[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by HayashiTakara

People die from cars more than anything else in the world. There should be a ban of cars, and we need to campaign heavily against people's right to drive!!

This sort of reasoning is nothing more than an excuse that people engaging in dangerous behavior rely on. It's no different than bbdeuce's mention that there are worse air pollutants in existence. Neither this fact nor that fact make smoking any better. Does it bother you to know that your habit of smoking is putting toxins directly into your body, and into the bodies of those around you? Sure, people die in car accidents, people breathe in car fumes, but generally neither of those result from voluntary actions. We all recognize it for what it is, so let's not get into this game of trying to make smoking seem any less worse than it is.

Seriously, this is ridiculous, I use to be a smoker some time ago and it annoyed the crap out of me when I hear people trying to tell me what I should be doing, especially when I can think of a million other things that are just as bad or if not worse. T.V., Video Games, Personal Computers, all are addictive media that leads to kids growing up to fat, unhealthy both mentally and physically, anti-social, dysfunctional human beings, why not bann these things too? Simply allow people to make their own decisions, allow the informations of the risks available to those who want it and let them decide. Anything and everything can be addictive, and basically all addictions are basically bad for you, if the person don't want to resolve themselves to overcome that addiction, thats that person's decision. Unless that person is bumping uglies with you, mind your business and live your own life.

Your comparisons are a bit more of the same of what I mentioned above, but I'll tell you why smoking is different from these other addictions. In general, the addictions that you've mentioned are psychological and/or habitual. If a person suddenly can't watch television, play games, or use their computer and they previously engaged in those activities very heavily, they are not going to suffer physical withdrawl. And this is what makes smoking so dangerous.

To any smoker reading this: do you doubt me? Do me the favor of a little experiment, then. If you smoke regularly and have been doing so for at least a year, don't smoke for about a month. Report back to us what it felt like to not smoke. If you don't want to go through it for yourself you can very easily find out what it was like from accounts on the internet. Solace has details of it in his post, as did TinyRedLeaf.

Can people be addicted to video games and have negative impacts on their lives? Certainly. Comparing it to smoking doesn't make it any better or worse, just as it doesn't make smoking any better or worse. There's a key difference, however. Not everyone who plays videogames, watches television, or uses computers becomes addicted to it. However we are all similar physiologically, and it has been established over and over again that nicotine, a substance in cigarettes, is physically addictive. There are some people who, whether by low-frequency usage or slightly altered physiology, do not become addicted to cigarettes. These people are in the minority, if not the extreme minority, of cigarette smokers. You can't say the same about any other group of addicts except for drug addicts.

If you recognize it for what it is and can accept it, good. I still feel sorrow for you, but it shows that you can take responsibility for what you're doing. If you're making excuses and trying to show that there are worse things in the world than smoking, and that as a result smoking should be given a free pass, I view that as an inability to accept that you're spending a lot of money on a habit that offers next to no health benefits. The tobacco companies probably love that, because you and people like you will spout rhetoric that attempts to make cigarettes seem harmless or even like something good.