Perceived risk of pack-a-day habit dropped in 31 states among those 18 to 25
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comFewer young people see heavy smoking as high risk
Seeded on Thu Jul 21, 2011 4:16 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
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There is no doubt smoking is hazardous to a person's health, but many now believe (with justification) that anti smoking advocates have managed to overstate that risk with constant warnings and anti smoking laws that go to far.
Not me
Nor me. In fact, I don't think they have gone far enough, especially in the South.
The "Chicken Little" techniques of the anti-smoking crowd have come home to roost.
Exaggerate any danger and the people of target mis-trust any part of the message.
Kind of hard to over exaggerate a slow excruciating death. Ask my father. Ask my step mother. Ask my brother. Ask my Grandfather. Ask my neighbor. Ask my friends father. Ask my father in law.
Oh wait, you can't. Smoking killed them all before they were 70. For them the sky did indeed fall.
The responders misunderstood the question. They thought the reference of "heavy smokers" was about really fat people that smoked...and everyone knows they don't have to worry about any risks from smoking....they'll be long dead from clogged arteries before lung cancer has a chance to develop.
Stupid is what stupid does, regardless of excuse makers.
Too bad they cant be self culled before they spend everyone else's health resources.
Jack-2510943
You missed the point.
2nd hand smoke
3rd hand smoke
'stinky' cloths....
Ya, smoking is bad but....after awhile, it gets so ludicrous that no part of the message is believed.
On top of that, they hear nothing of breathing in auto emissions??!!!
It was only a matter of time.
the only point i missed is why the "anti-marijuana" plug in an article supposedly aimed at tobacco smokers? deaths from cigarette smoke = 443,000/year. deaths from marijuana smoke = 0/year. Apples and Oranges.
MmmMmm..
Again you make my point. These kids KNOW that pot smoke is JUST AS BAD IF NOT WORSE. The message of tobacco danger is lost amongst your BS.
That's why they invented vaporizers =P
among my BS? funny how the FDA, most medical journals, and most countries around the world agree with me. Seems that you and US Congress are the only one that believes the BS that's been pushed down our throats since Reagan area. If anything, that message highlights the dangers associated with tobacco by separating it from the unfounded fear/propaganda/stigma associated with marijuana in our country. When one lumps together tobacco use with marijuana use as if it was one and the same (as they did in this article) it detracts from the message, adds no credibility, and people see through the "smokescreen."
No doubt that any smoke inhalation represents a health hazard, what you need to look at is the frequency of smoke inhalation/use/abuse, composition of said smoke, and the mental and physical addiction aspect. Marijuana vs. tobacco = apples vs. oranges. No BS there my friend. Kids know this, adults know this, learned citizens across the globe know this, why don't you justoneguy?
'nuff said....
That’s so you can LOOK like a SUCKER while not smoking.
How dumb do you have to be not to realize that smoking is harmful?! Overstating the risk? I hardly think so.
Putting the US in default of its already-committed financial obligations has no appreciable consequences..... Pass the smokes, please....
How dumb? Look around - read some posts from the other articles. You know the answer.
The sign says: "Danger, stay behind the guard rail" I don't believe it - I think I have a right to be on the other side of that dang guard rail when I visit a state park.
Stupid is as stupid dies.
You mean like dumping your old computer to a third world country?
I remember my Father waking up every morning and hacking and coughing for 10-15 minutes before he could get up and do anything. That turned me off of ever wanting to try any form of tobacco. He died 31 years ago when he was 59.
Let's see if they still feel that way when they're walking around with an oxygen bottle just to be able to survive. Just for argument sake, ask everyone you might see who are walking around with one of those bottles if they used to be a heavy smoker. (Or ask them if they still smoke.) I would be willing to bet on the outcome of your poll.
hey genius, maybe smokers know and don't care! Thats not a mental disorder just because it doesn't fit in with what the "experts" call the status quo. In a world full of stress and hard times, can't people just have their vices without organizations, governments and special interest groups nagging them? It's their life, let them do with it what they will and quit judging them. Honestly, we're all headed death, some accept it and live the way they want, others are afraid and fight the inevitable tooth and nail. Ridiculous. Who cares!
