is smoking unhealthy for you?

[Skipbidder]

I enjoy Penn and Teller. I like the idea of their show (and bought the first season on DVD). They are far from exhaustive or rigorous, however. If you like simple appeal to authority, which it appears that you do, at a skeptic's conference in Las Vegas Penn admitted that they had been wrong about the second hand smoke issue.

Saying that you would like to see ONE person which can be definitively shown to have gotten lung cancer solely from the effects of second-hand smoke is absolutely ludicrous. You can't even prove that a 3 pack a day smoker who got lung cancer got it from his smokes. All we can say is that you are considerably more likely to get lung cancer by smoking. The best we can do is to compare populations of nonsmokers who were exposed to second hand smoke and populations that were not. This has been done repeatedly, and statistically significant increased chance of cancer has been found. For an example study, try Int J Epidemiol. 2000 Apr;29(2):224-31

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Also, the claim that "second-hand smoking has been proven to cause lung-cancer" is dubious at best.

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Thank you Captain Wrong. If the above study isn't interesting to you and you'd like to see some of the gazillions of other studies showing the harm, try the review article Mutat Res. 2004 Nov;567(2-3):427-45.

This is hard work, however. Much easier to stay ignorant and bleat.

[XxGodJrxX]

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This has been done repeatedly, and statistically significant increased chance of cancer has been found. For an example study, try Int J Epidemiol. 2000 Apr;29(2):224-31

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Also, the claim that "second-hand smoking has been proven to cause lung-cancer" is dubious at best.

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Thank you Captain Wrong. If the above study isn't interesting to you and you'd like to see some of the gazillions of other studies showing the harm, try the review article Mutat Res. 2004 Nov;567(2-3):427-45.

This is hard work, however. Much easier to stay ignorant and bleat.

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I like how you respond to what I said first, then quote what I said in the first place as if I was responding to the study. I'll look into whatever studies are available on the subject. I still stick by my claim that smoking less cigarettes is less harmful, which was the point of my post and what the OP was talking about. Now excuse me while I cash in my tobacco company stocks. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[Klompy]

ski,
despite all the haters I understand what you're asking, but I don't have an answer. Despite what everyone says it is very possible to use tobacco without being an addict. I'd say in the last 3 years I prob have purchased 1 pack of cigs a month or so on average. Just because you smoke doesn't mean you're going to be addicted.

This said, I am actualy curious of the side effects of casual smoking.

[ilya]

QUIT NOW before you find you've become a slave to a disgusting dangerous and costly habit.

[XxGodJrxX]

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QUIT NOW before you find you've become a slave to a disgusting dangerous and costly habit.

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While we're at it: QUIT NOW....Fast food, alcohol, driving, screwing fat chicks... before you find you've become a slave to a disgusting dangerous and costly habit.

[Bartman387]

SkipBidder: What are the journals those studies are in? is "Int J" the journal title? Also who are the authors? I am asking this seriously, so I can look them up.

[george w]

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screwing fat chicks

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woah there partner. big girls need lovin' too.

[Skipbidder]

Sorry, full titles are:
International Journal of Epidemiology
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/

and

Mutation Research
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/jou...on#description

Abstracts should be available on pubmed. If you don't have access to those journals, I can provide other citations, since there is a great deal in the literature. (But I probably won't be reading 2+2 again until Monday.)

[Dire]

Weed.

[T.J. Combo]

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Kind of enjoyed most of what follows, as I'm a rabid anti smoker - my brother died at 42 from lung cancer.

Having said that, it's an interesting question. AFAIK, there are no good, or even bad studies on this topic, likely because the vast majority of people hack their way thru a pack or more a day, or don't smoke. The mechanism of just how smokers develop lung cancer is poorly understood.
It may be that with each ciggie you slightly increase your risk of generating that first cancer cell that will get you, but it may be that you need to smoke some (unknown) amount before you are vunerable. No one knows.
COPD and emphysema are long term problems, resulting from long term tobacco use. While there is some variability in how quickly people develop these problems, a few ciggies a day probably won't get you there until you're about 120 or so years of age, by which time you'll have died of something else.

