Criminalizing smokers

Companies are now not only going totally "tobacco free" but are actually requiring all employees to not smoke, even on their private time and at home. Some companies do urine tests for nicotine and employees get fired if they test positive. If that isn't fascism then I don't know what is.

Also they include nicotine gum, patches, and e-cigarettes as "tobacco use". The DSM 5 considers all such things to be pathological "tobacco use" constituting a "disorder" of behavior. Then we have the medical community on board with all these fake statistics that tobacco is #1 cause of all health problems, when in fact most tobacco-related disease appears late in life and other factors contributing to disease, such as obesity and eating habits, aren't factored into that. Smoking definitely contributes a risk factor to disease but so do a hundred other things; the fact that a person can smoke 10 cigarettes a day for 30 years and still be alive is proof enough that smoking isnt "causing fatalities". If a 60 year old person gets cancer there are many reasons for it, not least of which is also just old age. But they blame it all on smoking.

Yes- from what I recall, the risk for smoking related cancer and other disease is calculated in pack-years. With 30-50 pack years, the risk becomes more serious. So you could smoke 2 packs a day for 15 years, or 1 pack a day for 30 years, or half a pack a day until you were 60 assuming you started really young at like 12, before you would expect cancer or emphysema to start appearing.

You folks do know that this is all bullshit, don't you?

People who have never smoked or spent time around a smoker get cancer.

This whole thing was started by the medical insurance companies just like laws requiring wearing seat belts was initiated by the auto insurance industry.

I smoke. I have been smoking since the age of eleven. Average has been just a little under a pack a day. I am 75 years old, have no indicators of cancer.

It's all about big business and the government goes along with it a creates lies to brainwash the people making them think that the government is watching out for the individual. The government doesn't give a shit about the powerless individual. They care about big industry because most of the politicians own stock in those companies. Those two industries mentioned are so corrupt it is sinful! But the government protects them because, well, you know.

It's a fucking ruse, I've seen how they calculate it: they look at deaths of old people and if that person was a smoker, they add a tick mark into the "smoking related fatality" category. Since about 1/4 of adults are smokers, there you go.

Maybe humans weren't fucking supposed to live to 80 years. Maybe getting cancer is caused more by exposure to chemical toxins in water, air, clothing and food, obesity from eating high-grade shit your whole life and not exercising, stress and depression from being a member of a shit society that uses you for slave labor and then pumps you with "anti-depressants" when you have a problem with that, electronic radiation from devices and cell phones and wifi and radon in homes and whatever else, or just plain old being elderly and the body doesn't work as well anymore, or bad genes... but no, it's all the tobacco's fault.

Funny also how e-cigarettes are classified as tobacco. Lol. These fucking sub-humans who pull of this shit....

And yeah, incontrovertible proof that smoking doesn't case fatality: I've been smoking more or less every day for about 12 years, and I'm still here and doing just fine. Also what Sisyphus said. Can you imagine someone doing something, anything, multiple times a day for 12 years with no problem and someone coming up to them and saying "hey man that is fatal". Oh really?

Cancer is an immune disease. We all have cancerous cells all the time, the immune system keeps it in check. Smoking obviously causes some strain on body health in certain ways, but so does a thousand other things and if I were to drink lighter fluid and die that's a fatal response, if I'm to smoke for 50 years and then die from heart disease or stroke or cancer that's to be expected.

You're right about pack years. Emphysema and COPD are the primary concerns with smoking for decades, also high blood pressure. If you don't want COPD or emphysema then just smoke 5-10 cigarettes a day, as you point out it would take 80 or 40 years of doing that to reach 20 pack years.

Capable wrote:

It's a fucking ruse, I've seen how they calculate it: they look at deaths of old people and if that person was a smoker, they add a tick mark into the "smoking related fatality" category. Since about 1/4 of adults are smokers, there you go.

Haha, thats a priceless bit of information.

I can't think of a single other "unhealthy" behavior that you can do many times a day for 40 years and still be just fine. That one guy couldn't even eat McDonalds every day for a month without almost dying.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Capable wrote:

It's a fucking ruse, I've seen how they calculate it: they look at deaths of old people and if that person was a smoker, they add a tick mark into the "smoking related fatality" category. Since about 1/4 of adults are smokers, there you go.

Haha, thats a priceless bit of information.

I'd like to think they exclude causes of death obviously unrelated, like accidents, but I can't confirm that. They don't seem like a very honest bunch, so I'd be skeptical even here.