If I can stop paying insurance and taxes to support people smoking themselves to death, I'll stop caring in a heartbeat.
Oooooh, I think we just touched on a heavy smoker who doesn't care if they're screwing up other peoples air space. Let me know how you like lugging around that oxygen bottle.
I do not smoke, but if people did not smoke you would be paying higher taxes the government already taxes tobacco and a early death means less social security and other payouts.
Realtruth ;-(
As long as they are smoking out of the way and not in my face, fine. What I am tired of seeing, is welfare collecting people having no problem smoking when that money could be used elsewhere. Of course I will also be paying for their health problems associated with it with my tax dollars as well. This goes for alcohol as well.
Also, yes people can live the way they want as long as it doesn't affect other people. If smokers and drinkers want to head to the death sooner than later, then by all means, live how you want, just don't take me down also with the smoke or you getting behind the wheel of a vehicle after you have had too many.
Bert... I'll guarantee you that smokers pay more than enough taxes to cover their own costs. In fact they probably pay enough to cover their cost and yours.
Hey bob.... when you quit driving your vehicle around and screwing up everyones air space then you can talk.
On the other side of the coin smokers always take to many breaks so i would never hire one.
I also dislike working with them.
Unleash the anti-smokers!
Maybe people wouldn't hate smokers so much if they didn't stand at the entrance to every store and put up a fog?
Or maybe it's the fact that they flick the cigarette butts out of the car windows and they gather in all the gutters.
Or maybe because the beach is one big ash tray to them?
No, I can't understand why anyone would be hostile to the poor innocent smokers out there? I can't quite put my finger on it.
As a smoker, I wonder how much longer I'm going to live than the experts who warn me against the habit. Or the non-smokers who inveigh against my right to smoke with their obese, bloated bodies.
Hey Steve, the last time I was at the beach I cut my foot on a piece of glass. Looking around I saw a car tire, plastic bags and food wrappers. What does any of those have to do with smokers? They aren't the only one who think the beach is a place for garbage. Non smokers are just as inconsiderate and if you come out of your bubble for a while you might see that!
Androloma: Those fat people don't like my second hand smoke and I can't stand the sight of their bodies and the children they are raising to be fatties ! And yes, you fat people make me sick to my stomach. How about the health costs those people generate ?
@retiredcoastguard - do you realize what the SECOND most subsidized crop in the U.S. is? Tobacco! The tax on it doesn't even balance out.
Please publish an article about states effectiveness in keeping cigarettes out of the hands of young people.
The tobacco industry does not want you to do this.
To the "overstating risk" comment person. Gee, you are right; death via an agonizing painful road at an age below normal life expectancy is a risk that is really greatly exaggerated these days!
You sir are a complete dumb @*&#!
Well --- some people think the earth is flat too. Ignorance is bliss!!!!!!!
gday, our health system is broke. Most citizens do not have insurance or access to quality health care for serious illness that ruin their lives (thru no fault of theirs), yet you state smokers pay enough themselves to EVERYBODY's cost? A 10 year old could analyze the facts about health care and $$$ in this country and say, wow, your statement is beyond absurd!
You sir are another dumb @#*#!
Stupid is as stupid notices.
A little reading comprehension problem huh Eugene? I never said they could cover everybodys cost. I said a smoker could cover their own cost plus probably cover bob's cost. But if you feel the need to call me names feel free. Like the old saying goes.... opinions are like aholes... everyone has one and they usually stink. Have a wonderful day.
More teens engaged in oral sex after the President denied oral sex with an intern was sex. Now we have a First Lady whose message is healthy living and whose husband, the President, is a heavy smoker (We don’t know if he actually quit). Kids want to be like Barack.
