2007-12-26, 08:47 | Link #21 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Edinburgh
Age: 42
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Location: Holland,Zuid-holland,Capelle aan den IJssel Quote:
I smoke, but i can easily last a long duration without it as well. Don't know if it scientifically proven, but i remember some program or someone reporting that some people are more sensitive towards chemical changes, and can develop faster addivition towards some substances than others. |
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2007-12-26, 13:49 | Link #23 |
Gregory House
IT Support
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To be honest, tobacco is hundreds of times more damaging to your body and much more addictive than marijuana. I'd much rather have marijuana to be legal and tobacco to be banned (though I'd prefer none of them to be banned, for that matter. It should be a matter of personal choice).
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2007-12-26, 19:54 | Link #24 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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I dislike cigarettes and the like and find smokers to be an annoyance, but I don't hold anything against the people themselves. Smoking is a right, in a sense, but in my opinion the people are taken advantage of. In the past, nobody really understood that there were consequences. Cigarettes were marketed to practically everyone. Even though people now know of the health consequences and the addiction, I still feel that they're taken advantage of. Even if they know the addiction, they don't understand it until they're desperately trying to quit. At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to for me. You started smoking, you became addicted, and now you're some corporation's cash cow. If people could quit smoking on a whim, I'd have a bit less to complain about. Given the relatively large number of products marketed toward quitting, I'd imagine that a fair number of smokers are unwillingly smoking. That seems like an injustice in some form. One has to take care not to make a slippery slope argument, of course. In theory any substance can be addictive, and any substance could cause a person harm - should those substances be banned? I don't think so. Working to a gradual ban by making it harder to smoke, such as by pricing or limiting the number of smoking areas, will be painful for many smokers. It'll likely be better for society in the long run, though.
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2007-12-27, 03:08 | Link #26 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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aye... basically "sin" taxes (booze and cigs) are a tax on the poor and the addicted since they're statistically more likely to be spending too much money on the stuff.
The taxes *ought* to be levied directly against the tobacco companies as part of the total system costs of their products -- but we all know they'd just pass the costs on rather than reduce their profits.
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2007-12-27, 11:46 | Link #27 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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If the prices of cigarettes rise to a ridiculous point, I'd imagine that it would cut off younger people from buying them. The sharing of cigarettes is another method through which younger people obtain cigarettes, but if cigarettes become truly pricey, will people be so willing to share? Ideally this would mean that the people taking up smoking are informed and reasonable adults who won't be so easily taken in by marketing tactics (one can dream, at least). Ideally they'd value their earnings and would feel that cigarettes were a waste of money, and that would be enough of a deterrant for them. As I said, the entire issue I have with it is that the product is addictive and creates unwilling consumers. This may be forgotten knowledge, but does anyone recall that Coca Cola used to use trace amounts of cocaine in the drink? It was around the early 1900's, and from what I've read the intention was not to make addicts out of consumers. Yet from a marketing standpoint, it would be brilliant. The people consuming the drink would develop a minor (or major, depending on consumption levels) addiction to the substance, link it to Coca Cola, and just keep buying more. The government eventually stepped in and required that changes be made, probably more to prevent the use of cocaine and less to protect consumer rights. I find it rather interesting, though. Should companies be able to strong-arm consumers into buying their product by creating a reliance on them? I don't think so, and yet that's the fate for many smokers.
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2007-12-27, 12:05 | Link #28 |
Soy Bean
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: OC California (nothing like the show)
Age: 34
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The dangers of smoking
Yeah, never tried smoking, too afraid I will become addicted (smoking isn't exactly cheap) not to mention how much damage it can do to you. |
2007-12-27, 12:59 | Link #29 | |
Toyosaki Aki
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Join Date: Nov 2007
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Everybody starts small, most people with one cig from peer pressure, then another as they continue to hang out and etc. No matter how high you jack the price on cigs (reasonably), most teens can afford one pack a day, even at say $7 a pack (50% increase). Either you stop there, and are a social smoker, or you get addicted. Either way, demand becomes inelastic, people don't care about price either because they don't buy much, or they need that fix. The incentives for entry are social, not economical, as a lot of people mentioned, they aren't cheap to begin with. Assuming that you do increase prices enough to drive off most teens. Who's to say that tobacco isn't going to go underground? It's not an easy plant to raise, but with modern fertilizers, it's not out of the question. There is no regulation, and no purity standard in that case. Smoking becomes even more dangerous. Just look at all the cases where government bans an addictive substance, this is the outcome.
