By Stewart N. Thorpe of Citizen Press Revolution
In response to Bryan Farrell of In These Times' article, "The World's Growing Number of Smokers", I will do a rare act in any political circle on any side of the arbitrary and inaccurate political spectrum, defend smoking. Or, at least, put the the whole attacks on smoking and smokers in context and perspective.
In the industrial world, it is now safe to bet that the average person is fully aware that smoking is bad for you.
Cigarettes cause the deaths of an estimated 1,200 people a day. But as "Thank You for Smoking" points out, heart disease and high cholesterol still kills more people.
The Department of Health Services states that:
"In 2006, heart disease is projected to cost more than $258 billion, including health care services, medications, and lost productivity."
"In 2002, 696,947 people died of heart disease (51% of them women). This was 29% of all U.S. deaths. The age–adjusted death rate was 241 per 100,000 population."
What causes heart disease? It is high cholesterol with rare, rare exceptions. What leads to high cholesterol levels? Eating animal products: milk, cheese, meat, etc.
Think about this:
Jane Do, whose centerpiece of her meals is meat everyday and every meal, criticizes Joe Green for smoking, saying that cigarettes kill. Yet she herself does a daily habit that kills more people than cigarettes: eating animal products.
And let us put second hand smoke into perspective too, I have yet to found studies that completely put the risk of second hand smoke into significant consideration. Whether you agree with me on that or not isn't my main point about this:
Air pollution from vehicles and factories has much stronger correalation and health risks than second hand smoke could ever hope to have. In my own city of Sale Lake City, the pollution became so bad last year that people were advised to not exercise and stay indoors as much as possible for more than an entire month. Not having that option as I have never owned a car and nearly always have owned a bike, I got a good diet of urban pollution into my lungs. I acquired temporarily breathing problems, nausea, headaches, and coughing fits that were bad enough some nights that I couldn't even sleep. So, if air pollution and your health is a serious concern and you get riled that someone else's activity is putting your risk at health, isn't it just even a little tiny bit hypocritical to drive regularly at the same time?
Cigarette smoke dissipates pretty quickly. Car exhaust hangs around longer in the air. And even if you can't see it, it expels more air pollution in a week than a cigarette chain smoker could attempt to do in a year.
And Bryan Farrell of In These Times not only continues the propaganda machine (not that the facts aren't true, but the context is always ignored) that smoking is also an environmental problem because of discarded butts and cigarette packs. The numbers may hold up, but where is the comparison and context to put these facts?
According to a United Nations report, the animal product industry is labeled as the number two and number three worst offenders in nearly every type of pollution United Nations report. Cigarette butts, on the other hand, as an environmental threat, in this context, a great deal smaller.
If you are truly about good health, eating animal products is more likely to kill you than smoking cigarttes. if you fear second hand smoke, you should be more afraid of air pollution from vehicles. If you truly care about the environment, it would be better for you to smoke and not eat animal products than to not smoke and eat animal products.
Smoking and smokers have become an easy target for people to criticize. While declaring the health threat of cigarettes, they gorge themselves on animal products that lead the way to the number one killer of Americans. All the while, these same people eat meat, they also monetarily contribute to one of the greatest (or worst) industries in wasting and polluting our land, water, and air. All the while these people get into hysterical fits about tiny puffs of smokes from a cigarettes, they drive around cars that belch clouds of pollutants every day and everywhere they go.
Reminds me of that biblical verse about pointing out a splinter in someone else's eye when you have a 2 by 4 plywood stuck in your own eye.
High cholesterol is brought on by eating fatty foods, meat included, but it's still part of a healthy diet if you don't over eat the daily serving size. I think there are more causes of high cholesterol than just eating animal products like family history. What if those whose deaths are caused by high cholesterol also smoked?
As for pollution, I do agree that the government should focus on reducing a city’s pollution problem rather than debate whether to ban smoking in public buildings. Second hand smoking is effective in a closed room or car and over a period of time it's just like as if that person was smoking himself. However, pollution is basically everywhere.
Smokers are easier to criticize because there is no reason to smoke. You have to eat and go out of your house unless you want to be isolated but smoking isn’t necessary. It just gives money to companies that do nothing to give back (or at least that I know of). I have asthma so I have been warned and warned again not to smoke since it goes directly to the lungs.
