h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Smoking should be banned completely. Not just in public places but everywhere. Eventually all enlightened societies will ban smoking and then we'll wonder why it was ever legal. It's unlikely that it'll happen in my lifetime, though.

Smoking kills over four million people per year worldwide. A further ten percent of that number die and have never smoked a cigarette. That's the real evil of smoking - the innocent victims who can't get away from a smoker in a resturant, on a train or in the office.

Perhaps an argument could be made in favour of allowing smoking, if the smokers themselves were the only victims of its evil. (Although that doesn't really hold because any caring society should protect people from their own stupidity.) But the fact that smoking has thousands of innocent victims means that its an evil that should be eradicated immediately, everywhere it exists.

Sadly few, if any, societies have the courage to do so.

I hope it does not happen in your lifetime or mine.

Smoking has many undesirable effects, not least of which is shortening the lifespan of smokers themselves. But if you ban smoking, then you must surely ban alcohol. Drinking also kills many people, and is also implicated in many other deaths, not least road traffic fatalities. I read recently that the number of alcohol-related deaths in this country run at about 33,000 per year.

Then of course there are those road vehicles, which directly cause thousands of deaths a year, and are implicated in respiratory disease and global warming.

You give a very precise-sounding statistic that 400,000 people are killed by passive smoking. This is interesting, because I've spent some time looking at the evidence, and I have seen no unequivocal evidence at all that so-called 'passive smoking' has ever killed one single person. I have seen, though, that some junk scientists have falsified their results to make it appear that it has.

I'm not trying to defend smoking - far from it; I have lost quite a few friends because they died prematurely through smoking. But it strikes me that smoking is perhaps less undesirable than the desire to dictate to other people how they should live their lives.

Of course it's necessary to dictate to people how they should live their lives and we do it every day. Why on earth not? A far greater danger than this, is people touting individual freedom without any thought as to its meaning.

When society tells you you may not walk down the street with a machine gun and indiscriminately murder anyone you see, surely that's telling you how to live your life. Yet you've never questioned that.

If you smoke, it'll cause your own premature death as well as that of others around you (and, yes, there is plenty of scientific evidence worldwide that passive smoking kills). Why shouldn't society move to protect people from this evil?

If you really believe that no-one should dictate to you how you should live your life, why do you obey laws every day without questioning their existence?

http://www.who.int/inf-pr-1998/en/pr98-29.html

http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/html/lung_cancer.html

http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/issues/pass_intro.html

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/etsfs.html

http://www.ash.org.uk/html/passive/html/passive.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F05%2F16%2Fwsmoke16.xml

http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/hth/passive_smoking.asp

http://whyfiles.org/183smoking/3.html

http://health_info.nmh.org/HealthNews/reuters/NewsStory0516200318.htm

http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0516/smoking01.html

That is all, without exception, tobacco industry spponsored propaganda. It has been largely discredited and it proves nothing.

To latch on to it, is to be in denial about the overwhelming evidence that passive smoking is in fact harmful and deadly.

Rather dishonest, really.

Empty Sky,

Would you normally start a face-to-face conversation with a stranger by telling them they are dishonest? Rather discourteous, really.

When it comes to studies of so-called 'passive smoking' there is a big problem with the way they gather their statistic evidence. For example, it is a statistical fact that in the UK, the children of parents who smoke are more likely to spend time in hospital because of respiratory problems. But it is also a fact that smoking is more prevalent among lower-income groups. These groups tend to live in sub-standard housing and to have less healthy diets than those with more money. So what appeared to be a direct correlation is nothing of the sort.

To find a causal relationship statistically you have to compare groups. You have to separate the thing being tested, and make sure that the only difference between the two groups is that particular thing. If you do it any other way you are introducing other factors that will contaminate your results.

So to really establish whether 'passive smoking' is dangerous, you need to have two (large) groups of people, one group of which has never come into contact with cigarette smoke. Now the only way you are going to get that is by choosing people who live in a shut-off religious colony, or who live in some part of the world where smoking doesn't take place. If such a thing were possible, you would be introducing so many variables as 'noise' that your results would be contaminated.

Perhaps this is why there have been so many conflicting studies.

Muzzlehatch, I'm afraid you've fallen for the spin that the tobacco companies would like you to believe. Take a look at these two:

http://www.gasp.org/environmental.html

http://www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact08.html

The ASH one allows you to view the researchers' doccuments. The methods of carrying out the research are perfectly adequate and reliable. It's quite possible to tell whether a respiritory illness is caused by ETS or other factors such as diet and housing. It's naive to think it's not.

The research showing that environmental tobacco smoke is harmful outweighs research showing otherwise, a hundred times.

There is good solid evidence that passive smoking kills. But evenso, no-one would doubt that active smoking kills. Cigarettes are the only legal product on the market with no purpose other than to kill their user. The world is full of people incapable of making the decision to avoid somoking cigarettes - a good reason to legislate cigarettes out of existence if ever there was one.

In a generation or so, they wouldn't be missed.

No, I haven't falled for spin. I've looked at the evidence and on the basis of that have developed my own opinion.

That is that while smoking is no doubt a killer, the case for passive smoking is unproven, and is likely to stay that way.

It must be comforting to have the view that someone who disagrees with you is naive and malleable. Unfortunately that view could be misinterpreted as arrogance.