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2007-12-27, 16:13 | Link #30 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Edinburgh
Age: 42
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Besides seeing how some Uni studends behave here in my city, i pretty sure coke is still being consumed in large amound. Making tabacco illegal or harder to get is actually more tempting for youngesters. What worries me it that people are actually willing to sacrifies some freedom only to get a healthy socialty. I hope that doesn't ends that we are forced to eat specially produced food and drinks that is 100% cancer proof. I'm pretty against giving the goverment much more power, because i know that most of them are corrupt. It is time to take back what is ours. |
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2007-12-27, 23:05 | Link #31 | |||||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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All the same, I'm wary of corporate exploitation. I brought up the Coca Cola example partially to bring it to light that companies have done this sort of stuff. Tobacco companies are currently doing it. You want to say that we should just let the market decide? Keep up the FDA requirements about how companies have to include ingredient information on product labels, and let consumers pick what goes into their bodies? That wouldn't work. I'll get to why: A barber of mine, in a discussion about shampoos, once told me to go and look at the ingredients in the shampoo that I was using. I probably wouldn't be able to even pronounce more than the first two or three of them, he said. Actually, as a science person I can pronounce and recognize quite a few more than that, but that's not the point. The point is that even though companies are required to list what goes into the product, most ordinary people have no clue what any of it means. Even specialists may not know, although it's more likely that they have the resources to find out. Red 5? Yellow 13? What the heck is that stuff and what's it doing to my body? Let's say Red 5 turns out to cause a greater instance of birth defects - you can damn well bet I'd want the government not only to fund the studies and find out what's going on, but then to either make a massive alert to consumers or to ban it from usage. Corporations don't care about your health, and unfortunately we can't all know what's harmful to us. I don't want the government to tell me what I can and can't eat, but I do want the input from their resources. Let me expand on why this is different with cigarettes. As I stated in an earlier post, if cigarettes weren't so addictive, I'd have a lot less to complain about. The government has let us know that cigarettes are bad for our health, which is good - they're doing their job. They've let us know that they're addictive, but the problem with this is that I don't believe that many people who have never suffered an addiction before really understand how serious it is and how hard it is to overcome. I've heard plenty of people state "I'll just quit when I feel like it" and then when they're trying to quit, they have extreme regret about ever having started in the first place. You can't properly inform about that aspect - people know it, but they don't understand it until they've experienced it. Once they've experienced it and are struggling to quit, they're unwillingly paying the tobacco companies. That's not how the market is supposed to work - it's almost like extortion. People are being taken advantage of by corporations. Shouldn't the government step in for a situation like this?
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2007-12-28, 01:11 | Link #32 | |
Toyosaki Aki
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Join Date: Nov 2007
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However, the solution that you mention are somewhat politically unfeasible in the US. Lobbyists will NEVER allow taxes on cigs to rise high than it already is, nor allow their PR to flounder further under government and private programs that encourage NOT smoking. It will also be a sad day when government trys to take the place of personal responsibility. No matter how good education is about smoking, the choice is ultimately up to the individual. IMO, knowing the dangers of addiction is a personal responsibility, but government has done a lot confirm that (at least where I went to school).
