Surgeon General: 1 Cigarette Is 1 Too Many

[onehandle]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON — Think the occasional cigarette won't hurt? Even a bit of social smoking – or inhaling someone else's secondhand smoke – could be enough to block your arteries and trigger a heart attack, says the newest surgeon general's report on the killer the nation just can't kick.

Lung cancer is what people usually fear from smoking, and yes, that can take years to strike. But Thursday's report says there's no doubt that tobacco smoke begins poisoning immediately – as more than 7,000 chemicals in each puff rapidly spread through the body to cause cellular damage in nearly every organ.

"That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack," said Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. Or the one that triggers someone else's: "I advise people to try to avoid being around smoking any way that you can," she said.

About 443,000 Americans die from tobacco-caused illnesses every year. While the smoking rate has dropped dramatically since 1964, when the first surgeon general's report declared tobacco deadly, progress has stalled in the past decade. About 46 million adults – one in five – still smoke, and tens of millions more are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. The government had hoped to drop the smoking rate to 12 percent by this year, a goal not only missed but that's now been put off to 2020. Thursday's report is the 30th issued by the nation's surgeons general to warn the public about tobacco's risks.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/surgeon-general-1-cigaret_n_794250.html

[RandomThoughts]

1. Smoking is not healthy and a bad idea.

However, in metaphor.

Smoke'em if you got em.

"Our spotters say you got a few of them with that blast"



and for a few weeks, every time I post something that shows what some think, someone cuts off my internet for a few minutes, but I then post again a few minutes later.

Why is that, if they did not want me to post, wouldn't they keep it off? It is an attempt at stimulus training. To try to add some kind of negative stimulus after a post.

[ixion]

2. But by all means help yourself to some BigPharma or Fast Food Garbage

because that's just good eatin'. :eyes:

[udbcrzy2]

7. Neighbor is nurse who continually shames me for smoking

But, she is obese and waddles when she walks. Go figure...

My dentist complains about my smoking, but he's a skydiver and motocross rider.
Go figure that one too...

[notesdev]

3. Yeah?

Tell your boss that... you can catch him during his smoke break if he's busy otherwise

[LuvNewcastle]

4. If I walk past a man smoking in the park

and I have a heart attack later in the week, can I sue him? What if I smoke around my kids, should someone call child services? It's good to discourage people from smoking, but they shouldn't make shit up. If a man is on oxygen and spends his days in a smoky tavern, I can see how that could be unhealthy, but a whiff of smoke causing a heart attack? Come on.

[Fearless]

6. If you smoke around your kids...

Knowing that it is proven 100% to be harmful. And they are 100% unable to be removed from the situation, such as in a moving vehicle. Is this not negligence on your part? Does it matter if it's only once or every day? At what point would it go from not being negligent to being negligent? After 5 times? 30? 400? If damage is being done, proven 100%, with each breath inhaled by the child. You are harming that child each time. Are you not then negligent if you are aware of this fact and continue to do it?

[LuvNewcastle]

8. First of all, I don't have kids.

I have a niece and a nephew who are around me sometimes when I smoke. In fact, when I step outside for a smoke, they usually come out with me and we talk for a little bit. I don't blow smoke in their faces. If I'm in my car and I have a passenger, I roll down the window a bit before I light up. I use common sense and observe common courtesies when I smoke, but I have little patience for hysterical people who act as if cigarette smoke is like mustard gas. I wouldn't be surprised if one day the Surgeon General declared that tobacco smoke is worse than mustard gas. There are some people who are looking to be a offended all the time and some of these anti-smoking zealots are actually hurting their cause. When people catch them lying about one thing, all the rest of their warnings are suspect.

[Fearless]

9. I meant the rhetorical "you" not you personally.

Please don't construe what I said as a personal attack. I don't know you and I don't intend to judge you for anything.

In regards to mustard gas and cigarettes. Cigarettes kill more people a year than mustard gas ever has, so I'd agree with the sentiment that it is worse of a threat than mustard gas. Otherwise it's a non sequitur hyperbole when speaking of the dangers of cigarette smoke in realistic terms.

