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smoking bad for you quitting quitters smart intelligent story how to why to end smoking

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#1 YOLF

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Posted 26 February 2013 - 06:04 AM


I posted this in another thread, but I wanted it to benefit anyone who wasn't reading that thread. So hear it is again.

Intelligent smoker? ROFL I used to be a smoker, I don't mean that comment to be an insult, but it is pretty dumb for a smoker to smoke. I didn't quit then, because I fell into a spell of apathy, I let myself start when I was a kid because I thought to myself that I could pray it away with magical mustard seeds. Ignorance aside, why do you smoke now? Is it cool now because it was cool then? Did the other kids really smoke at any time other than in front of you? Did it give you then what you have from it now? We all think it's different for us or that we don't care if it hurts us when we start smoking, but we know better now. Why let that baggage hold us down? Face facts, if governments wanted us healthy they'd ban smoking and tobacco altogether. It benefits government and society in the eyes of some that you die earlier than everyone else. Smoking is like being ostracized or exiled. Take a stand, it's your freedom that's killing you when it's your freedom to live forever! So what are you doing? Why not quit? Nothing we have currently will let you smoke indefinitely and yet live unless you die of something else first. But we're trying not to die at all. Smoking? Just quit. The truth is that there is alot of anxiety holding you back, at least if you started young and felt pressured into not quitting by your own rebellious statements for fear of losing your identity and street cred, you would have realized much sooner that you needed to quit. Wake up!

#2 theconomist

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Posted 04 March 2013 - 01:18 PM

If it was easy to quit there wouldn't be a multi-million dollar quitting industry or a multi-billion dollar smoking industry. I do however agree with you fully.
As an ex- smoker you're already starting from a disadvantage compared to none smoker in terms of health and longevity.

#3 hippocampus

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Posted 04 March 2013 - 09:43 PM

It isn't easy to quit, that's why there is snus (and other tobacco replacements).

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#4 YOLF

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Posted 05 March 2013 - 07:31 PM

If it was easy to quit there wouldn't be a multi-million dollar quitting industry or a multi-billion dollar smoking industry. I do however agree with you fully.
As an ex- smoker you're already starting from a disadvantage compared to none smoker in terms of health and longevity.


It isn't easy to quit, that's why there is snus (and other tobacco replacements).


I'm not sure that any of the quitting things actually do anything for you. I've tried lots of them. nicotine replacement, wellbutrin, etc. But the only thing that does actually work is cold turkey. I have to imagine the drugs and products aren't designed to help us quit at all, otherwise they'd be effective, but are nominal at best and only for those who can't go cold turkey.

What ever happened to the nicotine vaccine they were giving rats? Why aren't we vaccinating ppl as babies? Anyone seen recent news on it?

Edited by cryonicsculture, 05 March 2013 - 07:32 PM.

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#5 hippocampus

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Posted 06 March 2013 - 02:42 AM

Snus is one of the things that helps a lot of people right because it isn't just a replacement, it's tobacco, but without carcinogens. It also very strong (well, you can choose less strong sorts if you want ...) and it gets in blood very quickly (in contrast to nicotine patch). You can't really compare it to nicotine replacement, because it has MAOIs like tobacco and it's not the same as wellbutrin. However, you're right - it doesn't help you quit nicotine but it helps you quit smoking (better than other replacements). Quitting nicotine itself is other thing ... Anyway, cold turkey may have worked for you, but I like it better to gradually decrease the dose.
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#6 YOLF

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Posted 06 March 2013 - 04:18 AM

Just quit, everything else is an excuse!
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#7 hippocampus

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Posted 06 March 2013 - 04:15 PM

Some people can quit easier than other.
Besides that, who are you to tell me that I should or must quit, especially if I don't do harm to anybody else than myself? What if I do want to use nicotine for life but I just don't want to experience all of the bad effects of smoking?
It's like as if I would say to "couch potato": do not sit! I can just say to him: "sitting is harmful and not healthy".
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#8 rwac

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Posted 06 March 2013 - 06:44 PM

Smoking does some interesting things.

