While I quit daily smoking years ago I will never give up cigars. Even my doctor has zero issues with that. According to the CDC there is essentially no risk even smoking up to five a day. I am definitely substantially lower than that though.
Smoking around the world
41–50 of 136 posts
Re: Smoking around the world
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some areas the percentage of unvaccinated is quite high. See this map of anti-vaxxers by county http://rpubs.com/markdg/AntivaxxerHotspots It uses the Personal Belief Exemption for school children as a proxy for the general population of anti-vaxxers. So arguably a bit inaccurate.
Nevada, California - more than 20% opt out. Fascinating. I would love to see hotspots of places where people have no religion - not even atheist... just none.
Re: Smoking around the world
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smoking is scary on an individual level, not to mention expensive. Those other causes you mentioned aren't interesting if you don't personally need them. It's harder to get someone to make a short term sacrifice for other people's long term gains.
A better analogy would be a potential campaign to reduce obesity. If US could pull off a public fat shaming campaign as successful and the one around tobacco it would be a huge benefit to individual people's quality of life as well as economy as a whole.
Except people have no problem making snide comments to smokers when they are smoking outside of a building, but there’d be all sorts of #meTooImFat outrage if you started tsk-tsking fat people eating ice cream.
However, it really isn’t anyone’s business if I’m fat. You could argue health insurance is a shared risk pool, but under that logic, we’d be giving the government the right to dictate every aspect of your life and I am not willing up to give that freedom. Because why stop there — why not have the government mandate hours of sleep or require morning group exercises or require that you get married (since studies have shown that married people have lower heart disease risks.) It could get absurd, but the moment you let the government control even something small, it just keeps growing until we are quite literally Nazi germany where only “ideal” people are allowed to breed or receive permission to open businesses or get desirable jobs.
I’d rather a fat, free society where you can smoke if you want or drink whisky every night than a “healthy” society where the government literally monitors your every breath.
We talk about digital privacy with almost religious conviction, yet when it comes to things like public health, many are willing to let the government sit down with you at the dinner table.
“Get the government out of the bedroom..” I agree. I also want them out of every other room of my house as well. Government’s role is to provide shared infrastructure that is impractical for private individuals to provide for themselves. Government’s role is to have a legal system where contracts can be enforced. It’s role is also to provide for a common defense: protecting property, protecting us from crime. In short, a government’s job is to protect liberty. It isn’t government’s job to tell people what to consume. We saw Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and now Venenzuela, why the hell would we ever want a government so ubiquitous and powerful that it could descend into such totalitarianism?
I have no problem with government providing for the destitute or providing public goods, but I have a huge problem with the government attempting to regulate the freedom of the individual under the guise that it’s “good” for society. Because “good for society” in Nazi Germany evolved into killing millions of people. It’s all incremental, the march towards a complete Orwellian nightmare. Russians never imagined that Bolshevism would lead to the horrors of the KGB and NKVD. Purges were never expected. Cubans never expected that supporting the revolution would mean millions of them would end up in prison or executed for thought crimes.
As far as “good for the economy” — the US economy got so powerful because of freedom; start messing with that and you could disrupt the very foundation upon which the largest economy in the world was built.
Sure, let’s fat shame — but let’s leave the government far out of it.
Re: Smoking around the world
#44Isn't it incredible how much the smoking culture of America has shifted over time? If only the forces who put the anti-smoking effort into motion could come together and work towards making renewable energy, alternative commuting methods, or universal healthcare acceptable ideas in this country. I used to smoke a pack a day and I'm glad I don't anymore.
Over the weekend a friend of mine pointed out that while nicotine use has dropped, cannabis use has heavily increased. As if, the rise on tobacco prices has driven folks to alternative drugs. I wonder (and if someone on HN knows how, please share) if you were to track use and abuse of pills, stimulants (including things like 5 hour energy), cannabis and other forms of what’s becoming not-so-recreational drug usage —…
There's recently been a big uptake of juuling (a mass produced high nicotine concentration vape) with teenagers.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/the-promise-of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUUL
https://www.reddit.com/r/juul/comments/7xnhzm/juuling_in_sch...
Re: Smoking around the world
#45In India they show vary serious warning message with photo on each cigarette box , but I did not see the same think in Japan (I am not sure about other countries)
In Canada too. But the most atrocious pictures I've seen were in Thailand.
Re: Smoking around the world
#46In India they show vary serious warning message with photo on each cigarette box , but I did not see the same think in Japan (I am not sure about other countries)
There are massive warnings on the packs in New Zealand. I believe they can't use any branding at all on the packs in Australia.
They can include the brand name in Australia, but the format is precisely specified including valid fonts and sizes. Names are also regulated so they can't imply a health claim (like afaik "Mild").
It would be instructive to do an image search for "Australian cigarette packaging" if you want to see exactly what they look like. I gather a lot of smokers like to use boxes to put their cigarette boxes in so they don't have to see them, but I don't know any smokers so that's just hearsay.
Re: Smoking around the world
#47While I quit daily smoking years ago I will never give up cigars. Even my doctor has zero issues with that. According to the CDC there is essentially no risk even smoking up to five a day. I am definitely substantially lower than that though.
You don't inhale when smoking cigars right?
Re: Smoking around the world
#48Why on Earth did they shade the percent of men smoking darker than the women? That means in countries where about the same proportion of women as men smoke, which is most countries, the female map is colored as having a higher percentage than men because they made the key identical minus 10%. This makes me irrationally angry.
Same here — I didn’t even notice what was going on until I saw the men vs women plot with almost everything above the y = x line.
Also the “number of daily smokers” plot makes no sense in absolute terms, and really seems like it ought to be per capita.
Lots of questionable data viz here, plus some graphs clearly copied and pasted from elsewhere.
Re: Smoking around the world
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over the weekend a friend of mine pointed out that while nicotine use has dropped, cannabis use has heavily increased. As if, the rise on tobacco prices has driven folks to alternative drugs. I wonder (and if someone on HN knows how, please share) if you were to track use and abuse of pills, stimulants (including things like 5 hour energy), cannabis and other forms of what’s becoming not-so-recreational drug usage —…
Well at minimum we mostly know that alcohol and tobacco are on the higher level on the "harm" spectrum than other illegal drugs. My takeaway is American drug usage has been shaped by a lot of socio economic factors that do not have human or societal health ramifications. There needs to be a total, science-backed overhaul of drug policy for this reason.
> Well at minimum we mostly know that alcohol and tobacco are on the higher level on the "harm" spectrum than other illegal drugs.
I don’t know who “we” is, but don’t count me in that group.
https://unitedrecoveryproject.com/10-most-dangerous-drugs/
And that’s by frequency.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/from-krokodi...
That’s by potency.
Sure. Don’t get me wrong. Nicotine is bad for you, so is Alcohol, but it doesn’t make you do this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack
Re: Smoking around the world
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better analogy would be a potential campaign to reduce obesity. If US could pull off a public fat shaming campaign as successful and the one around tobacco it would be a huge benefit to individual people's quality of life as well as economy as a whole.
I would argue this is already underway. There is a concerted campaign against fast food and sugary drinks. There are all sorts of programs to encourage people to exercise. Big corporations have annual “health screenings” where they fat shame you if your BMI is a point over and you drink alcohol once a week. The problem is that obesity is a complex problem. Not everyone who is overweight is a lazy person who eats Dori…
Can you expand on the near-certainty of cancer for smokers? I’ve seen figures more in the range of 10-15%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/7895211/