Yes, but even if passive smoking is not a health risk, smoking should still be banned! Smoking causes quite a few deaths, cost people quite a few pounds and makes quite a few public places stink of smoke (which I really hate).

I won't quote any statistics because I don't have any, but the evidence/research that has been done surely confirms that enough people are dying of smoking that banning it would not be such a bad idea?

However, I remain undecided about banning alcohol. I don't think this causes nearly as much harm as long as people don't get too attached to it and let it become an addiction. A couple of units every night isn't too bad, it's when people drink loads of the stuff that it becomes a problem.

But , I don't think drink will be banned anytime soon (certainly not before smoking anyway!).

Meanwhile, why not have a nice cuppa .

hello there, I smoked for 27 odd years and have stopped for 5 or so.Unfortuneately all those things they say about reformed smokers are true ...yep smoking stinks and is just plain awful, erm we just don't see it until we stop.

I've also worked in the hospitality industry for 25 odd years , the last couple when not a smoker and I can tell you from personal experience it ( second hand smoke ) really stuffs you up.It coats you inside and out , wretched stuff.

If tobacco (or for that matter alcohole) had been invented now, I'm pretty sure it would have been banned in most places anyway. The problem now (depending on how you see it), is more the fact that it's an integrated part of society as we know it. Though measures are being made to minimize it.

Smoking in small doses is anti social if there are non-smokers around.
Drinking in small doses is not.

When I'm round a friend’s and they are drinking and I am driving I do not come home reeking of smoke or my contact lenses feeling dry and uncomfortable. If I had asthma I wouldn't feel the need to 'get a breath of fresh air'.

You would not stay in a smoke filled room out of choice so why do we let people fill the room with smoke in the first place? (How many people do you know who will stand down wind of a bonfire on purpose?)

A few myth breakers as well:

°Nicotine is added solely for it's addictive affect, as the French Health commercials are spouting out nowadays 'you are being manipulated'.

°Cigarettes do not have any relaxants in them it is purely psychological.

°The physical addiction wears off after just 4 weeks of abstinence, the psychological addiction is the reason you crave after that time.

On the other hand if smoking were banned there would be a great loss in tax income and more pensions to pay which is why the government wont ban it outright.

Mel

Mel,

Number three is total codswallop.

I gave up smoking seven years ago, and I still go through periods of an intense *physical* craving. There is nothing psychological about it. I suspect that smoking actually alters brain chemistry in addicted smokers.

Muzzlehatch, how do you know there's nothing psychological about it? You could be mistaking a psycological craving for a physical one.

The mind can have a powerful effect on the body.

Mel, that's very interesting. Especially number 1 and number 2.

That nicotine is added solely for it's addictive effect, shows us that cigarette companies are forcing people to smoke by getting them addicted. Therefore the cigarette companies are violating the individual's freedom of choice by taking away a person's ability to reject cigarettes. So, rather than excercising their freedom to choose to smoke, smokers are simply demonstrating that their freedom of choice is a myth.

That cigarettes do not have any relaxants in them, shows us that the cigarette has no worthwhile purpose whatsoever. People spend their hard-earned money on something that has one purpose only and that's to kill the user whilst enriching the tobacco company.

Do all you smokers feel guilty yet?

Well, the last time I heard something like that it was said by her physician to a woman who had severe headaches. It turned out, a year later, that she had a malignant brain tumour.

I think people sometimes try to dismiss the experiences of other people by calling them 'psychological'. When I gave up smoking the effects I felt were a mixture of physical and psychological. I found it fairly easy to distinguish the two. When, by means of a totally logical and unemotional train of thought I decided that the best way of beating the craving was to have a cigarette, then that was clearly psychological! I also had a couple of episodes of extreme rage, which were very unlike me, but I suspect that while the results were 'psychological' their cause was physical. I do know that the mind can have powerful effects, but I do recognise a physical craving. Unless you are trying to tell me that hunger and thirst are psychological in origin. And why should I still be experiencing psychological effects seven years after giving up?

One thing to bear in mind, Empty Sky, is that while smoking is definitely a dangerous habit, interestingly it does have some benefits. So far as being a relaxant, I have read that smoking acts both as a tranquilliser and a stimulant under different circumstances. It has certainly been proved that tasks requiring concentration and fast reflexes are performed best by smokers (during, of course, the time when they are not feeling any craving for a smoke). Also if you smoke you stand a much lower chance of getting Parkinson's Disease. And smokers have a much lower rate of Alzheimer's disease. Mind you, with regard to the latter results, I do not know whether the reseachers took into account the factor that smokers tend to die much younger, before they have the chance to develop Alzheimer's!

Muzzlehatch, the fact that tasks requiring concentration are performed best by smokers doesn't prove anything. It's just as likely that a placebo effect is in operation. Smokers BELIEVE they are more relaxed and capable while smoking, therefore they are. It's not an endorsemant of smoking, it simply shows that giving in to a habit helps a person relax.


Surely the fact that smoking acts both as a tranquilliser and a stimulant under different circumstances shows that psycological expectation (placebo) effects are at work.

thats true, but if we were to ban the manufacturing of cigarettes, there would be a huge black market for cigarettes, like the Prohibition period in America. The problems with black market cigarettes are that the chemicals are less pure and its worse for both smoker and passive smoker.

A black market for cigarettes jumped in in the early 1990's in Canada when the government raised the tax on cigarettes substancially to discourage smoking.