Smoking - Page 19

oh i see then how come my parents never found out cause i used to smoke since i was 9 and never caught at all

oh i see then how come my parents never found out cause i used to smoke since i was 9 and never caught at all

Well then you're just special. Or better yet, sneaky.

lol ..........yeah i did used to sneak ALOT!!!

But seriously, at age 9?
How in the world did you get cigarettes as a child?

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-10/12/content_706415.htm

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-10/12/content_706415.htm

Wow, now this is ridiculous. But are the laws in China the same as here in the US?

You aren't allowed to buy tobacco until age 18, right?

You aren't allowed to buy tobacco until age 18, right?

Supposedly.

Some people want the age to be raised to 21.

http://internetservices.readingeagle.com/editor/archives/2005/07/5_year_old_star_1.html

18? Its 16 here but its being put up to 18 soon

we can drink at 18 too but have to wait until 18 to drive

UK ftw!

17 to drive you idiot!
That why i learning now :P
18 to drive anything but a moped or a car :)

How old do you have to be to drive a moped?

16. In the UK. so is sex for the record

edit: how did we get onto driving?

edit 2: nevermind.

Lets just blame JBennet, it's all his fault :P

ha ha ha i drive a car since i was 12 but again i was a rebelion kid since i was 9 hahaha and now i am 17 with no driving license and i own 2 cars haha

16 to drive a moped or a bike with a low cc power

whats a moped???

Kind of like a motorbike.

Moped and scooter have the same meaning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_%28motorcycle%29

aaah that is a moped it is called fagio in sudan

or something like it i guess?

yeah we have the word faggio but its kind of an offensive word (gay people are offensively called fags and mopeds/scooters are seen as smoething of a gay symbol) so we dont use that word alot

ooo i see ok then its a moped :)

Let me try to reclaim this thread.

[@Christina: Here is the stuff I had mentioned to elsewhere.]

Secondhand Smoke, Facts and Fantasy

Thinking about Smoking Restrictions

[...]

The existing scientific evidence is highly speculative. Existing studies focus only on exposure of other household members and fail to control adequately for household characteristics correlated with a smoking spouse that may lead to risks of lung cancer and heart disease. What is needed is a rational assessment of the risks, rather than an advocacy perspective from either side. Instead of focusing on worst-case scenarios, we should be seeking out the best available scientific evidence. Available scientific studies may not be conclusive, but that fact alone should not necessarily be a rationale for inaction. On the other hand, we should not be swayed by fragmentary evidence that is inconsistent with other, better-established relationships, such as the magnitude of the risks to smokers themselves.

Are the Risks Significant?

[...]

In the 1980 OSHA Benzene case (AFL-CIO v. American Petroleum Institute), the Supreme Court indicated that a one in a billion risk from drinking chlorinated water would not be considered significant, but a one in a thousand risk from gasoline vapors would be significant. Are the risks from ETS significant?

To answer that question, OSHA took a lifetime risk perspective, and it is useful to apply that approach to the Supreme Court's view that a one in a billion risk from chlorinated water would not be significant. The amount of water people drink per day from different sources ranges from 2.1 to 2.9 quarts. To be conservative, I will assume that people drink nine glasses of chlorinated water per day (that may come, for example, from sodas or other products). The individual who drinks nine glasses per day each year for 70 years will drink 229,950 glasses during his lifetime. If the risk per glass is one in a billion, as hypothesized by the Court, the lifetime risk is two in ten thousand.

Now let us consider ETS. OSHA estimates that between 144 and 722 people will die from lung cancer each year because of ETS. If the 74 million nonsmoking American workers exposed to ETS are exposed over their entire 40-year employment expectancy, their lifetime risk ranges from one in ten thousand to four in ten thousand. Thus, the risk of drinking chlorinated water falls between the two bounds of the risk range estimated by OSHA for ETS. When translated into lifetime risks as opposed to risks from a particular exposure, so that both the ETS risks and the chlorinated water risks being discussed by the Court are in the same time dimension, we find that the risks are quite comparable and are of the same general magnitude.

Even if the flawed scientific evidence is taken at face value, the case for banning smoking in the workplace on risk-based grounds is not compelling. Quite simply, there are more important and fundamental threats to workers' lives than ETS. That does not mean that ETS should not be a matter of concern, but rather that one should take a balanced view and assess the overall merits of such regulation.

If it's linear and we double it to between 2/1000 and 8/1000, one might describe ETS as about 4 times as dangerous as drinking water.

http://library.stcsc.edu/handouts/webevalsmoke_author.html

The simplest is this. It takes 20 years or more for damageto manifest itself in a smoker. ETS is hundreds of times more dilute thanmainstream smoke. Non smokers would have to live with ETS for upwards of2,000 years to incur the same damage.

[...]

Scientists, like everyone else, are subject to personal bias. They can set out to prove a pet theory, they can ignore data which contradicts a favored hypothesis, and they can read into data facts which simply aren't there. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, their employers can be biased. Employers can put pressure on researchers or even research firms to validate a preordained position or to produce a desired result. Not that they really have to, since it is much easier to hire or retain investigators who agree with them to begin with. And even that is not necessary, since the employer gets to write conclusions and recommendations. Scientists who dissent can effectively be buried simply by not publishing what they have to say.

[...]

