Self-rightous ads...

[EmperorDude]

[/quote]Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?[/quote]

Well I don't know exactly what's in my pop but pretty sure its not this stuff:
Benzene (petrol additive)
A colourless cyclic hydrocarbon obtained from coal and petroleum, used as a solvent in fuel and in chemical manufacture - and contained in cigarette smoke. It is a known carcinogen and is associated with leukaemia.

Formaldehyde (embalming fluid)
A colourless liquid, highly poisonous, used to preserve dead bodies - also found in cigarette smoke. Known to cause cancer, respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal problems.

Ammonia (toilet cleaner)
Used as a flavouring, frees nicotine from tobacco turning it into a gas, found in dry cleaning fluids.

Acetone (nail polish remover)
Fragrant volatile liquid ketone, used as a solvent, for example, nail polish remover - found in cigarette smoke.

Tar
Particulate matter drawn into lungs when you inhale on a lighted cigarette. Once inhaled, smoke condenses and about 70 per cent of the tar in the smoke is deposited in the smoker's lungs.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) (car exhaust fumes)
An odourless, tasteless and poisonous gas, rapidly fatal in large amounts - it's the same gas that comes out of car exhausts and is the main gas in cigarette smoke, formed when the cigarette is lit.

Arsenic (rat poison), Hydrogen Cyanide (gas chamber poison)

And as to your arguments that because my food and air may have chemicals in them: people have to eat to survive. We have to breathe air to live. How you ended up at the conclusion that the harm that may come to you from using a luxary product like cigarettes and the possible dangers in performing the tasks needed to survive are equal I don't know.

And while driving is not nessasary to survive it is nessasary to work and perform just about everything needed to function in America's soceity.

 

[Cpt. Red]

First of I whould like to say Hi and that I whouldent have anything against smoking if it was only harmfull to the person smoking, but thats not the case.

Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?

1) The chemicals in the smoke is hell of alot more dangerous then the ones in most sodas and the air(as long as it isnt filld with other toxic materials).

2)It is proved that its the smoke thats dengerous and not ciggaret it self, so I whould not say its that ilogical to say that second-hand smoking is dangerous.

3)If you copmare anything with cars in that way you can easily say that its safe for everyone to own a nuke, becuase how many more dosent die from cars then from nukes? What I mean is that cars have a valuable perpous in the world today and when people die in cars its usually)remember that I said usualy and not always) when they do somthing ilegal like driving drunk and if everyone is driving legaly the deathrates should(atlest I thinks so and I got no proof at all for this) be lower then the ones of smoking related deaths while smoking on the other hand dosent provide a very usefull perpous while killing people leagally...

4) somthing I forgot during typing so, F**k it...

EDIT: Oh yhea, sorry for grammar and spelling but english isnt my nativ language...

 

[lumi21]

That's not as rock solid a fact as you two might think:

Health care costs for smokers at a given age are as much as 40 percent higher than those for nonsmokers, but in a population in which no one smoked the costs would be 7 percent higher among men and 4 percent higher among women than the costs in the current mixed population of smokers and nonsmokers. If all smokers quit, health care costs would be lower at first, but after 15 years they would become higher than at present. In the long term, complete smoking cessation would produce a net increase in health care costs, but it could still be seen as economically favorable under reasonable assumptions of discount rate and evaluation period. [http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/337/15/1052]

That's a mighty fine block of text there making quite the unsubstantiated claim. I could just as easily post a similar claim that smokers are responsible for 97% of the cost of health care because of their incessant cancerous contributions to society, but it would be equally baseless.

A similar effect might be true of fat people, that they actually keep the health care system running while it's fit people who drain it of resources above and beyond what they have contributed:

If we somehow figured out a way to "cure" obesity?with a pill, an injection, or a law like the one they're proposing in Mississippi?we'd increase the burden on taxpayers. More people would make it to old age, hastening the Social Security crisis and pushing up the costs of Medicaid. Indeed, the analysis in PLoS Medicine revealed that lifetime health expenditures were highest for healthy-living people of optimum weight. [http://www.slate.com/id/2184475/?from=rss]

Is that really a path the pro-smokers want to go down? That we're better off with slightly higher health care than a healthier overall population? I don't know about you, but if I had the opportunity to pay a little more for health care in order to eliminate the effects of cigarettes on the general population, I'd jump at that in a heartbeat and consider it the deal of a lifetime.

