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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on January 23, 2011 at 11:46pm

With less than 12 years of smoking, and assuming you quit for almost a year once, your odds are pretty good.  Having a child (or more than one) you have plenty of reason to want to skew the statistics a good 10 or 20 years in your favour.  I'm a long term smoker and I have to say that if you feel motivated, and given your young age, you should throw out your cigarettes as soon as you read this and never look back.  Don't even try to convince yourself that you'll quit when your pack runs empty.

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Permalink Reply by Moria Jackson on January 24, 2011 at 2:19am

I couldn't even quit during my first pregnancy, and only at the end of my 2nd.  I quit for good in my first trimester of my 3rd child, 3 1/2 years ago.  I went cold turkey.  The prices now keep me from lighting up even when I feel like I want to! I can take deeper breaths, my fingers aren't stained, and my breath isn't like an ashtray. Not to mention, I'm not wasting all that money.  Clothes don't stink. No butts or ashes to deal with.  Definitely worth it to quit, if you can.  So, GOOD LUCK!

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Permalink Reply by JC Hamner on January 24, 2011 at 2:42am

So you're whining that people are doing the modern responsible thing in pointing out the bad effects of physically deleterious behavior, in the end wrapping it up in a blanketed straw man. Go back to youtube with posts like this. Better yet, just keep it to yourself.

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Permalink Reply by Ben on January 24, 2011 at 2:51pm

For me it was the cost of a pack that caused me to quit. When I realized I was paying double the price as when I started that was motivation enough.

 

Its bad for your health, and there are other side effects besides cancer that it causes. It seems to me that you are trying to justify the behavior by minimalizing the chance of getting cancer.

 

As for using fear. I am all for it. I try to scare the shit out of my kids when it comes to the dangers of smoking. Tobacco is a strong vaso-constrictor. Its use leads to a higher incidence of high blood pressure, and other issues. In diabetic patients it can even lead to a higher incidence of amputations.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on January 24, 2011 at 3:21pm

I have to disagree about using fear in the manner in which it is used.  When you blow things out of proportion I think that young people pick up on that and it just peaks their interest.

 

I think a good commercial would be to show two very similar kids, one who began smoking a year ago and the other who didn't, racing up a flight of stairs and the smoking kid loses, not by that much maybe, but he's wheezing like a smoker while the non-smoker takes a deep breath and is quickly recovered, just as an older man comes out, lights a smoke and then coughs up an oyster.  This is the daily reality of smoking that young people will realize very quickly rather than some distant statical probability that is made to sound like an overnight death sentence.

 

I just think that blowing anything out of proportion sort of makes the young kids feel like we're insulting their intelligence.

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Permalink Reply by Cecilia on January 24, 2011 at 5:44pm

I think that is good point.  That was a problem with too much of the earlier anti-drug stuff - really exaggerated and lots of folks just laughed it off.  See, for example, Reefer Madness, hilarious....

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m128QcdrUI&feature=related

 

How many people watched this film high over the years, I wonder.....

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on January 24, 2011 at 5:54pm

Exactly my point with reefer madness.  The ridiculous claims about drugs just always made me wonder what 'they' were trying to hide.  As it turns out I just never came to like drugs much.

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Permalink Reply by Ben on January 24, 2011 at 7:10pm

I dont think explaining the health problems associated with smoking is blowing it out of proportion. I do agree with blowing things out of proportion like the crap I was told as a kid that if you try drugs once you will be addicted.  

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Permalink Reply by Bronson on January 24, 2011 at 7:49pm

I'm actually a type one Diabetic, and I've been taking care of my blood sugar to the best of my abilities for nine years now. The only reason why people get legs amputated in the first place is because they let their numbers stay too high, and do nothing to try and balance them out. 

 

I also only smoke pipe tobacco and cigars (Non-inhaling), which is why I was trying to say that my risks for getting cancer seemed rather slim in comparison. 

 

When I was using fear as an example I wasn't trying to justify that it'll somehow minimize  the chances of getting cancer. I was trying to point out the mixed advice that CNN gave when they said 1/100 chance of getting cancer if you quit after 28 years of smoking, then shortly after they say "Think again". Even when they give you seemingly low chances of it happening, they make it seem like you will definitely get cancer, not maybe but you will get cancer. I don't care if people are informed about health issues, I just think that the media and advertisement companies try their best to instill  fear regardless if the stats are high or not. I mean you can get cancer from literally   everything, and there's a risk in almost everything you do. That was the point of my discussion. 

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Permalink Reply by Tammy on January 24, 2011 at 9:09pm

I have a family full of smokers. I was at one time around second hand cigarette smoke a good portion of my life. So thanks to their habit I now spend $384 a year on inhalers and $1250 a year in Doctor visits. If not for their habits I wouldn't have to now carry an inhaler with me everywhere I go.  

 

As for other people. I know I guy who just had to get a lung transplant because of his smoking and three people who have holes in their throats.

 

I do with that they would focus on all these problems and not just the cancer.

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Permalink Reply by T A A on January 25, 2011 at 4:25am

I have no problems with people who want to commit suicide by smoking, go ahead, I like darwinism in that regard.

 

However, my issue is with smokers who insist on ruining other people's lives. My parents each smoked three packs a day. I spent 17 years in'n'out of hospitals because of incessant coughing. I was pricked, analysed, tonsils removed, medicated, of course not one of those pseudo-medical proposals had any effect simply because idiots still insisted on keeping their eyes shut on the detrimental health effects of tobacco, with the coaxing of 'big tobacco' lies of course.

 

In the movie THE TOURIST with Johnny Depp and Angelina Joli, Depp tells of benefits of nicotine inhalers which emit only water vapor and do not burn. I say all go with that. Nicotine makes men's sperm count go down hurray, less babies. Nicotine has been correlated with SIDs hurray with that. I agree that stupid people should not procreate.

 

Now that cigarette sales have gone down in educated countries, cigarette companies are conveniently "losing" 30% of oceanic shipments. Conveniently lots of cheap cigarettes show up on the streets of third world nations, sold by 10 yr/old, to immense profits of the hoodlums who manage the entire circus.

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Permalink Reply by Isaac on January 25, 2011 at 7:56pm

I tried smoking hookah once last year and the week after I did it, during practice for me swim team, my lungs felt completely fucked. I also detest the smell of cigarettes, so even if smoking cigs didn't cause cancer, I still wouldn't be doing it. I'd also like to say that Cody Weber's idea that him being able to smoke a cigarette in public is more important than the comfort of non-smokers is bullshit. Smoking is one of those things that doesn't just harm the person doing it, it also harms the people in the vicinity as well. Yeah, I do some shit that's not necessarily healthy, but when I do it, I'm imposing it on anyone else the way that cigarette smokers are imposing their habit on me through secondhand smoke. If you are a smoker and you think that your right to smoke is more important than my comfort/lungs, then perhaps I might get the opinion that my fist in your face is more important that your right to smoke. In general, I try to stay upwind from smokers in public, but that's not always possible.

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