Lemmings follow their master? Who does the master follow?
Good! Now maybe we can roll back some of the fascist liberal anti-smoking laws they've passed over the last couple of decades. I'm so sick of libs trying to tell us what we should or shouldn't do. I so miss being able to light up right at the DMV while I wait.
I am not a liberal but i am glad you can't light up around me.
And I don't miss at all the smoke filling up my lungs from smokers that do not have any courtesy to others. If you want to knock years off you life, fine, do away from the crowd that doesn't want to smell the stench or have their lungs polluted with it. I praise the laws keeping smoking out of places that people have to go to.
Lighting up in public around other people is not courteous. But I resent the government making laws prohibiting restaurants and bars from allowing its customers to smoke in the restaurant. If you don't like a restaurant that allows smoking, don't go. Find restaurants that cater to your needs.
Job seeker: You are wrong, of course. That approach has been tried, and it simply doesn't work. Although 80% of people don't smoke, nowhere near 80% of the restaurants prohibited smoking when it was allowed. In fact, almost none did, so non smokers, the great majority of people, had no choice. In addition, restaurant workers who didn't smoke were subjected to second hand smoke as a condition of their job. Smoking is a public health issue and the government has both the right and the obligation to protect the health of its citizens.
Jamie,
Do you believe in freedom? If I own a restaurant, I want to be able to let my customers smoke. If you don't like it, you can go somewhere else or you can eat in the no-smoking section which I have reserved for you. It's my restaurant. I personally have never put a cigarette in my mouth. Don't drink nor take drugs. But I will fight for everyone's right to choose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOy2QCssTaI&feature=related
Smokers are a minority. So are homosexuals. If I wanted smokers in my restaurant, but not homosexuals, I could defy the government's fascism twice!
"early deaths" don't cover the BILLIONS in health care costs and increases to health care costs caused by smokers and everything associated with them! NOT EVEN CLOSE sir!
At least alcohol is something that many people including me can do in such small doses that it has no real effect. Smoking is about as brutal as it gets. 30 years ago I might have had more empathy. But today anybody that smokes should not be given any break in any way shape or form unless it is for help to kick the habit. They know what they are going to get into and they do it anyways!
Heil Eugene! Maybe you would feel safer in North Korea, where the glorious leader prohibits smoking for his subjects as well.
Your allegations of smokers dying left and right, before burdening the entire medical system with their ailments, is as fictional as the comment you lambasted. Massive fail on all fronts. But please enjoy your fantasy; it was specially delivered by state-run media.
Obesity overtook smoking illness as the largest drain on healthcare costs some time ago.
When you gonna start advocating against the fatties?
If you CARE SO MUCH about healthcare costs.. time to start bashin' fatties!
Fat people don't pollute the air with 2nd hand smoke.
Where are all these fat people comparisons coming from?
Thank God these young people aren't required to do anything that anyone's lives depend on. This just shows that stupidity starts early.
Smoking is bad for you. Its a well known fact, But what else is bad for you?
Alcohol,Fast food, microwaves, Car exhaust, and basically everything else that our bodies are exposed to each day. Also in my eyes its about quality of life and not quantity. I would rather live 60 good years than 80 bad ones. We don not need the government telling us what we can and cannot do to our own bodies. If somebody is smoking and they are respectfully going away from the nonsmokers IDC.
Besides smokers generate billons in taxes each year so they actually are helping government healthcare and welfare.
Smokers while being 23% of the population use roughly 80% of all healthcare. We are all living with the cost of that.
Good reason not have the govenment involved in healthcare. Everyone should be accountable for his or her own life’s choices.
Reasons for rising costs can be found anywhere one looks. Haven't wages gone up in the last two hundred years as well?
brundo-2431627
Got a link for that claim? It doesn't seem quite right (80%?!)
Considering that the elderly (65+) consume about 60% of America's healthcare dollars and only 9% of that group smoke (Gallup, 2008), I'm not really following the math. Please feel free to prove me wrong though!
