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Claimed dangers of tobacco are mostly a result of propaganda
As no cause-effect connection has ever been established between tobacco use and any of the 101 ailments it has been epidemiologically associated with, the latest bout of demonisation which tobacco is currently receiving leaves me decidedly unimpressed. For example, despite 50+ years of subjecting many different laboratory animals (such as dogs, monkeys, rats, mice, and so on) to enormous amounts of tobacco smoke – in one instance laboratory mice were forced to inhale the human equivalent of 62 packs of cigarettes a day – no animal has ever developed lung cancer. For another example, in the USA, where all the furore started back in the ‘fifties’, whilst the number of people using tobacco has dropped from approx. 50% of the population back then to approx. 25% nowadays the incidence of lung cancer has risen, not fallen.
What is of particular note is that the cause of liver cancer, cervical cancer, throat cancer and stomach cancer has recently been discovered to be bacterial/viral, all the while that tobacco was being blamed and valuable research dollars were being allocated elsewhere, and some preliminary research is showing indications that bacteria/viruses might also be the cause of lung cancer ... and maybe even heart disease.
Also, the figures published claiming, say, 350,000 deaths in a given year from tobacco-related diseases are not figures derived from a body-count – there are no such dead bodies in graves to count – as they are 350,000 (or whatever) phantom deaths generated by a computer programme such as SAMMEC II ... meaning that it is the epidemiological data that is fed into the computer which determines the statistical deaths the programme prints out.
Lastly (as I have no interest in belabouring the subject) those graphic photographs showing a slimy-black cancerous lung, labelled ‘smoker’s lung’, and a shiny-pink healthy lung, labelled ‘non-smoker’s lung’, are nothing but propaganda: the slimy-black lung should read ‘cancerous lung’ (and could very well be a non-smoker’s lung) and the shiny-pink lung should read ‘healthy lung’ (and could very well be a smoker’s lung) as it is impossible for a pathologist to determine, from both gross and microscopic examination of lung tissue, whether a person who died from other causes (such as a vehicular accident) is a smoker or a non-smoker.
The following URL covers all this and much more: https://lcolby.myvtoronte.com/
While this is very scholarly, upon reflection let me say:
Fuck you.
My late mother smoked pretty much all her life, tried and failed to stop smoking various times, and over the years I could see that the amount she smoked increased. She tried switching to low-tar cigarettes, but ending up smoking way more of them, presumably to get the same effect. EDIT: My father, on the other hand, smoked but succeeded in quitting and lived to be 81 before he died of an unrelated illness.
Eventually she got lung cancer. It was diagnosed very late, partly as a result of her reluctance to go to the doctor until the symptoms were undeniable (coughing up black phlegm in the mornings) and partly because the tumour was behind her shoulder blade so they didn't pick it up on x-rays until it was too big and too late for anything.
They offered her chemotherapy as more of a sop than any hope it would do anything; the first bout of it made her so sick that she refused any more, and the doctors said "yeah, it wouldn't do anything anyway".
I saw her die of it. It is a horrible, painful, wretched way to die, even with morphine as a palliative.
So maybe, yeah, maybe it's all propaganda that tobacco gives you cancer. But if some fool reads this, and starts smoking, and gets cancer, that is a miserable and avoidable death.
So, once again, Fuck. You.
And don't try to tell me she didn't die of lung cancer or that the smoking didn't cause it or any bullshit. Like your stupid-ass example of "if someone is killed in a car crash, it's not because they smoked so that shouldn't be counted as tobacco-related death" - who the fuck is counting "died in a car crash" as "died from smoking"?
Similar to the way in which falsely convicting a person of murder lets a murderer get away, falsely laying the blame on tobacco for any number of sprawling diseases let's the real or primary cause go unaddressed.
and beliefs/reactions like yours are part of the reason stupid status quo narratives built of straw continue for decades causing avoidable death and suffering
it's a stupid status quo narrative built of straw, eh? Then I welcome you to develop a heavy smoking habit for thirty years. As you say, it won't do you a particle of harm and you can laugh at me at the end of that period when you don't have bad health and a condition that will kill you.
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The smoking like a chimney -> lung cancer connection is pretty darned well established.
Without looking up anything: If you had to guess what % of people who smoke for at least 10 years develop lung cancer in older age, what do you think it would be?
The early studies which started the public health trend were trash. They take a situation where large portions of the population smoked cigarettes and then divined a tobacco cause when any number of other uncontrolled variables confound the ridiculous correlations they "find." It's akin to seeing a low class mortality correlation and then picking out any number of low class behaviors to "blame."
But that's really a separate discussion from the comment to which I responded which was akin to "I believe x and fuck you for questioning it because I have emotional trauma around it. Also, you're partly to blame for 'unnecessary death" for pointing out various odd observation which bring into question that belief."
10 years? 10 years is rookie smoking. Both my relatives who died of lung cancer smoked for over 50 years.
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