 

[werepossum]

A little on topic, a little off.

I was smoking a fag down at my local bus stop the other day

First off, I think I'm becoming a little dyslexic because at first I read that as "I was a smoking fag..." very different meaning.

Second when people pull crap like that, I usually start doing it just to piss them off. Maybe I'm just a douche like that.

There is always the bill hicks way of responding.....
"Wow thats a really bad cough youve got there, your lucky you dont smoke, I smoke loads and I dont cough half as much as that."

Oddly enough, I read that smokers get fewer respiratory infections than non-smokers. Don't know if they cough less, though, since smoking causes coughing itself.

About studies on health care costs, there was a study some years ago that set out to determine exactly how much productivity was lost in bank managers that smoke. To their chagrin, they found that bank managers who smoke were actually more productive.

I'm amazed that people don't understand how much it makes your house and clothes stink, though. We have a neighbor who's a heavy smoker and makes a big deal about not smoking after she dresses in the morning so as to not smell like cigarette smoke. Her entire house and all her clothes stink like an ashtray. If my wife goes over there she wears her yard clothes and immediately puts them in the garage and takes a shower. Even I can smell the smoke just from her being over there fifteen minutes, and I don't have much of a sense of smell.

I'm also amazed and irritated that the same people who want to take control of our lives and protect us from all the potentially dangerous things we like (e.g. cigarettes, drugs and alcohol, motorcycles, violent movies and video games, and guns come to mind, feel free to subtract from and add to the list) are also the people who are always whining about overpopulation.

 

[LewsTherin]

IHMO this thing is just blown out of proportion...

If you don't like smoking, don't. Where I come from, smoking is banned in public places, which makes perfect sense to me; smoking is your choice, but I personally am allergic.

If people are worried about the tobacco industry making so much money, calm down, people who use tobacco die younger, so they tell me, and therefore the tobacco industry will lose customers and cease to be.

Smoking isn't my cup of tea, but it's your own choice to do so, and I'll freely defend your right to this particular vice.

 

[Alex_P]

Thank you for saying it. Big Tobbacco must be paying for these ads, because they are not making me want to stop smoking.

I think they are, indirectly. Those campaigns are funded by public money from cigarette taxes and various fines levied against the industry, aren't they?

-- Alex

 

[Haliwali]

How did I copy paste to the wrong thread?

... I feel like an idiot...

 

[Bored Tomatoe]

Well, as it stands most anti-anything ads are always made by self righteous pricks with too much time on their hands and the education of a middle schooler.

 

[D_987]

http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/473-top-11-drug-psas

 

[Spectre39]

I like to take South Park's stance on the smoking issue. Although smoking can give you health problems, if you feel the benefit outwieghs the price of smoking you are free to make that choice.

I don't tend to respond too kindly to Truth ads either. Sure, smoking can kill but doing your best to spread bad PR about smoking in general is... lame? It kind of reminds me of that scene in Thank you for Smoking where a lobbyist tried to get old black and white movies with cigarettes altered if they had smoking in them, claiming to be 'improving the past'. It also reminds me of Clerks where a salesman for stop smoking gum started a riot in the convienence store about cigarette sales.

Where I draw the line is if there's any truth to allegations that tabacco companies are marketing their products to children and teenagers. To smoke or not smoke is a decision that requires maturity. It can cut your life in half, and you need to have a head on your shoulders to make that choice. That's why I support idea that you have be atleast 18 (in most states) to buy or smoke cigarettes. Recently I learned that my brother's ex-girlfriend has started up smoking. I feel bad for her because she's only 15. Now what's going to become of her health now that she's likely addicted to the stuff?

 

[qbert4ever]

How did I copy paste to the wrong thread?

... I feel like an idiot...

Well, if it makes you feel any better, you look like an...

No, I'm just kidding. On topic, eh. I don't watch commercials anyways (what can I say? I channel-surf), so I don't really care about the ads.