My quick search shows that smoking costs the healthcare system $96B annually (CDC data) and obesity costs the system about $147B (2008 AHR data).
We should do what we can to reduce preventable disease related to obesity and smoking, but if you want to use the pure dollars and cents argument, fighting obesity is about 50% more important.
Um, no..
Obesity overtook smoking illness as the #1 drain on healthcare some time ago.
Time to start going after the fatties with your time if you care so much about heathcare costs.
but you don't.. just admit it.. you don't like smoking. it's what it's ALL about to you.. you want to kill what you do not like.
Dom
So tell me how smoking increases quality of life? I must have missed that one.
I'm pretty sure that the pros and cons of this article are smokers or non smokers. It's probably a waste of time making comments. Let the smokers just kill themselves. I'll pay the extra taxes that they pay through their purchases. The taxes they paid probably just got wasted on medical care for those who do smoke and can't pay for their own medical care. Also, gday67, I drive my vehicle around out of necessity, not the vice of smoking. Stick that in your air intake.
How do you pay extra taxes on tax-paid purchases someone else makes? Are you kids still in elementary school?
Necessity, yeah, right. You could take a bus or bike out of necessity as well, you air polluter you!
Androloma
Your question is very simple to answer. If you are a smoker and treated for a smoking related medical issue and it's covered by either Medicaid or Medicare than you are using tax money that was collected at the state and federal level. Medicaid is a state program and is meant to assist the poor. Medicare is a federal program and primarily for those 65 and older. The Taxes collected from the actual purchase of cigarettes does not come close to covering the medical costs associated with smoking.
Hey BobGray,
Get your Gestapo boots calmed down there little Adolf! Libs have nothing to do with a filthy disgusting habit that absolutely intrudes on every ounce of physical privacy and health issues of everybody around the smoker. Nobody banned morons like you from killing themselves via lung cancer and other fun ways; It is legal for you to puff away in your home or vehicle. The "Libs" just had enough common sense and decency to not let ass#@&*@ like you invade my eyes, lungs, nose, etc..
So you are pissed that you can't just light up at the DMV and invade my private space and air I breath, really? REALLY? I can't write what people who think like you deserve to have done to them. So suffice to say F*&#@ Y*&!
Just how fat are you, Eugene? Tired of breathing smoke, but air pollution is just fine?
Disingenuous much?
Androlama
I have 140 employees working for me and not one of them smokes that I know of. The state says I can't discriminate against smokers but when I figured that a smoker spends 120 hours per year on cigarette breaks, that was enough to convince me that I'd take my chances with a law suit. My employees like the fact that their medical coverage is lower and since they are more productive they all get an additional week of paid vacation. If I use the national average of 23% of adult population that smokes than I should have 32 smokers who spend 3,840 hours per year outside puffing away. My average employee makes 27 dollars per hour so the cost of these smokers would be $103,680. My medical insurance savings is $180,000 annually and each covered employee saves around $900 per year.
You asked NewEgyptbob if he was still in elementary school? My guess is that you were trying to insult him. You are the one who is coming off as uneducated.
While you have a right to your "vice" - cigarettes, pot, booze, meth, coke, or what the F8ck have you - I have a right to NOT pay for your a$$ when you're hospitalized because of it. Period.
Poor, overpaying citizen victimized by smokers again! Somebody call a whaambulance! Find your freedom from the vice in Iran, where they're all free to not smoke.
Unfortunately we do not live in a free country
HOTTICKET-2304234
You should start a health insurance collective just for teetotalers. I'm totally serious. You'd never have to subsidize a smoker again!
I may start one for people who keep their body fat in check. You don't have to be stick thin, but 3+ chins would be where I'd draw the line.
We all have our vices.
haaha whaambulance! That's a riot!
But smoking still ain't too bright.
Haha, "whaambulance!" That's a riot! LMAO
But smoking still ain't too bright.
