We better hope it takes 7 generations. If not, they will be coming after something that the non-smokers prize. They have already started on obesity!
Obesity Worse Then Tobacco Smoking
Posted on 11/26/2002 4:58:07 AM PST by SheLion
Too much is made of the 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke. We're told these chemicals are so harmful that they are responsible for the deaths of millions worldwide. Untold in this "war on tobacco" is that each of the plants we consume consists of an equally daunting thousands of chemicals many of which are recognized poisons or suspected cancer-causing agents.
Cayenne peppers, carrots and strawberries each contain six suspected carcinogens; onions, grapefruit and tomato each contain five -- some the same as the seven suspected carcinogens found in tobacco.
High-heat cooking creates yet more dietary carcinogens from otherwise harmless chemical constituents.
Sure, these plant chemicals are measured in infinitesimal amounts. An independent study calculated 222,000 smoking cigarettes would be needed to reach unacceptable levels of benzo(a)pyrene. One million smoking cigarettes would be needed to produce unacceptable levels of toluene. To reach these estimated danger levels, the cigarettes must be smoked simultaneously and completely in a sealed 20-square-foot room with a nine-foot ceiling.
Many other chemicals in tobacco smoke can also be found in normal diets. Smoking 3,000 packages of cigarettes would supply the same amount of arsenic as a nutritious 200 gram serving of sole.
Half a bottle of now healthy wine can supply 32 times the amount of lead as one pack of cigarettes. The same amount of cadmium obtained from smoking eight packs of cigarettes can be enjoyed in half a pound of crab.
That's one problem with the anti-smoking crusade. The risks of smoking are greatly exaggerated. So are the costs.
An in-depth analysis of 400,000 U.S. smoking-related deaths by National Institute of Health mathematician Rosalind Marimont and senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute Robert Levy identified a disturbing number of flaws in the methodology used to estimate these deaths. Incorrectly classifying some diseases as smoking-related and choosing the wrong standard of comparison each overstated deaths by more than 65 per cent.
Failure to control for confounding variables such as diet and exercise turned estimates more into a computerized shell game than reliable estimates of deaths.
Marimont and Levy also found no adjustments were made to the costs of smoking resulting from the benefits of smoking -- reduced Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, less obesity, depression and breast cancer.
If it were possible to estimate 45,000 smoking-related Canadian deaths as some health activists imagine -- and Marimont, Levy and other respected researchers think it is not -- then applying an identical methodology to other lifestyle choices would yield 57,000 Canadian deaths due to lack of exercise and 73,000 Canadian deaths blamed on poor diets.
If both the chemical constituents of tobacco smoke and the numbers of smoking-related deaths are overstated -- and clearly they are -- how can we trust the claim that tobacco smoke is harmful to non-smokers?
The 1993 bellwether study by the Environmental Protection Agency that selectively combined the results of a number of previous studies and found a small increase in lung cancer risk in those exposed to environmental tobacco smoke has been roundly criticized as severely flawed by fellow researchers and ultimately found invalid in a court of law.
In 1998, the World Health Organization reported a small, but not statistically significant, increase in the risk of lung cancer in non-smoking women married to smokers.
Despite these invalidating deficiencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization both concluded tobacco smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers.
One wonders whether the same conclusions would have been announced if scientific fraud were a criminal offence.
When confronted with the scientific uncertainty, the inconsistency of results and the incredible misrepresentation of present-day knowledge, those seeking to abolish tobacco invoke a radical interpretation of the Precautionary Principle: "Where potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activity should not proceed."
This unreasonable exploitation of the ever-present risks of living infiltrates our schools to indoctrinate trusting and eager minds with the irrational fears of today. Instead of opening minds to the wondrous complexities of living, it opens the door to peer ridicule and intolerance while cultivating the trendy cynics of tomorrow.
If we continue down this dangerous path of control and prohibition based on an unreliable or remote chance of harm, how many personal freedoms will remain seven generations from now?
Eric Boyd of Waterloo has management experience across a wide range of sectors.
How would YOU know?!
You're pathetic. Just because it is your business to associate constantly with cancer patients, you project your hatred of the disease onto smokers and think you can assume the mantle of savior by using gub'mint to control the behavior of us less educated, less privileged folk.
Talking down to us, you smarmy little pr!ck?