Corrupt science has two salient characteristics. First, instead of starting with a hypothesis and data and deriving from that a conclusion, it does just the opposite: starting with a desired conclusion, it then selects data in order to support the hypothesis. Second, it stifles dissent by excluding dissenters from the process of review and by using ad hominem arguments to question their character and motives. The EPA is guilty on both counts.

[...]

One of the largest and most recent studies of ETS is the Brownson study, partially funded by the National Cancer Institute. This study found odds ratios varying from .7 in non-smoking spouses of smokers exposed for fewer than 40 years, to 1.3 in those exposed for over 40 years. .7 is a negative correlation, meaning that those exposed to ETS for less than 40 years experienced fewer cancers than the control group. Since the implication that ETS actually protected those subjects from cancer is biologically implausible, the only other conclusion that can be drawn is that the study's margin of error, caused by random variation, is .3 or higher. This means that the 1.3 figure is equally suspect. The total risk for all groups averages out to exactly 1, or no risk at all.

And another one that had slipped my mind.

The Blunders of SAMMEC (1) 400,000 Killed by Smoking!?

The 400,000 plus estimate is the result of logical and epidemiological blunders and a lack of scientific integrity, by the fanatic anti-smoking lobby. The CDC estimate is described as the number of deaths ASSOCIATED with smoking, not CAUSED BY it. This is not a semantic distinction, because a death can be associated with many factors.

Among risk factors for heart disease, for example, are hypertension, high serum cholesterol, obesity, sedentary life style, smoking, and genetic factors. If we ran SAMMEC computations for each of these factors, we could estimate the number of heart disease deaths associated with each one. But suppose that John Smith, who died of heart disease, had all of these factors. He would have contributed 6 deaths to the total associated deaths. So that when we sum up these results to arrive at the total deaths, we find that our total is MUCH LARGER THAN THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY DIED OF HEART DISEASE.

A simple numerical example will demonstrate the SAMMEC method, and its multiple counting error. Let us consider heart disease. A behavior or attribute is said to be a risk factor for death by heart disease(HD) if the population exhibiting that behavior has a higher HD mortality rate than the population which does not exhibit that behavior. If obese people have a higher mortality rate than non-obese, obesity is a risk factor for heart disease death. The ratio of these two mortality rates is unknown as the risk ratio of obesity for heart disease death, and of course, is measured statistically.

How does SAMMEC compute the deaths associated with some risk ratio? Assume that we have measured the risk ratio of obesity for HDD to be 4. Assume that we have a population of 1000 people, of whom 500 are obese and 500 are not. We observe 10 deaths by heart disease. We can then compute that 8 of these deaths would occur among the obese, and 2 among the non- obese, the ratio of 4:1. Let us call this risk ratio r. Then SAMMEC assumes that if the obese people were not obese, they would have the same mortality rate as the non-obese, or only 2 deaths. Therefore 6 deaths among the obese are attributed to obesity, or the fraction (1-1/r) of the deaths of the obese, in this case 3/4. It is easy to compute the fraction of the total deaths, which is called THE SAF, OR STATISTICALLY ATTRIBUTABLE FACTOR. IF WE STOPPED AT THIS POINT, WE WOULD SAY THAT OBESITY CAUSES 3/4 OF THE DEATHS OF ALL OBESE HEART DISEASE PATIENTS.

But is this true? Let us continue our computation, and consider hypertension as a risk factor for HDD. To simplify the calculations let us assume that hypertension also has a risk ratio of 4 and this is the crux of the overcount, assume that the same group of people who are obese are also the hypertensives. Then we find that 6 deaths of our hypertensive group are attributed to hypertension. Similarly we can find that smoking, lack of exercise, and high cholesterol levels each result in 6 deaths. So that we find that our 5 risk factors are associated with 30 deaths by heart disease. BUT ONLY 10 PEOPLE DIED ALTOGETHER, AND ONLY 8 IN THE HIGH RISK GROUP. Only if each person had only 1 risk factor for any cause of death, would the SAMMEC SAF be a true fraction, in the sense that all fractions would add up to 1.

But really, I found this piece most succint.

First they came...

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Those are interesting, Dave. And I'm not going to say I believe in everything it says, but a lot of it makes sense.

I found an article about a woman who says she had inoperable cancer due to cigarettes.

This is her story.

Cancer is a cruel disease. I would hope that people put equal ferver into finding causes and treatments as opposed to focusing on any possible false positives due to politics.

Agreed 100%. However, doing that may depend on whether or not the vast majority of researchers are willing to cast aside the current blind spot they're working under.

Something I heard, "Life is too good and too short to waste on this filthy habbit, give it up, live a nice long life".

Or as one smoker put it as she lay dying of cancer "I knew that smoking would take years off my life - I just didn't know it would take them from the middle"

God will punish smokers not for what they are doing to themselves, but for what they are doing to others.

God will punish smokers not for what they are doing to themselves, but for what they are doing to others.

why always with the god bit.

smokers will punish goders not for their beliefs but the beliefs they push on others.

lol, just joking your beliefs are you own and if you think that stuuf is true, then all the power to ya.

But to the point of smoking, i am a very light smoker (on my way to quiting) and i have always agreed with the laws againt smoking in public places. in canada your not even allowed to smoke within like 50 feet of a public doorway. There is no smoking in any public place and if your caught smoking in a car with a minor or child, there are huge fines involved. I think that last once is a provicial law, im not sure. But i really think thats the way it should be: why should others have to breath in my smoke. Just like i should not have religious beliefs pushed on me with threats of damnation.