To all you self-righteous, anti-smoking types who think smoking is stupid, what do you think of the smartest president ever smoking through school and most of his adult years, long into his presidency?
Obama is hardly the first US President who smoked.
But he is the smartest?
Jobseeker-Maybe on paper
Yes, he should quit.
Bright, yes. Orders of magnitude more desirable than the alternative.
But still a disappointment.
Hhmm, with a moniker "Jobseeker", it's not hard to see why. Job status aside, yes smoking is stupid filthy habit, and I'm glad there are no stinking smokers like you in my general vicinity.
Jobseeker
You need not apply to my company for employement. I have 140 employees and not one of them smoke. The Calculated saving is over $100,000. in increased productivity and $180,000 in medical coverage. Now calculate the savings on a work force of 155 million.
I had one employee who quit the company because he had to punch out and go off our property to smoke. I can only imagine the conversation he had with his wife when he broke the news to her. "Honey, I quit my job today because it's more important that I'm allowed to smoke on the job then to be able to feed my family and pay our mortgage.
Your way of thinking is going the way of the dinosaur. Either get with the times or go extinct.
Darwinisim at its finest.
Quit being a parrot with that old line.
Our service manager died this year. He was also 59 and also a two pack a day smoker. He died of a heart attack, but the younger generations do not associate the stress that smoking puts on your heart. They seem to think that the only consequence of smoking is lung cancer.
Ah gee. My grandfather died of a heart attack - non smoker. My mother died from diverticulitis complications (sp) -2 pack a day smoker. My father died from dementia - ex-smoker. I'm 66 years old and cause of death still undetermined (smoker) and no diagnosed disease to date other than a bladder infection this past week. No obesity in the family except my sister and that's because she eats too much. Take the statistics and shove them. Just my opinion.
So what's your point?
I think Nan is trying to say..."it's a crap shoot"....My dad just died instantly(as did his father before him) at 83 of a brain hemorrhage, he never spent a night in the hospital in his life, smoked two packs a day most of his life, put away a ton of vodka....trust me, your tax money was not spent on him.
Now, lets look at all the "anti smokers" rotting away in nursing homes from dementia related diseases.....that's where all your tax dollars are going. So, stay "healthy" my friends and you too will wind up in a diaper, not knowing who you are...but my, my...won't you have a strong heart and lungs to make sure you stay like that for years.....
Whether one finds heavy smoking to be high risk would be related to how long one expects to survive. Today's teenagers see a future where after 65 there are no jobs and they have no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Health care Pension, Home Ownershop or tax-deferred savings. I imagine on some level most of our teenagers are expecting short lives regardless of their smoking.
Absolutely. Unfortunately we do not live in a free country
Jem: We don't live in a free country ? Move to North Korea or the Middle East - and I hope you are a woman - if so try Afghanistan (or any other muslim country)
Legalize Cannabis...it's no where near as harmful. Plus, you can ingest it or vaporize it with no adverse health effects whatsoever. The Tobacco industry lied to the American public about the dangers of Tobacco. I know firsthand, my mother died of COPD and it was because of Tobacco. I've yet to see anyone die from using Cannabis. Tobacco deaths per year - 443,000. Cannabis deaths per year - 0. That's right...ZERO! Also PROVEN to not cause Black Lung or Lung Cancer but actually has protective properties.
The Missoula Chronic Clinical Cannabis Use Study examined the effects of long-term and legal medical marijuana use. Russo et al. (2002) demonstrated that regular use of cannabis for more than ten years does not cause major harm to patients.
So tell me...why is Tobacco Legal and Cannabis isn't?
Watch "The Union" it's a really good documentary that covers from a unbiased position, the topic of cannabis illegalization. I too dream of a day where one can walk to the corner store and buy a pack of spliffs, but we might have to hold out longer =/
Vapes ftw.
Smoking is not good for you, folks. While you may choose not to believe that statement, or disregard warnings, the best thing for all of us would be for smokers to quit as soon as is possible.