It reduces serotonin and increases dopamine. It increases the thyroid hormone T3 to T4 ratio in people with subclinical hypothyroid.
So if you want to quit smoking you might want benefit from generating the same effect by other, healthier means.
Think ondanstron and thyroid hormone supplementation.

#9 YOLF

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Posted 06 March 2013 - 11:28 PM

Some people can quit easier than other.
Besides that, who are you to tell me that I should or must quit, especially if I don't do harm to anybody else than myself? What if I do want to use nicotine for life but I just don't want to experience all of the bad effects of smoking?
It's like as if I would say to "couch potato": do not sit! I can just say to him: "sitting is harmful and not healthy".


Say this to yourself, SCREAM it in your mind! "IT'S MY MONEY, MY HEALTH, MY LIFESPAN, and MY EXISTENCE!" These are things of immense value to me, and you have to PAY ME FOR IT if you want IT and your not getting IT cheap!

To me it's the existential harm done by the behavior. It's been dis prioritized for a reason. There are people who will listen to the anti-smoking ads, and there are people who will smoke anyways. The people who will smoke anyways are a specific subset that social culture entices to cause harm to themselves like a shadowy eugenics program. Tobacco companies kill more people than drug cartels and get away with it. You won't see a storm of special ops or whoever it was that got Pablo Escobar taking down Philip Morris in a hail of gunfire. Lawsuits abound against the tobacco giants and yet they're still doing business, no one is stopping them and there are only half assed excuses as to why. The tobacco farmer could just as easily be farming blueberries and be paid to retool his business from the illicit gains of big tobacco. Did you start smoking because it was a necessity to you, or did a social culture prey on an at risk individual. As humans we instinctively copy behavior. The whole culture of smoking needs to be overthrown. It isn't American, it isn't patriotic, it isn't anything but murder. Yet there are patriotic cigarettes, American cigarettes, and cigarettes that represent everything. It just represents death and you're part of it, walking the sad path of death and disease down a lonesome path with people who are so blinded by their rebellion that they keep walking the lonesome path to the slaughter house. Most people may or may not realize it, but they are supporting your habit when they tell you to quit, because the person who started smoking and never changed the behavior has a certain way of thinking about the behavior and they aren't going to quit because someone else tells them to. To me it looks like there are forces fighting over you as a consumer, and the ones that want you to quit are carrying a false flag. They just want some people to smoke and others not to because they're making a choice that excludes someone with your life experience. Both sides have marketing campaigns. I've come across some very well paying jobs offered by big tobacco where they are looking for people to enter personal social markets and stimulate others to smoke. Their job is to make smoking cool and make it look like smoking is a success trait. It's not, you just aren't watching a commercial so you don't know you've been advertised to, you don't know that they're trying to take your money, your health, your lifespan, and your existence.

Even your argument can't help you. It's been concocted out of fallacy by both sides, BIG TOBACCO wants you to smoke, and the Ad Council and whoever else designed it to work on someone else who they thought were of more value than you are. So it backfires. Their both your enemy, you just haven't seen it. If I took money from you everyday like a tax collector and enough blood to slowly make you weaker, day after day, would we be friends? Would you defend our relationship? Because you've probably met someone back in college or even in high school, probably a hot babe, who was working for BIG TOBACCO, getting paid $70-100K a year to help you develop a habit. They might not have even been your friend, just someone who was in your personal network, had another job on top of it and was only smoking to get you to feel it. They are more like spies than friends and they're fucking up your life, giving you a negative attitude towards what is right in life that spills over into every other part of your life like pollution, and you think that person cared for you. Even if you started smoking while you were underage, it's monkey see monkey do, and the person who got you started was repeating a behavior that originated with BIG TOBACCO's PERSONAL NETWORK MARKETING which is based on using the same tactics spies use to gain access to personal networks and influence people without anyone being the wiser. You are unfortunately just somebodies pawn. The same tactics are used by law enforcement to punish criminals and by teachers and school administrators to punish bad kids. You're role in life is like that of someone's enemy. Neither the spy, the cop, or the school administrators ever tell a person how they manipulated them. There is no debriefing for these things. Do you think BIG TOBACCO is ever going to debrief you? Kind of hard to do considering considering they would be interfering with cops, school councilors, and spies. So you're left fucked on the sidewalk just sitting there and no one can tell you. And you thought BIG TOBACCO cleaned up their act after all those lawsuits...

