we should start a therealtruth.com

The figures that I have always seen is about 400 - 500 K per year.

I saw a similar claim made about drug related arrests and convictions. I won't quote the numbers given but they didnt add up.

After a little thought i concluded that for the numbers of drug arrests and convictions claimed, it would require an army of more that 100,000 police and judges marching from door to door raiding homes.

I support legalization of marijuana but i refuse to support false claims and junk science.

I cannot stand those commercials. One of them was filmed in Houston - I think the one with the hearses. Sanctimonious, haughty twits.

Yes, it sounds farfetched. They probably get theeir numbers by equating every death of every person who ever smoked as a "smoking related death" whether they smoked for one month and quit 60 years ago or died from an accident, or died from an illness where the link between smoking and that illness is specious at best.

They gotcha. You're assuming that they're talking about deaths in the US, which is what they want you to assume, but 3 million is the approximate number of deaths worldwide. Slick, eh?

I believe the total deaths in the U.S. in a typical year is around 2.5 million, so that figure is definitely exaggerated, if you're talking about the U.S. alone. On the other hand, if you're referring to world population, I'm inclined to think it's grossly understated.

Smoking is a real bugger when it comes to causing deaths from vascular disease, coronary disease, respiratory disease and various forms of cancer. I can't imagine why anyone would even need to make up numbers to exaggerate its significance in causing crippling illness and death. The numbers are sufficiently high without any embellishment at all.

Like a lot of the liberal mis-truths, they arrive at this with a little trick. If you ever smoked, then when you die it is smoking related. It is is the same stuff MADD uses, where they classify it as a drinking related fatality if anyone in the car has been drinking, even the passengers!
The libs also used this with the so called cost of somking, by including the loss of taxes collected if a person dies before the average age on life insurance tables.

I believe I've read something similar to what you say. In some of these materials, a death is "smoking related" if the deceased was a smoker... even if he or she dies in an automobile accident (maybe because they were driving to the 7-11 for cigarettes???). Reminds me of that "statistic" about spousal abuse on Super Bowl Sunday.

They didn't say it was only in America, they just threw out an "8 seconds" figure without mentioning a context. What do they care about accuracy, anyway? If anyone thinks those dweebs are telling the "truth," they'll fall for any clumsy propaganda.

Actually your final numbers are too low. You took 1 week X 4 = 1 month, then 1 month X 12 = 1 year.

Rather, it should be 1 week (75600) X 52 = 3,931,200. About 300,000 higher.

So their numbers are even more hosed.

1 day = 10,800 people die

1 year = 3,628,800 people die.

10,800 per day x 365 days = 3,942,000 dead people per year from smoking related diseases. It's even worse than you think! :^)

Maybe they count the people who die as the result of being hit by a drunk driver who was smoking at the time of the accident.

This is the same kind of "logic" that the left promotes in their zero-population dogma and save-the-rainforest hype.
But really, do the numbers matter? Liberals "care" and conservatives are meanies. Everyone knows that! (end sarcasm). If we listened to Erlich and his ilk,and their preposterous predictions, we'd be standing on top of each other on a totally denuded planet(imagine Haiti).
When I point the FACTS out to a lib, they typically look at me with the same blank look I get from my brain-damaged cat. They then mumble something, and scurry off to get new talking points from other coven members.

I once saw one of these "from mid-air" claims about child abuse. It took me a couple of minutes to compute that by the end of a year every child in the USA would be abused.

These type claims depend on the "tsk-tsk" factor and word of mouth to spread. They all assume no one will actually put logic into the statistic.

therealtruth.com is open.

what do you all say? let's pick apart their claims and make a website. make products, sell them online and make anti-thetruth.com commericals. just an idea.

ya gotta remember, the left is infamous for pulling out the "... studies show ..." meme to both support their goals and to pre-empt any questioning/criticism of their declaration ("... how could you question this data??!! ...")

Thomas Sowell addresses this in his book, "The Vision of the Self-Annointed" - an excellent read from one of America's Best and Brightest minds.

Juan

The Chinese smoke like they just don't care.

Geez, you guys. His number was accurate. Smoking related deaths take weekends off - didn't you know that? ;-)

"It is is the same stuff MADD uses, where they classify it as a drinking related fatality if anyone in the car has been drinking, even the passengers!"

I have never seen it presented that way and I have studied a lot of statistics on alcohol and alcoholism. It is called a drinking related fatality if the driver has been drinking and is legally drunk.

Here is the CDC's Health stats website.