You're behaving like the inner city cop who, because he associates with scum all day long, believes everyone to be scum.
Thanks for the tip, Doc. Do you get paid for these public service announcements or are they pro bono?
Where do you get the idea that SheLion, or any other smoker, must justify to anti-smokers what they choose to do?
In a free society, people choose the direction of their lives.
People who fail to understand the dynamics of a free society seek to control the behavior of others to conform to their likes and dislikes.
It's obvious which side you're aligned with.
You could have told them to try brushing their tongue once-in-awhile. Works every time!
We better hope it takes 7 generations. If not, they will be coming after something that the non-smokers prize. They have already started on obesity!
Obesity Worse Then Tobacco Smoking
OIC. Ok, try the link I provided and then do a Google search for online cigarettes and/or tobacco supplies.
Couldn't have said that any better myself! Thanks, Madame Dufarge! Well said!
Oooooooh.......I think metesky is quite able to tell you himself.
Im with you Pap ! - my Grandfather paid for the right to kill himself (painfully slowly I might add)-
I paid for the same right for about 10 yrs (2pk a day Lucky Strike filterless)-
Nothing good comes of it, never will.
Those lifestyle choices are burdening the collapsing system of health care as we know it - sure they have the right - I dont have to pick up the tab when they stiff the system when they are tapped out and destitute
Your obese, beer-loving, smoking friend,
Argh.
And forget about ethnic food. Ya gotta see the stuff they call salami to believe it.
The only saving grace is good fresh seafood.
Yes, all smokers end up living in dumpsters, penniless and begging you to help them - get real, will ya?
It's more likely that smokers will end up paying your long-term health care costs, for diapers and such, as you linger on into your dotage, pontificating and boring the hell out of anyone within hearing distance. After all smokers die younger, mostly so that we won't have to listen to the Nanny-Staters.
Actually, I started working for one of the northeast's premier caterers when I was 13, was involved in high-end and low-end food service for a long time and I am a fine cook with a wide repertoire of superb dishes, he said modestly.
(You have been brain washed!)
I REPEAT:
The BIG LIE That Smoking is an Economic Burden To Society
Smokers are not a financial burden as been implied: Smoking-related healthcare costs are a pittance to overall healthcare costs (8% in my state of Maine). If every smoker quit, healthcare costs would go down only temporarily and then rise above the amount you are complaining about now, because nonsmokers get sick too and for more years. Smokers more than make up for their extra cost by dying (their choice-not yours) sooner; collecting less social security and pensions, and less time in nursing homes. The state tax on cigarettes is all gravy. This is all backed up by facts.
The burden of smokers longterm healthcare costs on our social safety nets is costing me money. That makes it my business.
That old crock has been debunked so many times it's due for an oil change. If that's the only reason you think what others do is any of your business, you'd better start looking for a new hobby.
"After the Clinton administration proposed a fairly substantial increase in the cigarette tax as a way of funding health care reform, my colleague Dennis Zimmerman and I wrote a paper entitled "Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform and Economic Analysis." (CRS, Library of Congress, #94214 E ) The part of the paper I'd like to talk about is the justifications for increasing the cigarette tax.
"I know an economist, so I start with the presumptions that people have subjective preferences about what they like to do and how they spend their money and that, in general, we want to allow people to enjoy their lifetime resources in accord with those preferences. We would intervene in those decisions only under certain kinds of circumstances that we try to delineate and measure.
"When you buy a pack of cigarettes, you pay the price of the cigarettes. You also assume some implicit costs that you know about if you are aware of the health effects of smoking. But there might be another part of the cost that you don't pay, the cost that smokers impose on other people. That is the kind of cost that we were trying to examine. When we looked at the study done by health economist Ray Manning and several associates (funded by the RAND Corporation) we found that the spillover effect per pack of cigarettes was 33 cents. At the time (1994), the sum of federal, state, and local cigarette taxes was about 50 cents per pack. So the cigarette tax was already higher than the spillover cost."--Jane Gravelle, economist, Congressional Research Service.
"The lifetime health cost for a smoking man is $72,700 and $94,700 for a smoking woman. For nonsmokers, the cost is $83,400 for a man; $111,000 for a woman.
"If people stopped smoking today, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs." --New England Journal of Medicine,1997;337:1052-7.
We HAVE our own health insurance, thank you. You don't have to worry about paying for US!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.