Sorry man. But you're already killing yourself, so the only way to bear the embarrassment is to quit and live indefinitely.
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#10 hippocampus

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Posted 07 March 2013 - 05:10 PM

Let me make this clear: I'm not smoking, I used too, but now I use snus and I plan too quit (I have already quit several times but I had always start to use it again after a while). I have not started smoking because of social pressure, in fact I was always against it, even when I smoked. I started smoking tobacco because I abused anticholinergics and nicotine was one of the things that help me back then. But of course, I got addicted.
Anyway, my argument is not personal, I argue because of the sake of the argument. My main point is: some people find it very hard to quit and there are several much less harmful options which may make someone's life much less miserable but do not require to quit addiction. One can still be addicted, while not getting cancer and other diseases (there is increased risk for cardiovascular disease but it's much lower than with smoking). Addiction may even be a choice and addiction may also be a simptom. For example, heroin addiction may be a problem for someone - but his main problem is not addiction itself but life circumstances that make him depressed and so on. Of course, he could choose different way of solving problems, but this may not be an option for everybody.
If I had never abused anticholinergics, maybe I would never start smoking and using tobacco. Maybe even I am more prone to addiction because of some genetic causes and so on. Maybe it is my way of solving some problems. And even if I am killing myself, I am fully aware of it and maybe it doesn't bother me. It may no be just a cognitive dissonance, maybe I really choosed to live this way.
What I want to tell you is that not everybody are the same. Not everybody can quit that easily and not everybody started smoking because of Big tobacco propaganda. But there are ways other than quitting that may lessen harm caused by smoking and I think that advertising snus is a good thing - because much more people can switch from smoking to snus than quit for good. Sweden has the lowest cancer incidence in European Union among men. Why? Mainly because of snus. It this a bad thing? No. Should they aim to help people to quit snus addiction? Yes (because any addiction is bad - IMO, because it's a kind of psychological slavery). Should they still advertise snus? Yes, because it helps many people tremendously and it's easier to do than to make people quit entirely.
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#11 YOLF

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Posted 07 March 2013 - 06:14 PM

I'm not sure I understand. How did you get into anticholinergics? Whether you realize it or not, people who abuse most kinds of drugs are part of the same social group, you just got on the ladder at a different rung. That's how it sounds to me. Often what you're dealing with isn't an actual need but rather a need that arises from a social situation. I'm saying do away with social situations that cause these things. Whether it's smoking or heroin or otherwise, you decided to use something radical and harmful to alter your mindset, a mindset that developed from a social circumstance. If the social circumstance is a contributing risk factor for drug abuse and quickened death. Remove it! Our social circumstances shouldn't be this way.

#12 hippocampus

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Posted 07 March 2013 - 07:45 PM

Well, I don't personally know of anybody who abused anticholinergics and I did not really abused other drugs, except that I used marijuana but that wasn't often, so it wasn't abuse IMO (and I was in contact only with people who used alchohol and marijuana and maybe shrooms, not heavy addicts ... I don't know how this relates to tobacco anyway). In fact, it I only took large dose of anticholinergics once but it was enough to make "after effects" (depression, lack of sleeping, concentration difficulties and so on) that lasted about two weeks (maybe longer but they weren't so strong after that). it certainly wasn't a social situation, it was my curiosity to try some drugs ... But if it would be, maybe I couldn't remove it. If family is a social circumstance, could you just remove it? For example, 70 % heroin addicts (age about 28) are in daily contact with their mothers. This is a social circumstance which one cannot just "remove" (whatever that means) and it needs bigger changes. Unemployment is also a social circumstance - and some people just can't easily get a job and it also isn't dependent only on them - it's a economic problem.
Anyway, these kinds of addictions aren't really closely related to smoking. And snus doesn't cause any of these heavy problems, it just causes addiction and it slightly increases risk for some diseases.

