Why do you smoke?

I did not mean to imply otherwise. However, the ultimate danger, death from smoking, is something that only affects one out of every three smokers.

Well, you see, I'm not entirely certain that they include those or not. It is an anti-smoking ad campaign (it's called The Truth - I don't know how much play they get outside the US, so you may or may not have heard of it). I'm sure they don't just count the people who died of lung cancer or the like. They specifically say one in three die due to a smoking related disease. It seems to me that would include smoking making them more vulnerable to other illnesses, but as I said, I'm not sure how they came up with such a number.

I wasn't even saying that Tal's comment wasn't true - I just had to respond because it came off as such a "master of the obvious" comment. And I still say that such a statement applies to almost every disease. Here's another example. One in three people in the US have heart disease by the time they reach 65 years old. Every year tons of people die before they reach the age of 65, and therefore they don't get included in this statistic. While I cannot deny that it is extremely likely that even more people would be diagnosed with heart disease if everyone lived to be at least 65, I think it is unlikely that the number would change much from one in three. Similarly, if all the smokers who died of something else first had instead lived, I'd imagine one in three of the survivors would also die from some smoking related issue.

 

As many times as i've tried, i've just never had that "last one". I've been smoking on & off for years, and that'll probably never change.

My doctor once told me that you can smoke 3 a day with no bad health effects, as your lungs can clean out that crap fast enough. I tend to stick to that as a maximum.

 

Considering my mother died from lung cancer when I was 22, I am not a smoker. It will always be a sore spot with me that she never got to meet my wife or my son because she preferred to smoke.

It is easy to say you don't want to live to be old and wearing a diaper. However, you tend to forget the people you don't get to meet because you choose to die young.

 

It's not just the "dying horribly" that is the only downside. There is also the impacts on other aspects of health generally (like getting puffed out when doing anything mildly strenuous), the antisocial impact of smelling like an ashtray, and the fact that it is so mindblowingly expensive. I don't see how most people can AFFORD to smoke. No way that I could afford it.

 

I was actually one of the few that started smoking as an adult (23) because I had gotten past the age where I was just doing it to be cool. My grandparents smoked like chimneys, and all my life I've thought about cigarettes when I've gotten stressed out. Now I do it to keep from killing people.
The only difference is that I smoke, MAYBE 2 a week. Not two packs, two cigarettes. I know that I could still get ill from it, but I'm not as worried.

 

I smoked like that for a while too Dragon's Jewel. The funny thing about using smoking for a stress reliever is that when life gets more stressful you tend to smoke a little more. After a while when you smoke a little more you want a smoke more often. It can creep up on you. I was up to smoking 1/2 pack a day when I quit. I'm not saying that you can't control your "light" habit, I'm just suggesting that you keep in mind that it can become a sever addiction.

Geesh - I hope I don't sound like I'm preaching to you Dragon, I'm not. I just identify with your story.

 

I started smoking randomly, maybe once a month when I was 17. Social smoking, when I was out having fun with my buddies. Alcohol might have had something to do with the matter

This continued up until three years ago, when I started smoking regularly because it was unhealthy. Self-destructive tendencies...But now I've started to have the feeling that there's no need nor any point trying to kill myself slowly and painfully.

 

Watching my mother on her 6 month sickbed due to lung cancer made me shift to the abolish it camp. Thankfully it was not the lungcancer that got her. She was one of the two and died due to the cancer that had spread into her head. That way she was losing her mind and wits before the sickbed. How did she long for death, she begged for dead, but buying catholic she had to endure.

So when someone lights a smoke, that is what I see and think of.

 

And being a non-smoker, when I see someone light up, I think of the same thing. Thus, my original question and my inability to wrap my head around why people would start.

I see it as somewhat like the question of "would you rather freeze to death or burn to death?" (which invariably leads to question of how fast death would come in either case, etc.) In the end, rarely do people choose the option to die a slow, horrible and painful death. In my opinion, choosing to smoke is choosing this sort of fate. I know that not every case ends like this, but the chances that it will certainly don’t decrease because you smoke.

 

i smoke because i want to, i must admit i don't really care about the effects of it.

same reason when it comes to drinking

 

As stupid as it might sound, I've started about a two years ago at about the same time I started smoking Marijuana. Meh, I know... Should stop, but it's kinda hard.

 

I am regularly surprised by just how timely and relevant even the non-editorial comics can be.