I do understand what you're saying though and I agree with most of it. I never really thought about it that way. Nicely written!
The (strict or mostly) vegeterian diet of cultures that have existed for thousands of years have been perfectly healthy, if not actually healthier and having less diseases than the majority of the especially Western culture's diet. It is a mostly Western tunnel-vision that meat is the centerpiece of every meal. And this is, relatively, a recent, very recent development and perception of a meal. There are different ideas of what a meal consists in different cultures and is actually quite fascinating. Meat is, for example, sometimes a background supplement or addition, if present at all. Another sad development in the Western perception of a meal is the death of a supper. Eating food is a quick chore that is better if it is faster. Europeans have not yet abandoned the idea that a supper actually means a three-course meal, is a social and family event, not to be hurried, but enjoyed.
Also, if the myths of dairy and meat were true, you would see atrocious health crisises happening in these generations of vegans, but ya don't.
And not only is a animal-product-heavy diet one of the top drivers of destroying forests, land pollution, water pollution, and air pollution, but in calories of energy invested for the equivalent of a plant-based equivalent, is incredibly inefficient and wasteful of energy -- something that we are learning is actually limited.
About the meat/dairy myths:
There are a lot of health myths out there and meat/protein and dairy/strong bones are just two that don't hold up.
Cultures that have no dairy except as infants have actually stronger bones than the average American. Humans' bodies were meant to have milk as infants, not adults. Likewise, cultures that eat very little if any meat because of tradition rather than also factors, don't have protein deficiencies.
There are also now three generations vegans, for example, that now exist even in the Western world who are now living proof that meat/dairy/animal products are unessential for healthy living, if not actually an obstacle for healthy living.
Consequently, a diet in animal products is an option, much like smoking.
Citizen Press Revolution
Citations, please. I'd like to see where you're getting this information.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I get my information from a galore of places, but I decided to do a follow-up post instead of a gigantic reply:
Part II: Attacking Anti-Smoking Propaganda and Anti-Smoking Hypocrites
Citizen Press Revolution
I don't care if you want to smoke as long as you do it somewhere else. I was so happy when the no-smoking laws were passed. (And I can't wait for them to get even tougher! No smoking in any public area. yaaah!) I didn't have to walk thru the smoking section to get to my table at the diner. Of course now they sit out by the entrance and do it there, but they're still outside. I don't go around people and fart, spit and belch and I don't want them to smoke around me.
I have a friend who's mom smoked for 60 years without any health problems. She died from falling asleep in a chair andfalling out of it, hit her head on the floor. Smoking may or may not kill you. The same with meat products.
And speaking about meat products, I like meat, milk, cheese and eggs. A lot. I would probably starve if I didn't have them because I don't like most veggies. God did't put all these edible animals on this earth just to say "Oh, how nice." Just like the plants, they were put here to eat. And just like plants, some taste better than others, that's why we settled on pigs, cows and chickens. They cook up the best.
Just like with anything else people write on these bloggs you are missing a lot of information.
These days-since WWI-the problem we have with the food is with the preservitives. That's when all this obesity, diabetes and other health problems started. They had to find a way to preserve the food going to war and never changed it back after. Most people were hard working and ate well unless you were a bum and had to cook your boots for soup. Did you know that butter is better for you than margerine? It's anly one molicule away from plastic. It's been proven! But everybody still eats it.
The problem, is we are to prosperous. We don't have any limits for ourselves. We think we do, but we don't. The rest of the world is starving while we get fat and die because of the way we process food here.
You people need to do a little more scientific research and a lot less reading of news articles to get your information. They can't even agree on whether eggs are good for you or not. Good cholestorol, Bad cholestorol. Who cares! The only thing worth worrying about is whether you will go to the Good heaven or the Bad hell.
Go, Christ Jesus! My Lord and Saviour!
p.s. Doesn't anyone have anything important to talk about? Like the salvation of your souls?
You make several valid points, but I'd like to point out that if someone smokes they are five times more likely to have heart disease and the chemicals in the cigarettes damage the inside of the arteries, making it a lot easier for cholesterol to adhere to the vessel walls and leading to high blood pressure. Long-term smokers have notoriously high blood pressure.
