Quote:
Originally Posted by Ledgem
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.
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.
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All addictions are psychological and habitual, thats why its part of the definition of addiction. Nothing else causes withdrawls? I've seen people who haven't get their daily fix of WoW go through withdrawls its not a pretty sight. Every addiction causes withdrawls if taken away from the source. There was a thread on here about anime addiction and how people were saying that they were going through withdrawls when they don't watch anime for a period of time. You're deluding yourself if you truly believe other addictions don't cause withdrawls.
Video Games, are a major problem in asia, its a major cause of death among young people. They would get so addicted that they ignore personal hygene and even forget to eat, drink and sleep, and eventually would just die in front of their computers. Morbid Obesity is worse than smoking, sorry. Smoking shaves off 6 ~ 7 years off the end of your life, while eating potato chips and hamburgers 24/7 in front of the computer screen/tv screen cause death at the age of 30 from cardiac arrest.
And no, not everyone who smokes gets addicted, I've known many people who have smoked and never got addicted. Social smokers are a good example, they only smoke when they around friends who smoke, otherwise they don't have the urge to light one up.