While the medical side of this is mixed, there are other things to consider. Smokers, rightly or wrongly, are pretty much treated as lepers. Employers don't want them, as they are perceived as liabilities from a health insurance and work efficiency point of view. It's rapidly becoming a habit that is viewed to be owned by the lower socioeconomic classes - not where you want to hang out if you're a climber in whatever field you're in. Most older people view anyone younger than 30 who smokes to be.....how do I say it politely....stupid. It may not be fair, but it's true. Add in the fact that probably 99% of smokers would tell you "don't take the chance" of developing the habit - doesn't seem like a tough decision.

Good luck.

MM MD

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Sir, I salute you for being a rabid anti-smoker who knows his [censored] and gives real reasons for not liking smokers and actual convincing reasons as to why one should quit.

Nobody cares about quitting their addiction until they're already in a hospital.

The rundown.

My reasons for smoking:

1. They taste good with alcohol.
2. Spite. (Stupid reason with stupid explanation below)
3. They help to calm my nerves (although this may be attributed to the deep inhalation while smoking resulting in more oxygen than normal breaths).
4. I got addicted when I was 16 because they gave me a headrush when I first tried them.

Reasons to not smoke

1. Cost. (If a smoker spends $3.00 a pack on cigarettes every day, which is the average cost of a pack of cigarettes where I live, they spend about 1,100 on cigarettes anually)
2. Health issues. (Even short term smoking, say a year or less, can drastically reduce your athletic prowess).
3. Social Stigmas (People hate smokers)

In my defense: I realize how horribly lazy it is to endure a few days of torture as my body withdraws from this substance versus a lifetime savings of about $50,000, bonus years to my life, and healthier, happier years up to the conclusion of my life cycle.

However, slowly killing myself is worth it for the sole reason of spite. I honestly dislike about 80% of the people I come across. It gives me great pleasure to see someone fake coughing as they claim to be "allergic" to cigarette smoke. Granted, there probably are people out there who are actually allergic to cigarette smoke, but most people who claim to be afflicted by this are merely annoyed by the odor. For example, when I was at a concert where smoking was prohibited, some guy who was drunk off his ass lit up in the auditoreum (spelling?). In the row behind me, 3 fat whores who had been guzzling Miller Light started coughing like crazy at this guy smoking. As disgusted as this made me, I couldn't help but laugh because of these idiots thinking someone should give a [censored] about their health. If they were concerned with their health, they wouldn't drink and they'd spend a few more hours a week at the gym.

I run into these people everywhere and honestly it really makes me happy to increase their chances of getting lung cancer just by me practicing my addiction around them.

Another example: I'm in the smoker's break room at work. This place, with it's tar stained walls and old people who wheeze every breath, is the best reminder of why you shouldn't smoke. Even so, I'm playing a five card draw game for quarters with the guys I have break with when this horrendously fat disgusting bitch comes in and starts coughing her brains out, explaining that she wanted a magazine or something from this room and how we were all horrible people and should stop smoking. I immediately layed my hand down and covered my ears and whined about how I was allergic to bitching. Of course, fat bitch has something to say and I tell her it'd probably be smart not to come into the area designated for people to smoke and then complain that she smelled smoke for a little bit. Obviously defeated, she took her magazine and left.

One of the other influences for my spite is the new "Wudafuxup" campaign or whatever it's called that airs commercials right now. In lieu of explaining the harmful effects of smoking that had apparently failed in the past, this guy puts on a jogging suit and goes around to addiction treatment centers and asks if he can get help for jogging and M&M addictions. They of course tell him no, and then he says something like: "A tobacco executive talking about how smoking is like jogging and M&M's?". Or the other commercial where he talks to the matress salesman about banning sleep and ends the commercial with: "A tobacco executive talking about banning sleep?"

What are these commercials accomplishing? They're not really saying to me: "Don't smoke" they're saying: "I'm gonna use the social stygmas around tobacco use to show the stupidity of tobacco executives in order to embarass them." These guys were just getting paid to defend a product they'd invested in. Naturally their excuses for manufacturing a harmful substance aren't going to be spectacular. As a side note: chances are, if you walked into the same treatment centers he did in the commercials and asked for help with smoking, they'd probably say: "Get the [censored] out of here. This place is for people with real problems like crack and heroin. You ever sucked a dick for a cigarette?"

Again, all this is just my opinion, my opinions more often that not mean dick as I have a tendency to think much differently (and more than likely incorrectly).

Conclusion:

Smoke if you want. You know it's bad for you. You know it's bad for people around you. You know it's expensive. I'll probably smoke until I die of emphysema.

Edit: I'm a horrible speller.