[LuvNewcastle]

10. I wasn't offended; I didn't think you

were being rude. I used mustard gas as an example of how some people use distortions to make their point in a debate. For instance, it is commonly asserted that cigarettes are as addictive as heroin. While that statement may be true, the implication is far from the truth, that is that cigarettes are just as dangerous as heroin. All I'm saying is that we already know enough about the dangers of smoking that we can discourage people from doing it with the scientific facts we already have. When the Surgeon General gets up and makes assertions like this, it arouses suspicion that the rest of the warnings about using tobacco are spurious as well.

Also, one could also say that cigarettes are worse than nuclear weapons, judging by their comparative death tolls. Obesity is also 'worse' than nuclear weapons for the same reason, but what are we trying to accomplish by making these assertions. These examples are used to mislead people and it isn't necessary to this. When the facts are already on your side, why make up tall tales?

[LanternWaste]

14. Much like asking if you can sue someone you walk by who's smoking a cigarette?

"...how some people use distortions to make their point in a debate."

Much like asking if you can sue someone you walk by who's smoking a cigarette?

(Being disingenuous is being disingenuous, regardless of form or format)

[LuvNewcastle]

17. That wasn't a distortion. If it becomes generally

accepted that smokers cause heart attacks in people who breathe a whiff of secondhand smoke, it follows that smokers could be sued for endangering the health of others. That is the way our legal system works -- if it's plausible that your misfortune was caused by negligence or the malicious acts of someone else, you can sue their pants off. A distortion has little or no basis in reality. The scenario I described is very possible if most Americans believe every crazy thing they hear. And we know that they often do.

[Rozlee]

5. Does anyone know anything about the effects of early smoking ...

vs. starting smoking at a later age and resuming smoking after quitting? I remember hearing something about it years ago--around the time that Peter Jennings died--that suggested that. He'd quit for some years and come up with healthy exams of his lungs but then started smoking again and caught lung cancer five years later. I think I also heard them say that people that start smoking at an earlier age seem to get cancer a lot less than people that start smoking in their 30s or 40s. Might have been propaganda. I just worry. My son is in his 30s and shocked me by suddenly starting smoking because he got involved with some skank that smokes.

[RobinA]

11. It's This Kind

of ridiculous hyperbole that makes people, especially kids, not believe a word of any warning that comes along. Kinda like the drug "education." Wouldn't believe a word the government told me about any drug, thanks to their lies in the '60's and '70's.

[Ginto]

12. Ban it! nt

[G. L. Herter]

13. Surgeon General's reports

The first SG report stated more than once that pipe smokers have the same risk of disease as non-smokers. Pipes produce quite a lot more smoke than cigarettes, so one would think that second-hand smoke alone would be knocking off all the pipe-smokers, were second-hand smoke actually dangerous.

How can it simultaneously be true that second-hand smoke is injurious, and that pipe smokers have the same life expectancy as non-smokers? No wonder I don't trust the government much, especially with scientific matters.

[Greyskye]

16. Not quite true.

Pipe smokers have a greater risk of mouth cancer than do non-smokers. And more recent studies that I just glanced at indicate that pipe smokers do have a higher risk of cancers and heart disease than non-smokers as well. So let's look at current reports to make comparisons, as that's only fair.

I would venture that the difference in the lung cancer rates between cigarettes and pipes are mostly two-fold. One reason is that pipe smoke is not as deeply inhaled into the lungs as is cigarette smoke. The other would be that the 'extra' ingredients in cigarettes that are used for burning agents are extremely carcinogenic themselves. Here's the brief list, there are over 4,000 others in addition to these, over 40 of which are known carcinogens:

# Arsenic used in rat poison
# Acetic Acid hair dye and photo developer
# Acetone main ingredient in paint and fingernail polish remover
# Ammonia a typical household cleaner
# Benzene rubber cement
# Cadmium found in batteries and artists' oil paint
# Carbon Monoxide poison
# Hydrazine used in jet and rocket fuels
# Formaldehyde used to embalm dead bodies
# Hydrogen Cyanide poison in gas chambers
# Napthalenes used in explosives, moth balls, and paint pigments
# Nickel used in the process of electroplating
# Phenol used in disinfectants and plastics
# Polonium radiation dosage
# Toluene embalmer's glue

[ileus]

15. I think we can all agree with that.

40 years....and I've smoked 0. If I can do it, anyone can.