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2007-12-28, 07:42 | Link #33 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Edinburgh
Age: 42
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Freedom in most western countries is already pretty compromised, so i don't think goverments should intervene much more. They already done enought, like banning ads in TV and on the streets, prining leaflets and making TV ads warning people, getting rid off cigarette machines and so on. What more do you want, obviously the next step would be banning it completely, followed by house and body searches, piss tests aso.. I mean most people that still smoke cannot say "i don't know that it is dangerous and additive", there are big f*cking letters on the packs, stating it, such as: smoking can reduce you sperm count, smoking kills, smoking can damage your foetus, if it is you're 10th pack today you're almost dead, and so on. |
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2007-12-28, 08:16 | Link #34 | |
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Join Date: Dec 2007
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2007-12-28, 08:44 | Link #35 | |||
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
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Join Date: Mar 2006
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Yeah it sucks to have red tape and permits/licenses for everything, but they exist because a standard is required and proper safety needs to be followed through. Quote:
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In short, warnings are there to protect companies just as much as they are intended to protect citizens. This prevents you suing Miller for making the beer that got you into a car accident, or for suing Camel for cancer after 20 years of smoking. While I'm sure the government can find a better use for their time than telling you how to raise your children (because parents find ratings and warnings oh so hard to read), I am all for them trying to make the country a healthier place to live. The less time and money spent trying to solve the issues that come from smoking, the more time and money they can spend somewhere else. Just remember - killing yourself is illegal, yet people slowly kill themselves every day, by choice. There is no warning label for ignorance and stupidity.
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2007-12-28, 13:32 | Link #36 |
Inactive Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Fun fact about Holland:
Our government is going to forbid people to smoke in public places! FINALLY!!! I hate smokers in restaurants.. When your eating your awesome meal someone is smoking a stinky cigar or cigarette or whatever disgusting shit next to you! That just sucks!!!!!! No more smoking! Although law is coming in 2009... Or was it 2008??? I think it was 2009.. :| |
2007-12-28, 15:17 | Link #37 | |
Gregory House
IT Support
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You're damn right, there's no warning label for stupidity--but there are ways of eliminating stupidity. And guess what, the very society everyone forms part of is responsible of ensuring that. And, furthermore, the responsibility each person has to assume presupposes giving up some privileges that are not doing any better to society as a whole, or that are even hurting it (such as the case of incandescent bulb lights, and of course, of tobacco). (I'm not defending governments, it's just that I get tired pretty quickly of people bitching and moaning about their governments when it's partly their responsibility as members of a society).
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2007-12-28, 15:25 | Link #38 |
pythagorean≠python gorax
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: look behind you...
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I'm a smoker, and it hasn't really affected me that much. I still go swimming, jogging, and I haven't noticed any decrease in lung capacity. I try not to smoke every day, and once in a while I do get tired of it, so I wouldn't say I'm addicted.
It's nice to have one after a meal, or on a porch. As for people around me at restaurants or in public.. it's not hard to turn to the people around you and ask "is it alright if I smoke?" usually by showing them courtesy, they'll show you some too. Then there are the non smokers who are all "it's my right to breathe fresh clean air! put out your cigarette asshole!".. asking me to put it out is all you need =_= People litter the air with loud cellphone conversations, litter the ground with their trash, and bombard their bodies with chemicals.. garbage is everywhere, and I sometimes feel that smokers are getting singled out. Is there a warning label beside the chocolate bar that warns against diabetes if you eat one a day? Or how about the smog in the air? Besides, lung disease isn't the leading cause of death in north america, heart disease is.
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2007-12-28, 15:43 | Link #39 | |
Imouto-Chan♥
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: England
Age: 30
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2007-12-28, 17:49 | Link #40 | ||||||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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As for nicotine withdrawl being worse than those of "hard drugs" - I don't believe so. It's possible that some people may experience similar symptoms, but generally the people you find in therapy or on psychiatric drugs are those who did the hard drugs. Not that I'm a definitive source, but I've never heard of a case where a person reached that sort of level due to cigarettes alone. Quote:
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Why it's bad with cigarettes is because people become addicted. Perhaps the addiction is downplayed, or perhaps people don't understand what it truly means to be addicted until it's too late. Once they're addicted and trying to quit, the tobacco companies are making money from them that they should not. If Coca Cola had an addictive substance in their soda, what would you say? It'd be unfair to Pepsi, it'd be unfair to any other beverage company (since some of your spending is now locked into Coke that may have gone elsewhere), and it's unfair to you, because now even if you wanted to stop drinking it, you can't. Or you can - but it's going to be physically and mentally very hard on you. I think many people would feel that such a thing would not be right, and yet that's what the tobacco companies are doing. Quote:
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Your argument about litter, noise pollution, and people "bombarding their bodies with chemicals" is valid on its own - but it's too different to be compared with smokers. We can focus on those issues and focus on the issue of smoking as well.
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