Sisyphus wrote:

You folks do know that this is all bullshit, don't you?

People who have never smoked or spent time around a smoker get cancer.

This whole thing was started by the medical insurance companies just like laws requiring wearing seat belts was initiated by the auto insurance industry.

I smoke.  I have been smoking since the age of eleven.  Average has been just a little under a pack a day.  I am 75 years old, have no indicators of cancer.

It's all about big business and the government goes along with it a creates lies to brainwash the people making them think that the government is watching out for the individual.  The government doesn't give a shit about the powerless individual.  They care about big industry because most of the politicians own stock in those companies.  Those two industries mentioned are so corrupt it is sinful!  But the government protects them because, well, you know.
 

I've smoked about 30 a day for a decade, I don't really mind if the health issue is inflated, real, or unreal. I don't intend on living past 50-55. Even if it was completely real I'd still smoke because I like it. Probably smoke more to relieve the stress.

Capable wrote:

It's a fucking ruse, ...

Yep. I don't deny that smoking does cause a few problems, some of them regarding health.

But the way smoking and seat belts were handled caused great disappointment for the politicians writing the laws.

But don't you be saying anything about Alcohol o about the CIA protecting the poppy growers in Afghanistan.

Eh, I'm not averse to poppy either. Opiates have no health effect at all other than addiction obviously. You can stay loaded till you're 100, as long as you don't overdose you'll be fine.

As far as addiction goes, there's a lot of evidence that some people have a genetic deficiency in natural opiates- in the endorphin system, and they are naturally compelled to replace the endorphins they lack with artificial ones, ie. opiates. If this is done at a young age, it irreversibly changes brain function, and this kind of addiction cannot be dealt with therapeutically, as nothing else can replace a genetic lack of endorphins. If this is true, then a lot of what we call "depression" is actually a natural lack of endorphins in a person that never learned to self-stimulate with opiates, and opiates should thus be used as the treatment rather than zoloft or whatever they give you nowadays. I say this because the mark of depression is anhedonia not sadness, and endorphins modulate the reward punishment system that allows us to take pleasure in things. If your endorphin system was fucked, you would exhibit everything that we call "depression" because you would become de-motivated, anhedonic, and your reward system would stop responding, but it would not be a result of anything from the environment or from trauma or from a defect in the brain itself,  and so you would be diagnosed with the current psycho-neurological model and given some bullshit antidepressant that recent studies conclude are often no better than a placebo.

Studies have shown that if an opiate addict is given an endless supply, their use goes up, peaks, then drops back down to an average which they stay at and rarely go above from then on out, which would fit the physiological model of endorphins in a fully functioning individual. A multi drug using addict however will continue increasing the dose until they die, indicating that there is a qualitative difference in opiate addiction as opposed to alcoholism or meth use, and I am convinced that it's because people are fixing their own endorphin deficiency with opiates.


And of course nobody is investigating this idea because drugs that actually work are bad. If this is true then there is no psychoanalytic, therapeutic, or chemical solution to depression- save for opiates, and society has a moral obligation to freely allow access to them for those who require them to have a normally functioning reward punishment system. From personal experience, when that system is damaged from what I assume is a genetic deficiency in endorphins, there is no possibility of life. Food doesn't taste of anything, sex has no sensation, there is no motivation to do anything. A person like me,, with that genetic profile, will respond to opiates differently than a normal person; we reach peak use and then drop down to an average and rarely if ever increase the dose, whereas a person suffering from a true drug addiction will spiral with their doses until they kill themselves because they are pursuing a high, rather than normality.


Exclusive opiate using addicts experience this anhedonia long after the physical withdraw is over, as more evidence for what I'm saying. Long long after, possibly for the rest of their lifespan. Opiate users report greater instances of preexisting mood disorders than other kinds of addicts, especially depression, whose symptomatology a deficiency in endorphins would perfectly emulate.

Parodites wrote:

I've smoked about 30 a day for a decade, I don't really mind if the health issue is inflated, real, or unreal. I don't intend on living past 50-55. Even if it was completely real I'd still smoke because I like it. Probably smoke more to relieve the stress.

This was the next point I was going to make. Even if the argument from health were valid and sound, which to a small degree it is but to a larger degree it isn't, that doesn't really matter. "Being unhealthy" isn't a philosophical argument or reason for not doing something.

