Thread: I'm Glad I'm on the Downhill Side of This Life

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

No your not missing anything.
I would like to know if smoking and second hand smoke is so deadly trimming years off life, then why do countries like JAPAN, ISRAEL, GREECE, CUBA, with smoking rates of 45% to 60% All have some of the highest life expectancies in the world,japan with 60% smoking rate coming in at number two. The rest also in the top ten.

How can it be then that countries like the U.S.A and Australia with smoking rates of23% can,t even make the top ten, The U.S.A being at number 16 behind France who have a 40% smoking rate.

I can answer for Japan... having smoked there. The cigarettes don't have the same kind of shite the manufacturers cram in cigarettes in the west. I have smoked in America, across Europe and in Japan. The Japanese cigarettes have the lowest level of additives in the lot. For fun, look into cigarette filler material...

The other reason why Japan might have a longer life expectancy is that their culture isn't based on "stuff your face until you pass out, then stuff it some more". Ever seen what is considered obesity in Japan?

Yet another reason why Japan might have longer life expectancy is that they have (or at least had when I was there) a pretty niffty healthcare system... if you don't mind being given painkillers in the form of suppositories or being told you need to shed a stone or two every time you meet a doctor.

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

There are obviously health issues in our countries but I don,t think smoking or second hand smoke is the number one problem,far from it.
As the director of WHO was told in 1975 " to futher denormalise smoking ,we must foster an atmosphere where it is percieved that they are not just harming themselves, but those around them. especially thier family and children"

Question, how would you react if I was to pulverize the following non-exhaustive list of crap around you all day?

Acetone
Aluminum
Ammonia
Arsenic
Benzene
Butane
Cadmium
Carbon monoxide
Carbon dioxide
Chloroform
Cyanide
DDT/Dieldrin
Ethanol
Formaldehyde
Hydrogen cyanide
Lead
Methanol
Nicotine
Tar
Vinyl Chloride

Why should it be OK if you do it by smoking?

Or as one of my ex customers used to say when I was still smoking:
You enjoy smoking, the byproduct of your smoking gets all over my clothes and inside my lungs.
I enjoy beer, would you be happy if I ****ed all over you and down your throat?

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

I am not so nieave as to believe that primary smoking is totally harmless, but nothing in this world is. If anyone questions my smoking I ask If they drive a car.If the answer is yes, it is the end of the discussion.I just cannot abide someone who would have a go at me for having a smoke but for themselves it is OK to drive around spewing the same pollution as 15,000 cigarettes every hour out of their exhaust and they couldn,t give a damn who has to breath it.I can tolerate a lot of things but not hypocrits.

Unlike the smoker, the driver has the decency to pollute in open spaces where there is usually proper ventilation. That still doesn't render his pollution inoffensive, but there has been a lot of progress on that subject over the last few years.

Originally Posted by IanS

Your comparison isn't useful because it presumes that smoking is the overwhelmingly most significant cause of shortened life expectancy; outweighing all other causes combined. Without this presumption, you can't draw any conclusion from the data you present.

For instance, the number of homicides, the obesity rate and related illnesses, the number of fatalities in automobile accidents, and several dozen other causes of death are significant enough that they would need to be removed from your life expectancy calculation to get a truly representative sample. And at that point, I'm fairly certain the numbers would look a lot worse for the point you are making.

But is this not the point!Overall lifestyle.These countries have extremley high smoking rates and there living longer than us, so if smoking is so bad why isn,t their life span less.The anti smoking brigade, the government have been telling everyone that it is the most significant cause.So someones telling porky pies.So do you agree with me that there are more pressing issues that need to be looked at, diet obviously is the number one factor in health and life expectancy.Second hand smoke, and third hand smoke(now theres a joke if I ever heard one) have been made out to be the cause of every ones troubles.Smokers have been made the whipping boys in todays society and are fair game for anyone with an axe to grind.The scandal of this social engineering experiment will surely go down as the biggest con of the 20th century.
Can you please explain this

Originally Posted by MichaelP

I can answer for Japan... having smoked there. The cigarettes don't have the same kind of shite the manufacturers cram in cigarettes in the west. I have smoked in America, across Europe and in Japan. The Japanese cigarettes have the lowest level of additives in the lot. For fun, look into cigarette filler material

So can you tell me about the cigarettes from Greece,Cuba,Israel,Costa rica,Spain? Also do countries like CostaRica and Cuba have better health care than us?


Question, how would you react if I was to pulverize the following non-exhaustive list of crap around you all day?

Acetone
Aluminum
Ammonia
Arsenic
Benzene
Butane
Cadmium
Carbon monoxide
Carbon dioxide
Chloroform
Cyanide
DDT/Dieldrin
Ethanol
Formaldehyde
Hydrogen cyanide
Lead
Methanol
Nicotine
Tar
Vinyl Chloride

Why should it be OK if you do it by smoking?

