Are Smokers Dumber than George Will?

Rebecca

http://www.jpands.org/vol14no2/marlow.pdf

Epidemiologic and Economic Research,

and the Question of Smoking Bans
Michael L. Marlow, Ph.D.

Excerpts:

Epidemiologic Research on ETS

Research on ETS does not fully support claims that it poses
significant health risk. A recent review of the many studies of risks
associated with ETS exposure concludes that "reported studies do not
offer consistent results, and overall cannot be interpreted for or against
risk." Of the 75 published studies of ETS and lung cancer, 70 percent
did not report statistically significant differences of risk, 17 percent
claim an increased risk, and 13 percent imply a reduction of risk.

More detail is in the article.

Fergus Pickering

I would point out that sex is injurious to your health. In fact there is an excellent poem on this very subject by Fleur Adcock, well worth googling. Sex and childbirth both shorten your life. Look at all those old nuns about. Sport, the indulgence in, undoubtedly shortens your life. Footballers finish up crippled. Cricketers kill themselves. Rugby players break their necks. I think Bridge is probably OK. I have given up smoking but I MIGHT START AGAIN. As you say, itis a pleasure, one of the pleasures that keeps right on being pleasurable. A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke. Oh, I tell you wjhho I would NOT employ. I would not employ anybody who espoused Green Politics. Imagine having to share a room with a humourless damn fool like that.

Mike D

Bad week Massie - taken in by the hysterical suburban left on the BNP .... and now by the tobacco lobby.

Actually, you do not enjoy smoking. Nobody does. The truth is that you dislike it. What your body is enjoying is the satisfaction of its nicotine craving or addiction - which is happening simultaneously with smoke inhalation. If all nicotine was removed from cigarettes no one would smoke.

Have a look at the Allen Carr website. The whole process is one massive con. I just wish I'd cottoned onto it a lot earlier.

Whilst I'd always known that there was absolutely nothing to recommend smoking I'd never been able to overcome the addiction. What finally did it was this plus the discomfort from the inability to replenish my nicotine levels at meetings, in restaurants, on flights and so forth.

Redvers

No Alex - you are hiding from the truth.

Consider the nature of addiction. The absence of the substance (be it nicotine, alcohol or heroin) makes the user feel anxious/sad/ill. The next smoke (or drink or injection) eases those mild withdrawal symptoms.

So an addict only 'enjoys' taking his/her drug of choice because it makes them feel less bad.

Colin

Weekly average Public house bankrupcies.

Year = No. of Licenced businesess closing

2005 = 2

2006 = 4

2007= 27 = SMOKING BAN

2008 = 39

2009 = 52

Not to mention turning 12,000,000 people into social outcasts.
Anti smokers are bad news.
Anti smokers are really in it for the money.
Ban them .

Fergus Pickering

Mike D, don't tell me what I enjoy and do not enjoy. Trust me to know that. I enjoyed smoking cigars and French cigarettes. I didn't care for Virginia tobacco. Presumably tghe nicotineintake is the same. And since one does not inhale cigars, the amountof nicotine would be (I presume) less. I liked cigars and french cigarettes partly because of the ambience, which is different from the ambience of ordinary British?American cigarettes. I could go on but I won't.

Ray

I don't mind anyone smoking as long as they don't blow it over me and make my clothes stink.

Nicholas

I bet Mike D votes Labour and believes in climate change.

david bunn

The Spectator is one of the few mainstream publications that has empathy for smokers (although it could try harder). How about including 'a smoker's corner'? There are millions of angry tobacco lovers out there.....

Dick Puddlecote

How odd of Mike D to accuse Alex of being taken in by 'hystericals' just before trotting out an oft-repeated, but still patently untrue, anti-smoking soundbite.

The drip, drip worked on you then, Mike, it would seem.

Andy

This guy is obvioulsy fooled into the campaign of hatred of smokers waged by the anti-tobacco industry who really care nothing about health and more about money. Instead of education and moderation they pay for studies that make smokers out to be killers, which then feeds the villification and hatred,in an age when all other minorities are rightly protected against such treatment. Even the former darling of anti-tobacco is speaking out against their lies and corruption http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/david-goerlitz-winston-man.php

Mike D

"I bet Mike D votes Labour and believes in climate change".

This is one I'm going to treasure and boast about for years!!!!

The facts: I'm somewhere to the right, the lefties tell me, of Attila the Hun. I do a lot of shooting and for conservation, fought with black troops in the bush wars in SA ( where with the right breeze a terr can smell a Virginia cigarette from a mile away - and he wants to kill you ), despise the US and their infantile "Brave New World" view, believe that since the end of WW II they have done nothing but blunder about stuffing up the well crafted, god intended, perfectly natural, colonial order and that Blair and his mob are a quite awful toxic brew. I battled to give up fags but I'm glad to be shot of the dependence. Need I say more?

Andy

Mike being a smoker doesnt= being an addict anymore than being a drinker means you are dependent on alcohol. Many people smoke occasionally,socially, when they are stressed, to aid concentration etc etc. I have smoked very moderately for 20 years. It is a social thing the same as drinking, it is a pleasurable like taking a glass of wine with a meal. I dont get the shakes, or break-out into a cold sweat if i dont smoke one day. Dont tar us all with the same brush dont feed off the AT propaganda machine, and try respecting people's choices and rights to enjoy smoking tobacco. If it was just for the nicotine then why does NRT have a 98.4% failure rate?

Pete

I think some of the comments on here veer to the extremes - you're either labelled a 60-a-day nicotine slave with no free-will whatsoever or quite merrily puff on one or two fags now and again for the sheer joy of it. Personally, I think there is a murky grey area somewhere in between. Some people are addicted, some people are not addicted, others think they're not addicted but are, some smoke now and again etc.

The prevailing view in this country, from non-smokers anyway, seems to be that smokers would prefer not to be. Countless times I have witnessed conversations with smokers where they are asked, "Have you tried giving them up?", "When are you going to quit?" etc. As a non-smoker but a social drinker, I have never once been asked "So, when are you going to give up the sauce then?". If people want to smoke let them, it's no skin off my rosey nose.

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

Are we allowed a Bernard Manning nugget on here?:

"Painstaking scientific research has shown that 100% of non-smokers will die"

Jeremy

"And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."

- Kipling

James Watson

Who on earth is George Will? Never heard of him. Is the name an alias for Patricia Hewitt or Caroline Flint? You know, the Ministers of the Crown, who lied and lied about the effects of passive smoking, meanwhile, sticking their snouts into the trough of taxpayers' money?
It seems to be quite likely.

For heavens sake, why don't we start again. Why don't we say that if you want to smoke, you can do - but be aware that you MAY be taking a risk. Be aware that there is a MINISCULE risk that that the health of other people, in your vicinity, could be affected.

Let us assume for a moment that everyone in England stopped smoking. Would the cost of the National Health Service be reduced?
Well, if the doom mongers are to believed, then that may happen. But, is that not going to be a SHORT TERM effect? Is it not true that the LONG TERM effect is going to be that more and more poeple are going to be EVEN MORE RELIANT upon the state, in terms of the NHS and pensions than before?
In general terms, is not the smoking issue of MAGINAL significance?

Mark M

What amazes me is that nobody is questioning why the prevalence of lung cancer has increased even though the rate of smoking has decreased dramatically.

There is some other agent at work here and the anti smoking campaign is being used to divert public attention from the truth. The obvious suspect would be the fumes and particulates released by combustion engines. Many studies have shown they produce cancers especially the particulates released by the increasingly popular diesel engine. Would be interesting to find out if any of the big petroleum companies have made donations to anti smoking campaing groups.