Thursday, May 6, 2010

Tobacco isn't Wacko - Adam

First off Last night Travis Smith sent me a text informing me that the long awaited Yacht Rock Episode 12 made its debut which is incredible.

Anyway Tobacco...everyone hates on tobacco users wither you smoke it or chew it. Smokers have been shunned out of bars, restaurants, airplanes, and virtually everywhere else on earth. I don't smoke but I'll certainly fight for peoples rights too smoke so allow me to shed some light from the other end of the cigarette.

Tobacco provides 48,800 jobs at 114 factories in 21 states, and another 136,000 farmers in 23 states. Tobacco is a major part of the southern states economy.

The government wastes $250 million a year to counter tobacco advertising with anti-tobacco programs.

The per pack tax for cigarettes as of March 09 is at $1.01. Chewing tobacco is at .50 cents per pound. That's just at the federal level, State and local also get some coin thanks to smokers. That is a lot of tax money I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to pick up the slack for the tax money made from tobacco if the industry dies?

I'm not saying smoking is healthy for you, too much of anything is bad for you, not just smoking. all I'm saying is smokers get a lot of persecution and I feel bad for them. Let people do what they want, although you think smokers are cutting into your freedom to breath free air, when you prohibit smokers from the freedoms they deserve as American citizens aren't you being just as selfish as they seem to be?

9 comments:

  1. A person has a right to swing their fists as long as they want...until they connect with another person's jaw.

    People can smoke all they want as long as it's not around me. I choose to be healthier and someone else smoking is taking that choice from me. Plus, I'm asthmatic and smoke kinda kills my lungs.

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  2. Agree with Kacie on this one. I think they can smoke as long as it isn't around people who don't want to inhale secondhand smoke. So keep smoking, but make it is designated smoking areas where if a non smoker is there, it is their fault for being there.

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  3. I for one am glad of the smoking ban. I hated going out places, whether it be a resturant or a club, and dealing with people smoking. My Grandma died from complications of all her years smoking. I don't like being around people who are smoking and certainly don't want to kill myself on their secondhand smoke. Stick to designated areas where I don't have to breathe that air and pray to God I don't die from lung cancer. Clearly people have their right of freedom, but they can have that right far away from me.

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  4. their are far worse concentrations of chemicals in the air than "second hand smoke" if your all as concerned as you seem to be about the faint whiff of a cigarette being smoked near you then i suggest you start using a respirator and avoid cars, semi's, and factories.

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  5. Well with that logic, then we might as well all become smokers because there are "worse chemicals" in the air. Except for the fact that cigarette smoke is the leading cause for lung cancer (by a mile), and not CO2 emissions from cars and factories.

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  6. the National Cancer Institute declared, "relative risks of less than 2.0 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." Second hand smoking received a relative risk of 1.19 Strange that a 1.19 should be enough to classify second-hand tobacco smoke as a Class A carcinogen, but a 1.5 or even 2.0 probably is too low to mean anything.

    a December, 1993 article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found no link between passive smoking and lung cancer in women, it did find that the women with the highest saturated fat consumption had six times the lung cancer rate of women with the lowest level.
    Other studies have established that women who live with husbands who smoke have a significantly greater fat intake than other women. The correlation is that people who smoke tend to be in the lower economic class and these people also tend to eat poorer diets.

    None of this proves that passive smoking is not harmful. What it does mean is that if there is a risk, it is probably too small to be measured.

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  7. "With that logic" you shouldn't just smoke because your going to inhale harmful aerosols anyways. The act of smoking is much more detrimental than not smoking at all. There is no doubt about that, but the "risk" from second hand smoke is made into a mountain from the mole hill it truly is. If your going to smoke because your already breathing toxins than you may as well apply your logic to suicide when confronting your own mortality, and no one I know would agree to that philosophy.

    BOB

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  8. Speaking as an asthmatic, I am definitely going to go PRO smoking BANS. Public places are definitely not okay for people to smoke, because they never know who they are hurting, on the "remote risk" level, they could damage someone's long term health with second hand smoke. To me, what is far more important is all of the people with asthma or other respiratory problems who cannot enjoy eating at resaurants, going to bowling alleys, being at bars, or other fun places because they can't breath. It won't kill the person to smoke outside, or in a private place. It might seriously mess up someone with asthma in a public place.

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  9. Alan, right you are! I have no problem with people smoking in their own homes and when I go to visit them I would never tell them to stop smoking. But simply visiting one of my uncles is incredibly difficult because he chain smokes. I have to take breaks and go outside because it doesn't take long for me to struggle with my breathing. And then there's the fact that my cousins all had problems at birth traced to my aunt inhaling secondhand smoke the entire time she was pregnant for them.

    The risk for cancer may not be large and there may be worse things we're breathing in the air but it's still there and this is something we can work on controlling. One thing at a time...

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