#13 YOLF

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Posted 08 March 2013 - 06:58 AM

The decision to use drugs is more than an experiment. People and media use the terms frequently, but it's way more than a curiosity and certainly less than a scientific experiment. Why did you need to experiment with drugs, cigarettes or anything? It's presentation to you existed in a certain manner and you thought life could be better. We never truly know another person's experience in life so we can never truly know our existential condition. So what do we do? We change out conditions and "experiment." Why have a culture where one experiments with dangerous things at all? What purpose does such an experiment serve that person who is getting to know their condition. Why not promote a culture where experimentation comes in other forms? Do we already have that and some people just don't realize it because it's not made noticeable to them? Or does experimentation in the negative exist to make us feel that being anything but what we are or knowing any other condition outside of ourselves is folly. If that's so, at what cost does that come to the individual who could experiment with better conditions? In any case an addiction is an addiction and being at risk is being at risk, some just take it further and I'm certain a lot of smokers have used other drugs or have it in their minds that smoking is better for them than drugs and don't try those too. Carcinogens are carcinogens. There is no purpose for snus or tobacco at a point where neither is available except by prescription to people who actually do need it. The only reason other addictions aren't closely associated with smoking is that we don't classify them that way on a legal basis. There is no difference except that one is taking a greater risk and placing themselves at a greater distance from others.

This is probably blotchy, but I've got to get to bed.

#14 hippocampus

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Posted 08 March 2013 - 12:06 PM

I will paraphrase you: There is no purpose for TV/McDonalds/sugar/porn/facebook/whatever at a point where neither is available except by prescription to people who actually do need it.
Do you see where this goes?
Yes, addiction is bad, but where is the line between addiction and "free will" (whatever that is, anyway)? And again, addiction is not always problem by itself, it may be just a simptom - so, don't blame people who are addicted, it's hard to argue whether it's their fault.
And I want to distinct between tobacco and other addictions. It's not the same, not just because tobacco is legal, but because a smoker or snus users can actually live like anybody else - except that he need his drugs. Same with coffee and I believe it's the same with heroin (read about Swiss heroin prescription program). But (IMO) this is not true for cocaine, some stimulants, compulsive shopping and some other addiction - there addictions have severe influence on someone's life (heroin and opiates are somewhat special - if they are illegal and you can't get them on regular basis they are a serious problem, whereas if you can get them on prescription it a less serious problem). You can't put all addictions in one basket. They are all bad (for psychological reasons primarily, not physical health), but some are more problematic than others.

#15 YOLF

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Posted 09 March 2013 - 01:22 AM

I'm not blaming the addicted, just saying that availability affects behavior. Have you lost whatever free will is if you've never seen or heard of smoking and know it as a deadly habit of the past? I'm drawing a much broader line on addiction and the root cause. You're getting into distracting details that don't matter and require the first concerns to be ignored. If cocaine was legal, it would be cheap or at least affordable on most budgets just the way cigarettes are. All of these other drug users could get along in society just as well as a smoker or drinker. It's about the social situation. Bad stuff affects everyone. Drugs are detectable in tap water. Not that they are harmful in those quantities, but they are there.

Anyways, there is more free will in saying I'm not part of this, or we're not part of this (harmful substance use/abuse). We're all paying for someone's medical care, and someone is getting harmed by drugs. Let's not make the harm available or support it in any way. Doing so is in itself an abuse.

