Should cigarettes be banned?

A very sobering post, erie. I wish you well and I hope you get through this, whatever the odds may be.

 

Because smokers gave me lower lobe lung damage consistent with exposure to second-hand smoke. Am I to defend YOUR rights to fuck with MY lungs?

 

If it makes you feel any better, your posts don't encourage me much about human nature either.

 

Furthermore, I don't even know what that means. Inspiration? What are you talking about?! Does smoking into someone else's face inspire you? Please show me where I wrote that tobacco should be banned, if that is what concerns you.

It seems to me that you selected the wrong boilerplate platitude off the shelf for this particular discussion. Your god and flag arguments have all the depth of a mud puddle.

P.S. As for trans fats, since it is to this post of mine to which you responded, are you aware that, unlike other dietary fats, trans fats are neither required nor beneficial for health? These fats are used by manufacturers without regard to the significant health hazard to the consumer because they are cheap. Now what was that about God?

 

What are other causes of "lower lobe lung damage"? Just curious.

 

The mammoth of all passive smoking studies, however, and probably the largest that will ever appear because of its enormous cost and effort, came from the labs of research professors James Enstrom of UCLA and Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Published in the prestigious British Medical Journal in 2003, this 39-year analysis of 35,561 Californians found no “causal relationship between exposure to [passive smoke] and tobacco-related mortality,” adding, however “a small effect” can’t be ruled out.

The reason active tobacco smoking could be such a terrible killer while passive smoke may cause no deaths lies in the dictum "the dose makes the poison." We are constantly bombarded by carcinogens, but in tiny amounts the body usually easily fends them off. A New England Journal of Medicine study found that even back in 1975 – when having smoke obnoxiously puffed into your face was ubiquitous in restaurants, cocktail lounges, and transportation lounges – the concentration was equal to merely 0.004 cigarettes an hour. That’s not quite the same as smoking two packs a day, is it?

http://www.fumento.com/disease/smokingdebate.html

 

Nutmeg, no disrespect (really), but I will not be drawn into this debate because the principal study you refer to was funded in part by the Center for Indoor Air Research, which is an arm of Philip Morris and other tobacco companies. Michael Thun, MD, head of epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, advised that "While this study is flawed, there are at least 50 very reputable studies that find a link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer and at least 50 others that find an increased risk of heart disease."

http://www.webmd.com/lung-cancer/news/20030515/secondhand-smoke-study-raises-ire

Forgive me, but I place as much value on studies related to smoking that are funded by tobacco companies as I do on studies regarding climate change funded by oil companies.

 

Thanks. aaahhhh, dueling links, so much info, we all have to make up our own minds on many fronts, not just this one. Really though, I concede on this issue. It falls under my "do no harm" clause (while participating in the real world) when you can't really know for sure.

 

Thanks Alexis, I was completely unaware. I know that govt has the capacity to be efficient, I just wrote it off that our govt is not because we chose not to be. The Nazi's were efficient.

 

you don't get this from casual exposure. you a bartender or something?