Most of that same crap as you call it is in the food you eat and the water you drink and in much higher concentrations.The rest you are inhaling as vapor from all the plastic that surrounds you in your house, office and car.The only thing you won,t be getting a dose of will be the nicotine.

Or as one of my ex customers used to say when I was still smoking:
You enjoy smoking, the byproduct of your smoking gets all over my clothes and inside my lungs.
I enjoy beer, would you be happy if I ****ed all over you and down your throat?

This comment is just ridiculous,if everyone went around handing out payback to people, for doing something they didn,t like it would be a sad world and a very violent one. I am not partial to cars but I wouldn,t stop you from owning one,I am not partial to alcohol but I wouldn,t stop you from having one, I am not partial to gun,s but I wouldn,t stop you from owning one.Instead of making with the smart arse comments why didn,t this customer politley ask if you would mind not smoking around him? instead of threatening to expose himself in public and urinating on you. A little courtesy goes a long way.

Unlike the smoker, the driver has the decency to pollute in open spaces where there is usually proper ventilation. That still doesn't render his pollution inoffensive, but there has been a lot of progress on that subject over the last few years.

Well I do not know where you live but the only place you can smoke where I live, is in the open spaces.As for progress on car pollution, in research yes but in reality on the roads virtually nothing.

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

This comment is just ridiculous,if everyone went around handing out payback to people, for doing something they didn,t like it would be a sad world and a very violent one. I am not partial to cars but I wouldn,t stop you from owning one,I am not partial to alcohol but I wouldn,t stop you from having one, I am not partial to gun,s but I wouldn,t stop you from owning one. Instead of making with the smart arse comments why didn,t this customer politley ask if you would mind not smoking around him? instead of threatening to expose himself in public and urinating on you. A little courtesy goes a long way.

Nobody stops you from smoking yet... non-smokers and ex-smokers who made the deliberate choice of not smoking anymore want their choice respected. As I pointed out before, your freedom to light up can't trump their freedom to not be exposed to your smoke. Until the ban, the answer from most smokers to "would you mind not smoking around me" was along the lines of "screw you, it isn't forbidden so I'll light up where and when I want" or "why don't *you* go somewhere else while I light up here"... heck the second answer is still one of the most common answers nowadays.

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

But is this not the point!Overall lifestyle. These countries have extremley high smoking rates and there living longer than us, so if smoking is so bad why isn,t their life span less.The anti smoking brigade, the government have been telling everyone that it is the most significant cause.So someones telling porky pies.So do you agree with me that there are more pressing issues that need to be looked at, diet obviously is the number one factor in health and life expectancy.Second hand smoke, and third hand smoke(now theres a joke if I ever heard one) have been made out to be the cause of every ones troubles.Smokers have been made the whipping boys in todays society and are fair game for anyone with an axe to grind.The scandal of this social engineering experiment will surely go down as the biggest con of the 20th century.
Can you please explain this

I think that is exactly the point. You just simply can't compare those figures - you have to compare smokers and non-smokers with similar lifestyles and background.

As for Japan, how do you prove their smoking hasn't decreased their life-expectancy? Who knows how high it would be without smoking.

"government have been telling everyone that it is the most significant cause." Please, reference us when exactly the goverment has claimed this. I don't believe for a minute the goverment would make such claim.

Where is smoking being officially made cause for everything? Where are smokers being made whipping boys for everything?

With all due respect, your post tries to make smokers look like scapegoats, feigning hurt and injustice to try to emotionally affect readers. If you think that is not the case, please provide references to your claims that smokers have been blamed for everything, and I'll withdraw my words back.

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

As the director of WHO was told in 1975 " to futher denormalise smoking ,we must foster an atmosphere where it is percieved that they are not just harming themselves, but those around them. especially thier family and children"

I am not so nieave as to believe that primary smoking is totally harmless, but nothing in this world is. If anyone questions my smoking I ask If they drive a car.If the answer is yes, it is the end of the discussion.I just cannot abide someone who would have a go at me for having a smoke but for themselves it is OK to drive around spewing the same pollution as 15,000 cigarettes every hour out of their exhaust and they couldn,t give a damn who has to breath it.I can tolerate a lot of things but not hypocrits.

That WHO comment discussed strategy to get through to people, since they knew that banning things outright would have been a disaster. That is not proof of some secret plan to stop you enjoying your cig. I'm certain that smoking companies have similar strategies to make the most profit from smokers.

It would be nice to see that study you flashed information on. Care to link me to it?

And as you might have noticed, nobody has been discussing ban to outdoors and non-smoker rarely park their SUV's inside a restaurant. Or keep it running in the aparment they rented =)

Calling anybody names is not productive area of discussion. Keep in mind that with properly chosen scope, everyone can be called a hypocrite.

Originally Posted by AussiePostie

But is this not the point!Overall lifestyle.These countries have extremley high smoking rates and there living longer than us, so if smoking is so bad why isn,t their life span less.The anti smoking brigade, the government have been telling everyone that it is the most significant cause.

