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Nicotine is a proven carcinogen and directly linked with many health problems.
There's absolutely no evidence of that.
With respect to morality, ethics and legality, the correct statement is that smoking might cause cancer in certain people who are genetically week and already predisposed to cancers, in particular lung cancer.
People died of lung cancer for centuries before people even started smoking, so that alone blows the whole theory.
In other words, you're not the problem, it's the other guy.
No, what she is pointing is that your position is absurd because it is inconsistent and contradictory.
A single Newport menthol cigarette sells for $0.75 - $1.00 on the street.
Some Jordanians got a "cell-phone shop" and they sell cigarettes by the pack or a la carte for $0.25 to $1.00 depending on the brand.
If you buy 10 cartons in Kentucky at $30/carton you can sell them easily for $40 in less than a few hours. That's $100/day tax free in your pocket. Too bad for government.
You just have to learn to smuggle. The latest prices I can find show that the cheapest are in Missouri and South Carolina, at around 3.40 a carton, compared with 6.50 in NYC and 6.35 in New Jersey. There are signs on Mississippi River bridges warning people that it is illegal to take cigarettes into Illinois, and those signs have been there as long as I can remember (1950s). Illinois residents can save $15 a carton buying them in Missouri or Iowa, and Illinois police can and will stop suspect cars and search them. Two cartons will pay for your gas fill-up, and gas is cheaper in Missouri, too.
There's absolutely no evidence of that.
With respect to morality, ethics and legality, the correct statement is that smoking might cause cancer in certain people who are genetically week and already predisposed to cancers, in particular lung cancer.
People died of lung cancer for centuries before people even started smoking, so that alone blows the whole theory.
Where do you come up with these shaky medical "facts"? Lung cancer existed, but was extremely rare, before the advent of widespead smoking. That alone does not "blow the whole theory". Smoking is a proven risk factor in bladder cancer, heart disease, and many other problems. We don't need to be able to say that in a given individual, smoking "caused" something in the sense that we can know for sure that the individual wouldn't have it otherwise, because there are mountains of epidemiological evidence which implicates smoking beyond any shadow of a doubt as an extremely serious health risk.
I recently had hernia surgery, and in the printed instuctions I was given by the hospital, one thing they said to do was quite smoking two weeks before the surgery to promote proper blood flow and healing. Why did the doctors put that in there? Perhaps they were just hallucinating?
I have to side with Mircea on this one. There are plenty of people who have smoked a pack a day for their entire life and NEVER got cancer, lung or otherwise.
People, the world is just not so simple as we wish it was. It's easy to see things in simple terms and/or "black and white", but that is just NOT reality. Reality is ten thousand shades of grey, and mysterious and complex.
Of course smoking daily IS quite unhealthy. For me, $11/pack means I buy American Spirit blue's and cut each cigarette and filter up into 3 mini-cigarettes. All it takes is a razor-sharp knife, scissors and masking tape! That gives me 60 smokes a pack and I smoke one or zero per day. I am a serious athlete, but occasionally I enjoy a little puff here and there (not just tobacco, either)!
Believe it or not, NICOTINE in very small amounts can be BENEFICIAL to health. Nicotine is truly a very interesting and intriguing substance. I am a Type-A person and I love how a little tobacco can just calm me right down.
I have to side with Mircea on this one. There are plenty of people who have smoked a pack a day for their entire life and NEVER got cancer, lung or otherwise.
People, the world is just not so simple as we wish it was. It's easy to see things in simple terms and/or "black and white", but that is just NOT reality. Reality is ten thousand shades of grey, and mysterious and complex.
Of course smoking daily IS quite unhealthy. For me, $11/pack means I buy American Spirit blue's and cut each cigarette and filter up into 3 mini-cigarettes. All it takes is a razor-sharp knife, scissors and masking tape! That gives me 60 smokes a pack and I smoke one or zero per day. I am a serious athlete, but occasionally I enjoy a little puff here and there (not just tobacco, either)!
Believe it or not, NICOTINE in very small amounts can be BENEFICIAL to health. Nicotine is truly a very interesting and intriguing substance. I am a Type-A person and I love how a little tobacco can just calm me right down.
This is a very self-contradictory post. On the one hand, you admit that "smoking daily IS quite unhealthy". But on the other hand you repeat the bogus argument about some life-long smokers never getting cancer.
Why do I call that argument bogus? Not because it's literally untrue - I recognize that some individuals escape the ravages (as our bodies are all different, as you point out). The bogus part is the implication that because some people come out O.K., then it's really O.K. after all. What rational person would want to take the chance of being among those genetically equipped to escape the ravages when the answer to that question will be unknown for 20, 30, or 40 years? Not only is that rolling the dice, but the odds are rather poor.
Yes, nicotine is complex and intriguing. It has been shown that some 92% of schizophrenics smoke, which is a staggering statistic in a nation where about 20% of adults now smoke. It is thought that they are self-medicating, i.e., that something in the smoke is making their symptoms better, and that a promising line of research would be to isolate what that is and deliver it without all the other health-negative baggage of smoking.
Smoking rates are also linked to a significant degree to educational level - something like 6% of people with a graduate degree smoke. I have often speculated that it is not the additional knowledge that the educated have which explains this, because even the semi-literate cannot escape knowing that smoking is bad for them. Rather, my theory is that the huge discrepancy is to be explained by the fact that the highly educated (as a group) have thereby shown the self-discipline to pursue goals for the long-term and to act in their own long-term self-interest.
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