Posted on 12/09/2010 1:18:16 PM PST by upchuck
[This has been edited to fit within the excerpting guidelines.]
Think the occasional cigarette won't hurt? Even a bit of social smoking — or inhaling someone else's secondhand smoke — could be enough to block your arteries and trigger a heart attack, says the newest surgeon general's report on the killer the nation just can't kick.
Thursday's report says there's no doubt that tobacco smoke begins poisoning immediately — as more than 7,000 chemicals in each puff rapidly spread through the body to cause cellular damage in nearly every organ.
"That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack," said Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. "I advise people to try to avoid being around smoking any way that you can."
...this newest report is unusual because it devotes more than 700 pages to detail the biology of how cigarette smoke accomplishes its dirty deeds — including the latest genetic findings to help explain why some people become more addicted than others, and why some smokers develop tobacco-caused disease faster than others.
There is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke, whether you deliberately inhale it or are a nonsmoker who breathes in other people's fumes, the report concludes. Nor is there evidence yet to tell if efforts to develop so-called safer cigarettes really will pan out.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
If no one at FreeRepublic has started a “We’re All Gonna Die!” Ping List to notify us of alarmist articles, you should consider getting one going.
I’d certainly like to be on it. I love to read nanny-statist, crack-pot articles telling me how dangerous EVERYTHING is.
Should this be in Smokey Backroom?
I wonder if our Clown Sturgeon General thinks sex with HIV rampant but also with condoms is safer than secondhand smoke.
Secondhand smoke can be a health-endangering breathing irritant to some (not all) people, granted. I’d never suggest that a non smoker go hang out in smokey bars for the sake of his or her health. But it does not seem to occur to anyone that a little common courtesy between smokers and non smokers could solve 99.9% of the problems.
He’s an un-fit father. He’s an ‘abuser’. He’s a MURDERER!!
;-)
Tell that to your Boss, Regina.
BTW, how many puffs does it take to turn your lips purple?
The surgeon general is tossing credibility out the window with this absurd claim.
“Hey Regina, name one person who died after smoking one cigarette.”
Well, there was this guy at the firing squad. But I don’t think that nicotine was the cause of death. . .
The last time I checked, the mortality rate was still 100%.
Perhaps he should have written: "Name one person who has died as a result of smoking just one cigarette"?
...and she has SUCH a pretty voice, too...
Genetic factors almost certainly can make a person more sensitive to smoking than the average. I believe I saw this happen in my mother’s family, in which the two non smoking siblings beat the life spans of the two smoking siblings by about two decades, and none of the deaths were due to manslaughter or accident. I always point this out to surviving members of my family when encouraging them not to smoke.
My father, interestingly enough, was one of the very few who had the will power to “take it or leave it.” I saw him smoke literally one cigarette a week, and that was at social events.
One encounter with your gay lover....oops maybe I’m not allowed to say that. Why isn’t homosexuality considered a dangerous life style?
One conversation with a progressive may cause your head to explode.
What next?
I wish I had the same bad reaction to dark chocolate/almonds/nuts candy that I have to cigs.
Waiting on my once a year Sees candy gift and I can Smell it coming across state lines. ; )
Why don’t all the non-smokers just mind their own f’n business?
Of the people who get lung cancer, only 10% are smokers. And we’re living longer...so the studies make absolutely no sense.
"I don’t want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner; etc. etc. etc. ...You never see but one side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in American smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishing drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime, (and which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone) nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from NOT smoking.” MARK TWAIN SAN FRANCISCO, 1865
I started smoking cigars about four years ago. I have one every two to four weeks at Lit, the cigar bar in the Snoqualmie casino on tuesday nights.
Child abuse in the White House!!!! Arrest him . . . he is a menace to society!!!!
I started smoking at 14. Was a 2-3 pack a day smoker for 40 years. I quit cold turkey (the only way to do it, IMHO) in 1999. Still have the last pack magneteted to my fridge.
Today I try and not be the smoking police. If someone wants to, fine w/ me. But I no longer like the smell.
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