My biggest problem with cigarettes is the effect they have on people who don't ask for it. My mother smoked while pregnant with my big sister, and she was born three months early at three pounds because of it. Her Achilles tendons are too short, and her hand-eye coordination is deplorable due to her premature birth. Also, if a mother smokes around a baby, as well as all of that nasty stuff in the air you cited, but then also the chemicals in the smoke gets into the baby's/child's lungs.
You made a good argument, though, and I do agree with some of your points. Thanks for sharing your views,
Chrissa
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“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” - Pink Floyd
"In the industrial world, it is now safe to bet that the average person is fully aware that smoking is bad for you."
But you are overlooking the fact that most smokers start young and don't intend smoking for more than the short term. By the time they really realise that they are chemically addicted, it's usually around the same time they realise that they are going to find it very hard to stop. The number of full grown adults who decide to suddenly take up smoking in their twenties, thirtiers or whenever, are a minority amongst the greater majority of longterm smokers who started when they were in their early teens with the intention of stopping before any damage was done, not realising the strength of nicotine addiction, or that it could happen to them.
"What leads to high cholesterol levels? Eating animal products: milk, cheese, meat, etc."
Eating excessive amounts of these leads to high cholesterol, not eating them in moderate amounts as part of a varied diet.
"If you are truly about good health, eating animal products is more likely to kill you than smoking cigarttes."
Again, only if eatin to excess. Animal products can be a part of a healthy and varied diet. The same way it would be disingenuous for me to assert that a vegetarian who eats a poor vegetarian diet is a good case for vegetarianism being unhealthy, it is equally disingenuous to claim that people who eat animal products to excess are representative of a meat inclusive diet being inherently unhealthy. The brass tax of the matter is this, people who eat balanced and varied diets, eat healthily, some include animal products as their source of proteins and amino acids, others utilize other sources to facilitate their abstinence from animal products. But both users of animal products and vegans run diet related health risks if they don't eat from a balanced and varied menu.
"Reminds me of that biblical verse about pointing out a splinter in someone else's eye when you have a 2 by 4 plywood stuck in your own eye."
While I agree with you here, I have to make some stab at justifying people's attitude to smoking. I myself am a smoker, I smoke a pack a day. I've been smoking since I was 14, when I took it up because I thought it was cool and would help me to get older chicks. As it turned out, it worked on both counts, regardless of what people like to say to the contrary. I had no intention of smoking right to this day, I only intended smoking for a couple of years, then putting it behind me in a been-there-done-that kinda way.
But I'm now chemically addicted to nictotine and have failed every time I've tried to give up. If I could go back, knowing what I know now, I would never have started. But if somebody told me then that I would still be smoking today, I wouldn't have believed them.
I think people try to rationalize their own addiction to themselves through this whole 'right-to-smoke' line of reasoning and mock bravado. But this falls flat on it's face when you find out that plenty of people who advocate the right to smoke tobacco, which really offers them very little by way of pleasure and a whole lot by way of potential harm, don't hold the same view in regard to legalization of marijuana, a plant which apart from medicinal use, offers the user a host of pleasurable effects, and is nowhere near tobacco in regard to it's addictive qualities.
I can't stand people who whine about smokers and who do that whole mock coughing fit to prove a point when passing smokers. But I fully understand those who want far stricter regulations placed on tobacco, I am one of them. I would advocate jail sentences for people who sell tobacco to kids, or who buy or provide tobacco for anybody under 18 years. That's what would happen if the local corner store sold a kid morphine. I don't care if some idiot wants to take up smoking as an adult, unless they are mentally cahllenged in some way, my sympathy is nil. But allowing kids such easy access to tobacco is ruthless, and is exactly the marketing strategy tobacco companies focus on. That's where their next crop of customers lies and they have to get them young, because grown up smokers don't really switch brands a whole lot.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
I completely agree, and you pointed out the logic flaws with the meat thing far better and nicer than I could have.
The issue that I have with smoking isn't so much that people do it and that it kills people (hey, you know what it's going to do to you, if you want to destroy your body, far be it from me to stop you), but the fact that a lot of smokers seem to ignore a lot of the smoking policies put in place (where I'm at, you're not supposed to be within about 100 feet of a door to a public building). I grew up with Asthma, and now that I've moved out of my parents' house and into a non-smoking environment, I can't really handle being around cigarette smoke anymore. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to have to deal with a bunch of people standing around smoking right outside the doors to [insert public building here] just so I can do whatever it is I need to do. Outside or in, smoke still carries very well.
