% by 2007-8. However, tobacco tax evasion still accounts for nearly £2 billion in tax losses, many times more than fuel or alcohol. The World Customs Organisation estimates that worldwide losses due to tax fraud on cigarettes amount to around $30 billion each year, so the UK still accounts for over 10% of the world total.
-------------------------------------
Ergo if fag tax evasion accounts for 13 % of all taxes on fags, which is estimated at £2bilion , all you have to do is divide 2 by 13 and times that by 100 to figure out the total sum of tax from tabaco - IT's £15.38 bilion, and with taxes gone up since 2005 add to that inflation and other economical *****, you get a rounball figure of £20 bilion JUST FROM FAGS.
I dont think i have to tell you kow much british people love their booze, or that there are hundreds of thousands of ilegal imigrants in your country purchasing tabaco, be it counterfit or not. - Qliphah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2You people do realize cancer can be caused my any number of elements (water/air pollution, household chemicals, preservatives, the sun...)
Now Ill admit I'm a smoker, long time one in fact. Ive never had any health issues and still workout, run, and play sports with the best of them. My great grandmother smoked, rubbed snuff and drank till the day she died at 86. The act of smoking doesn't cause cancer, its when you smoke 2-3 packs a day your health starts to fail. The same could be said if you drink 4 gallons of water a day, or only eat pop tarts.
The way smoking has been vilified the past decade says more on societies demand to dictate your every action than how much they really care about peoples well being. And also it gets anti-smoking campains lots of government funding to line their pockets with while they print penny pamphlets to claim their helping people.
Oh and also keep in mind 64% of all statistics are made up on the spot. - tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I still think you're pulling numbers out of thin air. Are you saying over 10% of our GDP is made up of tax on cigarettes? Are you saying cigarette tax could pay for just about every public service there is? 2 packs a day on average? And you wonder why I think you're spouting crap? If you have a link that backs up your figures, I'd love to see it, but until then I'm marking it as a pile of steaming poo.
- kingofwaldos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I've heard 64% of all 86 year old smoking grandmothers are made up as well...
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