#16 hippocampus

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Posted 09 March 2013 - 03:56 PM

Let's not make the harm available or support it in any way

Then we should prohibit chairs or cars or wheat or alcohol? Harmfulness is not all-or-nothing thing, it depends on the dose. And I don't think state or any authority can say to people: you shouldn't do drugs (or anything) harmful. Authorities must leave choice to users - but if state makes something legal it should inform people about its consequences. I could even argument ad absurdum: from your point of view state should tell me what to eat, how to exercise, where to live and so on ... This is of course ridiculous.
Regarding tobacco: from practical point of view it is better to make less harmful forms of tobacco available than to prohibit it completely. Why? Look at alcohol prohibition in US in 1920s. Most people (if not all) find it easier to go from cigarettes to snus than to quit completely. That's why snus should be legal everywhere. And form this point of view it is also legitimate to propagate snus. If I would be an authority, I would say to people: "Smokers, smoking is bad, so you should quit. I won't force you, but you should at least know what it is doing to you. I will help you to quit, but in case you find it too hard, you can try with harm reduction, e.g. snus." And when there would be little smokers left, I would change my opinion and say: "Snus is bad (although not as bad as smoking), so you should quit. But because snus is still a little but harmful you will pay an extra tax which will be spend for treating diseases connected to snus use." (and same for smoking)

#17 YOLF

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Posted 10 March 2013 - 04:58 AM

Chairs, cars, wheat, and sometimes alchohol are beneficial to us. Tobacco? Not so much. Not in any form. It's just a cancer stick. Though at the very least, I would like to see "hard" tobacco (cigarettes, cigars, chew, etc) completely removed from store shelves in favor of only snus and e-cigarettes as they are thought to be 1000 times less cancerous. I've tried the vapor types and they gave me headaches though, so they might not even be as safe as we think they are. But I'd rather have some teenager only be able to choose the safest if they have to have the choice at all. I doubt tobacco prohibition would cause the problems alcohol prohibition did, and I wish they treated cigarette addiction like heroine addictions so I and others could have benefited from one of those away programs in the middle of nowhere that don't let you get near the stuff.

I'd argue that eating healthy is a necessity. I'd rather not have fattening food available. It's garbage and we start eating it before we ever realize how bad it is for us and before we can truly understand the consequences of eating it. Can a kid really understand how overeating and hormonal signals from extra fat are going to negatively affect their personality and life experience? Exercise should be mandatory, esp if you need it to reach national/presidential standards, in fact it should take priority. What was early healthcare? It was public gymnasiums in Greece. I'd argue that they're ahead of us there. Garbage food and things that cause unhealthy habits can be seen as existing to punish people who are susceptible to them for reasons not under their control. The point is, that it's easier for a person live a better life in better circumstances and being unhealthy is a very bad circumstance.

As for taxing something to pay for related health costs, how does healthcare return the health that been lost? The cost of smoking is more than the cost of the doc, cancer treatments, and lung transplants. It's the suffering and compromised life a person lives for having smoked. Remember I started this topic off with an explanation of how health deteriorates in the way that a mortgage or other credit debt accumulates more debt and we never truly know how healthy we could have been.

#18 JLL

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Posted 14 March 2013 - 09:58 AM

Chairs, cars, wheat, and sometimes alchohol are beneficial to us.


Really? How is a chair beneficial, when standing is much healthier? Apparently sitting all day causes all kinds of deaths.

Tobacco? Not so much. Not in any form.


Really? How about relaxation, tobacco seems pretty good for that? Or is that not on your list of "benefits that count"?

Though at the very least, I would like to see "hard" tobacco (cigarettes, cigars, chew, etc) completely removed from store shelves in favor of only snus and e-cigarettes as they are thought to be 1000 times less cancerous.


"You would like to see" - that's the key phrase here. Because YOU don't want to smoke tobacco, nobody else should. So what are you going to do, prevent people from smoking by putting a gun to their head?

I'd argue that eating healthy is a necessity. I'd rather not have fattening food available.


"Healthy eating" doesn't mean anything unless you define it. Is a hamburger healthy? What about a banana? What about butter? Are you going to form some kind of committee of bureaucrats to come up with a list of allowed and banned foods?

Exercise should be mandatory


How much exercise? What kind of exercise? What happens if you don't exercise? Should you go to prison? Are you going to be there, putting a gun to their heads when people don't exercise?