The real problem is the expense. The cigarettes themselves are worth like a quarter, the money is all tax, I think it's 10 dollars a pack some places, a tax which is justified because it's a "vice" and we have bullshit healthcare and the government wants us to basically pay in advance for the health benefits they expect us to draw on in the distant future after we blow our lungs out, even if that eventuality isn't likely to ever precipitate.

Parodites wrote:

Eh, I'm not averse to poppy either. Opiates have no health effect at all other than addiction obviously. You can stay loaded till you're 100, as long as you don't overdose you'll be fine.

Well, I just avoid such things. My smoking and coffee addictions are enough for me.

[quote="Capable"]

Parodites wrote:

This was the next point I was going to make. Even if the argument from health were valid and sound, which to a small degree it is but to a larger degree it isn't, that doesn't really matter. "Being unhealthy" isn't a philosophical argument or reason for not doing something.

Good point. There are no laws against being an extreme athlete. I don't even know why there are laws against suicide.

No laws even against McDonalds! It's obviously just a way to tax.

Tobacco is magic. Any smoker feels when he needs to quit - he'll quit, as he's fucking annoyed he doesnt enjoy it anymore.

My friend here has a high end vaper, using some oils, it seems to satisfy her. Very nice thick 'smoke'.


Anyway I see the human oprganism and all of nature as an ongoing chemical experiment. Humans are the farthest down this line and resilient to all sorts of garbage and toxants like Coca Cola, which is great by the way. Really great. But we can just handle quite a lot.

Ive noted by the way that every time someone dies of cancer it is after he has been diagnosed with it. Its interesting, as in China the phenomenon isnt recognized, its just excessive cellsplitting which their entire 10000 year old medicinal breathing system has been developed to contain. Avid smokers, the chinese. Not just of cigarettes, of the air in general nowadays.

Avoid breathing. That will prevent pollutants from getting into your lungs.

Avoid driving or riding in any vehicle. You might still get killed by an auto.

Cancer treatment is a death sentence. A change in lifestyle can reverse the further growth of cancer.

Wow, so my post was deleted. This is totally the helm of free-thinking.

Totally not like the corrupt medical or political industry at all.

I didn't delete any posts of yours. But if someone else did im sure it was for good reason.

I did. It was not more than "smoking is stupid, anyone who smokes is stupid".

That is considered trolling. Any further such posts will also be removed.
If you cant figure out why, if you think that that represented a thought-form, that would be nauseatingly stupid, and I dont like nausea.

Fixed Cross wrote:

I did. It was not more than "smoking is stupid, anyone who smokes is stupid".

That is considered trolling. Any further such posts will also be removed.
If you cant figure out why, if you think that that represented a thought-form, that would be nauseatingly stupid, and I dont like nausea.

You should have all the needed neurons in order to extrapolate the data. I present a module, module is dormant, module opens up a world of possibilities in your mind, possibilities you do not wish to accept, and so you reject the module and delete its contest, in order to find peace.

You claim I am not being philosophical by not spelling out all the details, but that is really a reflection of your own capacity.

garbage videos wrote:

Fixed Cross wrote:

I did. It was not more than "smoking is stupid, anyone who smokes is stupid".

That is considered trolling. Any further such posts will also be removed.
If you cant figure out why, if you think that that represented a thought-form, that would be nauseatingly stupid, and I dont like nausea.

You should have all the need neurons in order to extrapolate the data. I present a module, module is dormant, module opens up a world of possibilities in your mind, possibilities you do not wish to accept, and so you reject the module and delete its contest, in order to find peace.

No idea what the fuck you're talking about, but now I want a cigarette.

Capable wrote:

garbage videos wrote:

Fixed Cross wrote:

I did. It was not more than "smoking is stupid, anyone who smokes is stupid".

That is considered trolling. Any further such posts will also be removed.
If you cant figure out why, if you think that that represented a thought-form, that would be nauseatingly stupid, and I dont like nausea.

You should have all the need neurons in order to extrapolate the data. I present a module, module is dormant, module opens up a world of possibilities in your mind, possibilities you do not wish to accept, and so you reject the module and delete its contest, in order to find peace.

No idea what the fuck you're talking about, but now I want a cigarette.

Ok I will spell it out for you but I thought you were smarter than this.

"Smoking is stupid" Should conjure a variety of thoughts in your mind as to why smoking is stupid. Thoughts you don't want to validate or hear. So, as a cop out, you play the typical card of saying "This is a philosophy board, calling something stupid is an ad hom" in order to silence your own thoughts which have been triggered and generated by my own post, in order to feel safe and secure in your lifestyle.

Define "smoking is stupid".