I agree, smoking did get singled out. Largely as a backlash of the public going "Holy shit, look how much money the tobacco lobby is giving BOTH parties?!"

So the politicians said "Oh, crap... Tobacco... BAD! I'm not for sale... God I hope they don't figure out all the other lobbies I've been sold to."

Obesity is getting targeted next... but while tobacco use is among like 40% of the population, gluttony is among closer to 100%, so it's a great deal harder to address. Also, McD's has a lot less damning memo's about how they want to hide the fact that BigMacs are addictive and cause cancer and get kids hooked on them in grade school. Basically once it came out that pretty much every tobacco exec in the past 60 years has been almost comic-book villian evil, the tobacco industry had to realize it was going to have some rough days ahead. It's hard to argue for compromise and fairness with regard to some rich guys sitting around sending memo's back and forth asking for better methods to kill your children without you finding out.

Look guy,s,I know the tobacco giants are no angels,I know primary smoking isn,t totally harmless and I do realise that people may find second hand smoke annoying. But in the last 10 years the anti tobacco movement which is largely funded by the pharmacutical companies has totaly lost the plot with decitfull information,dodgy research papers and with an agenda of fear and hatred.Any phsycolligist will tell you the easiest way to control people is to firstly give them something to fear and hate, then they will believe and act on any information you supply them on the chosen subject even if that information is untrue.
I do not care how good the ultimate goal is. To blatently supply the public with misinformation on any subject to achieve that goal is not justified.
PS. In 1998 the WHO carried out its own study on the effects of second hand smoke, results no catergory studied showed anything of statistical signifigance, except one, they did find it was annoying to people.Suffice to say this report was buried.
Two of the biggest people in tobacco control in the U.S.A, DR. micheal siegel and david gorlitz have in the last 5 years disasociated themselves from the anti tobacco crusade citing the fact that these people have become far worse than the tobacco industry ever was in lying and with absurd statments like third hand smoke and their attack,s on smokers instead of smoking, and are making the whole issue of tobacco control look like a joke. Just google FORCES INTERNATIONAL to get some information on the smoking debate.You might not agree with everything there but in my opinion they take a more realistic approach to the subject than the emotive non substantiated articles at sites like ASH.So you see I do like to look at things from all sides and check on the credability of so called experts and their research papers.

Anyway take comfort in the fact that I am considerant off other peoples comforts and well being and not just on the subject of smoking.My mode of transport is a small motor bike,all my heating and cooking is done using renewable energy resources,I recycle everything, I have many trees on my property which are replenishing the atmosphere and even though I live in a bushfire prone area I am planting more for the good of the planet.My main concern in life is not how long I can live, it is in being happy within myself, and leaving as small of a footprint on the planet as I can.
So Ursus,MichaelP and IanS if you don,t mind being around a pipe smoker and your in Australia, drop in for a cuppa and a chat I,m sure you will find me a nice and friendly sort of bloke.

Originally Posted by ursus

"government have been telling everyone that it is the most significant cause." Please, reference us when exactly the goverment has claimed this. I don't believe for a minute the goverment would make such claim.

Where is smoking being officially made cause for everything? If you think that is not the case, please provide references to your claims that smokers have been blamed for everything, and I'll withdraw my words back.

Sorry I forgot to answer your question.Where I come from There are government addvertisments on TV and mandatory warnings on cigarette packs "telling" everyone they are not claiming this as fact they are just "telling" people that smoking is the No1 cause of premature deaths. As for causes there are mandatory GOVERNMENT warnings on cigarette packs stating that smoking "CAUSES", not may or might be a contributing factor but "CAUSES"
strokes
heart attacks
cancer
gangrene
impotence
blindness
asthma
copd
sids
birth abmortalities
premature deaths
and the list goes on.
The strange thing is non smokers actually die of all these as well,these are actually just diseases of old age, so smoking is obviuosly not the only factor. The other strange abnomilly is that there is no premature age death set for smokers, so if you die when your 100 years old and your a smoker it will still be listed as a premature death on statictical records. If you die of a heart attack and weigh 200kgs and never excersiced a day in your life, but if you smoked it will be listed as a smoking related death for statictical records.As a smoker you virtually have to get run over by a bus not to recorded as a smoking related death!

A friend of mine used to say that if he were to be struck by lightning everyone would say that the booze finally got him. My father smoked cigarettes from the time he was 15 until he was 40. He quit the cigarettes and exchanged them for a pipe with occasional cigars. He died at 84 of old age and smoked a pipe up until a week before he passed on.

I still say at 61 that not being sure how much time I've got left I am glad I am on the downhill side. I see society becoming more and more totalitarian as the years go by and I'll be ready when my time comes. Smoking G L Pease Blackpoint right now in an old Comoy Specimen Straight Grain.