And I do have one thing to say in regards to the original poster's meat comments:
When the meat packing industry starts putting cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia, carbon monoxide, a dozen or two different kinds of alcohol, along with six hundred other additives in the meats that I eat, then and only then, will we talk about how bad meat is for you. (Source)
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I get my information from a galore of places, but I decided to do a follow-up post instead of a gigantic reply:
Part II: Attacking Anti-Smoking Propaganda and Anti-Smoking Hypocrites
Citizen Press Revolution
I love you for this post.
Thank you.
Citizen Press Revolution
The bias outweighs the prudence or good sense. This is totally lame. How can you begin to compare killing yourself via smoking to eatting meat to live. First of all I would like to note, at no other time in history has it been Legal, under ruling religions, and government, to kill yoursefl. Smoking tabacco is displaced suicidial tendency. This is an attack on the immuno-defense as well as a anagonist mimicing agent to a natural Hormone( to ease explaintion.) This is a negative feedback loop, People have to eat to live, don't go crazy calling people who eat meat but don't smoke hippocrites. You have no basis.
For the record, study Health Psychology. Second hand smoke is more damaging than to the person smoking the ciggarette. The person smoking has all the other tabacco filtering to be burned later (tar, nicotine, etc.) Which intensifies the second hand smoke and the first hand smoke. The key is to understanding the physiology of the person's immune system that regularly insuffuates smoke, to the none smoker who occasionally is in a smokey environment. The metaphor is comparable to a farmer who shuffles shit every and works hard on a farm to the student who gets a summer job mowing and raking lawns. One of them is adapted to the conditions they are personally subjecting themselves.
"Second hand smoke is more damaging than to the person smoking the ciggarette. The person smoking has all the other tabacco filtering to be burned later (tar, nicotine, etc.) "
I hate to rain on your self-percieved notion of yourself as some kind of intellectual behemoth, but the fact is that smokers inhale second hand smoke too. You don't really need to be an intellectual giant to figure that one out.
You also overlook the fact that most cigarette smokers start as children, which is relevant to your request that the author of this blog read about Health Psychology. You assert that smoking is basically a strain of suicidal tendancy, which would completely overlook the relevance of both child psychology and the significance of habitual conditioning and chemical addiction in regard to why people continue to smoke.
In many circles smoking is viewed as a paediatric disease, as this is when most longterm smokers start. Children make all sorts of ill-advised decisions due to the fact that their brains are not fully developed and due to their limited life experience and the short-sightedness that such limited experience facilitates. To turn around and claim that adults who became chemically addicted to a substance as children have suicidal tendencies smacks of a complete failure to think about the psychological aspects of nictotine consumption and addiction.
_____________________________________________________________
I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
Smoking should be illegal because it is the NUMBER 1 preventable cause of death.
As opposed to diet related illnesses? Would you mind posting the figures?
_____________________________________________________________
I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
"I am the people my mother warned me about."
:-)
Citizen Press Revolution
"I am the people my mother warned me about."
:-)
haha, nice one.
_____________________________________________________________
I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
I'm sorry... but as deplorable a habit as it may be, you cannot make smoking illegal.
It's a choice people make; and they have the right to make it.
I live in New York, and I celebrated when they made smoking illegal in bars and restaurants, but I would never support making smoking illegal outright.
If this is true how did they make other drugs illegal? Heroin can be a choice, yet it is illegal. The truth is that too many of our policy makers use tobacco, that is why it will not becaome illegal, any time soon. Marijuana was made illegal based on an article that was written in the 20's and cited in other articles, with no empirical research. I think it is ridiculous that with all of the research done on tobacco related illness, that it wouldn't be made illegal.
You can't make smoking illegal because our nation's economy was built around it.
Believe me, I would love to see it happen. But people would scream bloody murder because hundreds of years of history has established smoking and chewing tobacco as a "personal freedom" granted to citizens of the United States. If someone chooses to participate in a vice that is detrimental to their health, that is their choice, and in this case the government does not have the ability to take it away from them.
Good article; it made me think.
However, I really can't agree with your comparison of smoking to eating animal products. I see no statistics that tell me that consuming dairy products or meat in moderation will cause harm to your body. It bothers me when people put down the agricultural industry because of their personal choices.