You are being ridiculous. How is it that you think you have ANY say over other people's lives? Even if tobacco is nothing but harmful to health, so what? Isn't it someone's right to reduce their lifespan if they so choose?

Who are you to tell them they can't?
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#19 hippocampus

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Posted 14 March 2013 - 06:33 PM

Tobacco/nicotine may be useful for treating some diseases or conditions, it lowers the risk for some diseases. But of course, smoking isn't beneficial for anything (or maybe for just a handful of conditions). OTOH, it isn't equally harmful for all people - it is harmful for most people, but there are some with genetic predispositions that won't develop cancer no matter how much they smoke (at least not in their current life span, maybe they would develop cancer if they'd be smoking for 150 years, but this isn't an issue right now, because nobody lives for so long). The same is true for other things. It also depends on dose - even if sitting is harmful, it probably isn't harmful if you're only sitting for an hour a day (same for wheat, watching TV or sitting in front of the computer - it may be even beneficial in low doses - but it isn't equally beneficial/harmful for everybody), OTOH, too much exercise may be harmful.

#20 YOLF

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Posted 16 March 2013 - 08:18 PM

JLL I'm over your head.
1. Chairs are good for resting and resting is good and often needed after a good workout.
2. Tobacco doesn't cause relaxation. Addiction to Tobacco causes cravings and satiety of cravings causes relaxation. Smoking a single cigarette can cause palpitations, arrhythmia, and all sorts of other things that don't relax you. Tobacco is a complication to your life and the addiction has you seeing things wrong.
3. Yes, no one should like to see tobacco. Any and all affinity we have for it derives from unnatural sources such as BIG TOBACCO's covert marketing schemes. It's existence in our lifestyle is entirely artificial, even in Amerindian culture it is artificial. It's how the tribe killed people off. Who said anything about guns? Just take the stuff off shelves and have a mandatory destruction date for all of it. Maybe make it available by prescription for a while and then shut it off.
4. That sounds like a good idea, but not bureaucrats, doctors or nutritionists. Eating habits kill and are addictive.
5. Mandatory minimums and then enough to reach health standards. It should be part of a national culture of health, because healthy makes happy.
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#21 rwac

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Posted 16 March 2013 - 08:56 PM

2. Tobacco doesn't cause relaxation. Addiction to Tobacco causes cravings and satiety of cravings causes relaxation. Smoking a single cigarette can cause palpitations, arrhythmia, and all sorts of other things that don't relax you. Tobacco is a complication to your life and the addiction has you seeing things wrong.


This is nonsense. I have smoked a total of 3 cigarettes in my life. I can tell you with 100% confidence that cigarettes make me feel good.

Edited by rwac, 16 March 2013 - 08:57 PM.

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#22 YOLF

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Posted 16 March 2013 - 10:04 PM

Tobacco/nicotine may be useful for treating some diseases or conditions, it lowers the risk for some diseases. But of course, smoking isn't beneficial for anything (or maybe for just a handful of conditions). OTOH, it isn't equally harmful for all people - it is harmful for most people, but there are some with genetic predispositions that won't develop cancer no matter how much they smoke (at least not in their current life span, maybe they would develop cancer if they'd be smoking for 150 years, but this isn't an issue right now, because nobody lives for so long). The same is true for other things. It also depends on dose - even if sitting is harmful, it probably isn't harmful if you're only sitting for an hour a day (same for wheat, watching TV or sitting in front of the computer - it may be even beneficial in low doses - but it isn't equally beneficial/harmful for everybody), OTOH, too much exercise may be harmful.


How frequently do benefits outweigh the consequences? Would it be more efficient to have one disease set to cure or two?

