[Poll] Do you smoke tobacco?

[Xantipius]

I'm a heavy smoker (30-40 cigarettes daily).

[pritaeas]

Cigars... irregular though, I can go weeks without.

[Dani]

Odd, I don't think I've ever seen you without a cigar.

[pritaeas]

LOL, well yes, if you had allowed off-site avatars, I could have made one that updates when I am (not) smoking.

[Dani]

Well, I do. DaniWeb has had support for Gravatar for a little while now.

[Squidge]

reformed smoker. Used to smoke 20~30, unless i was drinking and it nearly doubled :(

[Reverend Jim]

Never have, never will. My dad suffered from emphysema after smoking for 40 years.

[Ancient Dragon]

I stopped smoking in 2001, started when I was about 16 or so. I was chain smoker for quite a few years.

[Agilemind]

Never, ever. I never saw any appeal: its expensive, makes you smell awful, make you wrinkle & look old, destroys your voice, and eventually will kill you.

[Ancient Dragon]

You also loose your sense of taste and smell. As for expensive -- they were $0.10 per pack when I started. I could buy almost 6 cartons for the price of one pack today.

[<M/>]

never have, never will.... i don't want to have a disease...

[pritaeas]

i don't want to have a disease

Like smoking is the only way to get one...

[Octet]

Never seen the appeal to smoking, an expensive and disgusting habit, but good luck to anyone who is giving it up!

[<M/>]

Like smoking is the only way to get one...

Well, it is a common way but I know that smoking can not only ruin your life, it also ruins others lives.

Have you seen those commercials about quitting smoking? those commercials are quite inspiring and very well thought out, I just wish they came sooner.

[pritaeas]

it also ruins others lives.

So does driving a car, or using any other drug. I think getting rid of war and famine leads to more lives saved than banishing smoking. Unfortunately it's all about money. They don't even want everybody to quit.

[<M/>]

All i can say is that life is unfair and these companies just make it more worse for us... And yes it is all about the money, think about how wheat was evolved...

[Reverend Jim]

As far as I'm concerned you can smoke as much as you want and whatever you want as long as I don't have to smell it.

[<M/>]

I say something similar to that except in my way of thinking, no one should smoke to begin with so no one has to smell it and suffer.

[jfejsa]

No one dies of breathing...

...but millions of people die of smoking every single year.

Check http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D6NXaHGuRMsc and if you continue smoking after watching this, then you are mad!

[chris.stout]

Have you seen those commercials about quitting smoking? those commercials are quite inspiring and very well thought out, I just wish they came sooner.

As a smoker, I find myself lighting up whenever I see one of those commercials.

[GrimJack]

My first cigarette was about age 6 or 7; my brother and I would steal a pack of cigs from the freezer (my dad bought cigs in bulk) crawl into the hopper of a combine and smoke on the way to school. When it was really, really cold (Livingston MT - this is about 20 below Z), we would smoke in a coal shed near school - this is where we got caught. Dad quit cold turkey, threw out all his cigs and punished us. To this day, if I smell that very first ignition of the cigarette end I am back in the hopper with my brother and I am happy and safe. Both my brother and I went in for tonsilectomies right around that time and we didn't smoke again until much later.

My brother started back up when he was 15; he died of congestive heart failure when he was 44; he was still a smoker. I did not start again until I was 19 and smoked until I was 40 - I suppose I was at about 1-1.5 packs per day often more. My employer paid for a quit smoking plan so I went to Schick Electro-Shock™. They don't actually call it that but they are the old fashioned, negative reinforcement type place. You put the electrodes on your non-dominant wrist and attach a loop to the little finger of your 'smoknig' hand. Everytime you bring the cigarette up to your lips you get a shock; you can adjust the level of shock with a potentiometer - I would max the thing out and watch my hand spasm wildly. The booth was purposefully disgusting, it was never cleaned and all the butts from all the previous smokers were in piles all over the counter; there were nicotine stalactites hanging from the ceiling, thick yellowish stuff on the mirror. I quit; lasted for 3 years then started up again so I went through the program again and have not smoked a cigarette since.

The ex-Mrs. Grim and I would go up to Canada and smuggle 222s and Cuban cigars back - yeah, she smoked them too. Then I caught myself inhaling the cigars like they were cigarettes and stopped that immediately.

I have promised myself that I can start smoking again when I turn 103 (I used to say until I turn 95 but 95 is getting closer, quicker than one could imagine).

[<M/>]

I would max the thing out and watch my hand spasm wildly.

that had to be fun lol... but what if you were to drop cigarette on the ground and something got caught on fire...

[IIM]

(I used to say until I turn 95 but 95 is getting closer, quicker than one could imagine)

You are right every year when i celebrate my birthday threw off party,a thought strikes my mind,am i celebrating for becoming old year after year?

[<M/>]

am i celebrating for becoming old year after year?

Yep :)

[Xantipius]

Not all is so simple & unambiguously with the smoking.
Medical statistics shows that those who smoke 1-10 cigs per day live longer than abs non-smokers
(I read about this fact in Soviet monthly pop-magazine "Chemistry & Life", of early 1980s).
Not to mention, smokers never catch Parkinson's and Altzheimer's diseases.

[Xantipius]

One more interesting recent medical observation:
those who in their childhood were always half-hungry (due to poor, unlucky families etc)
they preserve the lucidity of mind till deep old age.
Opposite case with those who were growing without any stresses.

[Agilemind]

I don't know what you were reading but the tobacco companies fought back against the facts that smoking is bad for you by funding & publishing biased, or misleading science (usually by taking advantage of confounding factors such as socio-economic status).
Here is a nice 50 year study of over 30000 men: http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7455/1519
depending on the age of starting & stopping smoking had anywhere from a minor increase in mortality to a threefold increase.

PS there is growing evidence that many 'modern' diseases are because our bodies are adapted to being sick a lot (leads to auto-immune disease if your not) more and being hungry most of the time (leads to obesity & type 2 diabetes if your not) since that is how we lived for tens of thousands of years before civilization. This is not applicable to stresses due to luxury goods such as tobacco or caffeine.

[pritaeas]

smokers never catch Parkinson's and Altzheimer's diseases.

Not true. My dad died of Alzheimer's, has smoked all his life.

[Reverend Jim]

I read about this fact in Soviet monthly pop-magazine "Chemistry & Life", of early 1980s

Well, there you have it. If this prestigious scientific journal says that then it must be so.

[Xantipius]

1.
Obviously, by "never" I mean "very rarely" (if compared to non-smokers).
Also, smoking mothers have NOT children with Down's syndrome.

2.
If little mice are put on some moderate stresses, they grow up
more strong, more healthy and more big than mice from control group.