I used government statistics that state that heart disease is the number one killer. You missed it. High cholesterol is connected to a diet heavy in animal products. Its elementary health. Look it up. If you don't believe something, don't stop there by saying you don't think so, research, read, find out. Disbelief without objective research to back it up is worse than ignornace, it's willful ignorance. Don't do that. The internet and your local library is a gold mine of information. Use it. Don't just disbelieve.
You should really do research on what constitutes as "argiculture business" nowadays. I could write an entire book criticizing the corporatized, factorized monstrosity that it has become. And again, look up the United Nations report, see their statistics about the big pollution that is argifactory practices produce.
Dig deeper, don't simply base your disbelief on sentiment.
Citizen Press Revolution
1. You linked a blog. And not just any blog, but a self-admittedly left-wing blog. Aside from the fact that a single source does not necessarily constitute consistent or accurate statistics, this isn't even an objective source. Want to be taken more seriously? Consider using sources such as the American Heart Association.
2. While poor diet is, in fact, one of the leading causes of heart and cardiovascular issues, what actually constitutes "poor diet"? A poor diet isn't necessarily one that consists of meat. You're looking at a diet that's high in saturated fats, empty calories, and sugars. Basically, junk food and fast food play a major role in this case. Processed foods in general will also contribute to the problem.
3. I, and many other people, have said this time and time again... The meat industry, particularly what I've come to call "battery farms" where animals are kept in areas that are far too small and crowed to be healthy, is certainly lackluster and in need of an overhaul. There are, however, sources known as "free range" where the animals are healthy and kept in ample space (chickens, for example, have coops to nest and can run around in much larger areas). It is not, and should not be, a matter of cutting meat out of everyone's diet (the article you linked looks more like something PETA would write, honestly), but rather knowing your sources. I can pretty much guarantee you that a person whose balanced diet consists of lean, free-range meats (or even wild game) will be just as healthy as the person whose balanced diet is strictly vegan (assuming other variables are the same, such as family history, exercise routine, etc).
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I get my information from a galore of places, but I decided to do a follow-up post instead of a gigantic reply:
Part II: Attacking Anti-Smoking Propaganda and Anti-Smoking Hypocrites
Citizen Press Revolution
High cholesterol may be linked with a diet HEAVY with meat products... but not one with high-quality meat products eaten in moderation. There is a difference between low-grade 85% lean hamburger and the high-grade stuff. The people who choose to educate themselves and eat healthy, but do not necessarily choose to be vegan or vegetarian do not have problems with cholesterol.
Maybe you are the one who needs to do some research on the truth about the agricultural industry, and not just the *shocking* exposes and supposed statistics you see. I grew up with the agricultural industry... I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you don't bother to get to know the people who are involved day in and day out, then you can't really understand it. Judging the entire industry on the bad choices of a few large farms is just as bad as my judging all vegans to be ignorant because of a bad experience with one or two.
Can you link me or guide me to this United Nations report that is so revealing? I'd appreciate it.
In the defense of meat I have written a blog to dispel the many myths including that it causes heart disease, cancer, and that vegetarians or vegans are somehow healthier. These claims are completely unfounded, and as you will read many scientific studies have clearly proven otherwise.
Please take a moment to check it out:
http://progressiveu.org/001209-i-am-a-meat-eater-and-im-proud-of-it-disp...
That is an excellent post.
For me it's like...if you're going to smoke then don't complain about the risks and like you said....everybody these days knows the effects of smoking and that it's bad for you. Everybody these days ALSO knows that eating fatty foods is bad for you. People still do both, and not much seems to be stopping people from doing it. Both things are an addiction, food and cigarettes, and they are both really hard addictions to stop.
This is a good article and very controversial. So many people focus in on smoking being bad but there are ways to avoid the effect of it. Don't hang out people that smoke, don't smoke, sit in a the non smoking section.
I agree, lets stop attacking people who decide to have a bad habbit. We all have them, and many of them we don't even realize.
thank you....finally, someone with common sense and good logic. ive been saying this for years, but im always the crazy one.
Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent.
2 A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3 Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.
4 There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.
5 The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.
6 The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide.
7 Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8 The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.
These facts are all true, and all part of the "lipid hypothesis" that has never been proved.
Dispel the myths of meat!
http://www.progressiveu.org/001209-i-am-a-meat-eater-and-im-proud-of-it-...