Don't be shortsighted. Just because we aren't living 150 years now doesn't mean we won't be living that long some day. You don't know how long that man could have lived, so don't put any kind of limit on him that would affect his health in that way. You could be taking thousands of years from him. Doesn't that equate to having a death penalty for the crime of living? BIG TOBACCO marketed their product and caused a genocide. Other unhealthy things are doing the same as tobacco did. We don't even put warning labels on cookies and fattening food. It's tobacco all over again. Granted, soda companies are being somewhat voluntary, but not everyone is going to stop drinking the stuff or resist the advertising. Some won't even see Coke's health campaigns or know that it exists. Cola makes a better battery cleaner than a soft drink, you should need a license to dispense it. Our bad health habits have gotten way too out of hand and I still don't see enough happening to reverse it. What we have is a 5 gallon bucket being dumped into lake superior each year. It'll run dry before it means anything.

#23 YOLF

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Posted 16 March 2013 - 10:12 PM

2. Tobacco doesn't cause relaxation. Addiction to Tobacco causes cravings and satiety of cravings causes relaxation. Smoking a single cigarette can cause palpitations, arrhythmia, and all sorts of other things that don't relax you. Tobacco is a complication to your life and the addiction has you seeing things wrong.


This is nonsense. I have smoked a total of 3 cigarettes in my life. I can tell you with 100% confidence that cigarettes make me feel good.


Try smoking longer. That only happens when a smoker hasn't smoked for a while or if they're smoking once a day. What you're experiencing is a constriction of blood vessels. So not enough blood is getting where it needs to go, that's where the numbness comes from also. In the long term it certainly isn't relaxing. After the first few cigarettes, you become resistant to the effect until you've quit for a while. I find the feeling disabling and I'm far less personable. The rest of the world gets somewhat muted. It's not relaxing it's debilitating. If it were relaxing it would make you more social. If you have the medical opportunity try a real relaxer, or order some oxytocin acetate. That stuff will show you how to relax, and smoking will counter it's effects. So I feel that calling tobacco a relaxant is a misnomer. Once you figure out what's happening, you see it much differently.

#24 rwac

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Posted 16 March 2013 - 10:28 PM

2. Tobacco doesn't cause relaxation. Addiction to Tobacco causes cravings and satiety of cravings causes relaxation. Smoking a single cigarette can cause palpitations, arrhythmia, and all sorts of other things that don't relax you. Tobacco is a complication to your life and the addiction has you seeing things wrong.


This is nonsense. I have smoked a total of 3 cigarettes in my life. I can tell you with 100% confidence that cigarettes make me feel good.


Try smoking longer. That only happens when a smoker hasn't smoked for a while or if they're smoking once a day. What you're experiencing is a constriction of blood vessels. So not enough blood is getting where it needs to go, that's where the numbness comes from also. In the long term it certainly isn't relaxing.


You just changed arguments there. You went from saying "Tobacco doesn't cause relaxation" to saying "In the long term it certainly isn't relaxing".

So there might be a use for it in the short term, although perhaps not the best choice long term?

#25 YOLF

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Posted 16 March 2013 - 11:13 PM

If it's constricting blood vessels and increasing blood pressure as a result, it may feel relaxing as it causes your body to slow itself down, but it's not relaxing, it just feels that way. If you had the same effect from another substance that you didn't see people using and not dieing from immediately, you would probably have health concerns. But the attitudes of smokers and cultural acceptance make it FEEL that way. It's only because you were told that it is relaxing that you feel that way about it. It all goes back to a persistent smog that's hanging around in our minds as a result of BIG TOBACCO's ad campaigns in the past. They purposefully planted the seeds of rebellion in smokers as way to keep them smoking. They engineered the smoker's culture and it persists b/c it was meant to.

Smoker or not, you're part of an engineered, and evil culture without even knowing it if you don't see it for what it is. Smokers suffer from smoking related physical diseases, but you my friend, suffer from BIG TOBACCO stupor. Which I'll define as a state of having been made ignorant through mal-intent. Even if you don't buy and iPhone or an Android, you know some of the marketing points of either and continue to propagate what you know. If Steve Jobs or Sergey Brin went around saying newest newest smartphone was made by aliens and you believed it, you'd probably have discussions about it with your friends who also believed it and you'd see the newest version of Siri and think you were really talking to a superadvanced alien AI instead of one made in San Fransisco. The leaders of BIG TOBACCO may have been deposed and may be sitting in jail, but their crimes still exist in our mindset. More radical steps are necessary. It's nearly impossible to get rid of the ills of BIG TOBACCO until you get rid of it altogether.
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#26 rwac

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Posted 17 March 2013 - 12:28 AM

Nicotine is actually a vasodilator, and so is smoking, short-term.

The problem with this attitude is that you want to ban everything that's bad.

So that would end up banning saturated fat, sugar etc, according to the belief of the day.
I now believe that both of those might even be good for you. You've just injected even more politics into what should be a scientific argument about the optimal diet.

Which beliefs do you think will win out? Do those beliefs agree with the diet you follow?
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#27 YOLF

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Posted 18 March 2013 - 02:38 AM

You've made alot of assumptions. More appropriate and scientific questions would be how do you determine what is too fatty and too sugary? Sure I might ban cookies, but when there are no high fat cookies, the flavor expectations of people will be cookies with low fat or are made healthy. You want fattening cookies, you'll have to go to a specially licensed delicacy bar that has cookie sugary enough to make you sick of them in short order and has taken enough of your money to make sure you don't come back for a while. But the food you buy to bring home and feed your family will have to be healthy. I'm not saying not to have some far in your diet, I'm saying keep the availability such that it is extremely difficult to be unhealthy. People eventually suffer from unhealthy diets. I've known people who've had serious operations in their mid 20s that they wouldn't have had had they not been morbidly obese. How long are we going to let stuff like this happen? How long are we going to be part of that suffering?

#28 rwac

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Posted 18 March 2013 - 03:54 AM

You've made alot of assumptions. More appropriate and scientific questions would be how do you determine what is too fatty and too sugary?


Ok, so how would you determine what is too fatty and sugary?
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#29 YOLF

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Posted 18 March 2013 - 12:35 PM

I'd probably go radical here too. I'd start by designing an optimal food source that was filling, and promoted optimal body metrics and prevented obesity. I wouldn't so much care about how much it would cost to produce, it would become the measure. Then foods would be approved for public health based on how close they are to the standard. Then, just as emissions standards are raised each year, I'd raise the bar for the standards and put the demands on science and engineers to make it happen in the shortest period possible. I would develop a culture of disdain for food that strayed too far from the measure. Pictures of cookies would eventually make people vomit! There'd be running gags in mass media where people try a cookie and vomit all over each other. I'm talking cookies making their way to fear factor!

Now before I spray tea all over my monitor, back to a more serious note. Family size, and individual metrics would determine how much food one was able to buy to prevent anyone from over eating and it would become punishable by law to aide and abet a food felon who was misappropriating food supplies or selling their shares through an unregulated market. This would ensure that there were no shortages of food and that prices remained low. Going to the public gym or being employed in an industry with greater physical demands would increase one's food allocations depending on the individual's nutritional needs. Food would be ordered through the internet and packaged for the individual family members. AI would actively suggest better nutritional selections.

And in the 42 weeks preceeding the fall of fatty unhealthy foods, this would become the norm:
http://www.ebay.com/...=item1e77d521c5

Follow the twinkies, you'll find the crack dealers!

You know, there are alot of people around that are into nootropics. Try taking them during a week long fast and watch how much more efficacious it is.

Anyways, we're getting off topic, this thread is really about smoking. My point is that healthier people are happier people. Excess food doesn't make anyone happy and food as bonding and social thing is more of a social habit that can be changed. There's no reason to have things that are unhealthy for us. It hurts people.
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#30 hippocampus

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Posted 18 March 2013 - 02:45 PM

Yes, but lack of free choice also hurts people. As I said: you can say to people what is healthy and what is not and offer them something healthier for lower price or other benefits (or tax unhealthy foods etc.), but you shouldn't prohibit all unhealthy things if there are reasons to do so (for example, even if marijuana would be proven unhealthy you should not prohibit it because some people enjoy it and they shouldn't be prosecuted for this and decriminalization is de facto decriminalization of organized crime ...; but you should prohibit asbestos because nobody enjoys it).
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