There is an interesting and chilling new study out on smoking. It is well understood that smoking is a leading cause of death. However, the leading study on the morality rate is derived from a 1956 study called the “British Doctors Study” that found a roughly fifty percent mortality rate. A new study however by BMC Medicine has found that the rate is more like 66 percent or two out of three smokers will die as a result of smoking related illness.
The study is huge in size following 204,953 men and women over 45 years old from New South Wales, Australia. The work by the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University found a much higher rate of morality than previously thought. The study also found that smokers tended to come from less educated and less affluent populations, a fact previously found in other studies.
Despite the findings, I remain convinced that such risks should be left to individuals to measure. However, the study reaffirms the dangers of this product. Indeed, it may be unique. Is there any other product that can be sold that is both so addictive and so ultimately lethal?
Oily; ‘so addictive and lethal’. No, total lie. Please explain at least rather than think us dumb enough to just believe.
Bad Pappies 🙂
lolol Ari you are funny but you are right — I am always misbehaving and i don’t consider it a sin. — 😉
HappyPappies….Issac is NOT interested in discussing the alternative. I ceased naming it here because I had named it so frequently previously with little or no response. It is an alternative that has no future for the general population. It could have had one, but apparently didn’t have enough political and lobbyist input or whatever. Of course the PPACA has no positive future either, for other reasons…among them just how do they define “middle class?” I ask that because it is openly acknowledged that the middle class could not afford the ACA without subsidy…with no discussion of just what the income cap is for middle class subsidy. Those I know who have had to accommodate themselves to the ACA find that fairly low income is above the cap. In short, last I checked, $46,000 per year is the cap…and that is barely middle class in today’s world….where the median income level is $50,500 per year.
Ari
I know, I couldn’t resist
😉
Jim22
Your response illustrates a fundamental flaw in your ability to read, carefully, the positions of others as well as a seemingly innate penchant to reduce positions to an us or them condition. Tobacco has been proven to be addictive, dangerous to one’s health, extremely costly to a medical and health service that every American pays for, and further more allowed to be considered as a right vis a vis marketing as well as use. The very ingredients/poisons included in a cigarette contribute primarily to the damage done: addiction, cancer, stink, etc.
Your comparison with athletic and healthy activities reduces your position in this discussion to nothing more than pure reaction, for whatever reasons you may have.
Alcohol and tobacco can be, when used responsibly, and when not containing hundreds of chemicals and other poisons, non dangerous to health if even beneficial to health. However including the chemicals and poisons when used to excess Alcohol and tobacco more often than not lead to high costs that are ultimately levied on society as a whole. In other words we all pay for the stupidity and/or weaknesses of a few.
As a society we cannot refuse medical treatment to those in need but without the resources. We are, hopefully, emerging from a time when private for profit insurance companies will either tax those who indulge or refuse altogether access to health care-the last of our peer nations to do so. The cost remains. The best way to connect the increased cost of health care due to the abuse of alcohol and tobacco to those abusing these products is to tax them. In some cases, and this is where you need to pay attention, it does contribute to lowering and/or eliminating consumption, which reduces health costs and benefits the individual as well as the society.
Education, one very effective way of reducing alcohol and tobacco abuse, is also something that costs society as a whole and something that could be funded partially if not completely through taxation.
Whether or not our politicians use the taxes appropriately is an unrelated issue. Our politicians need to be elected by a more informed voter, focusing on the issues and not the ideologies that seem to be driven by jingoism and ignorant responses to sore points.
There are those that routinely rail against the government and income tax, etc., that a person should be allowed to earn and keep what they earn. This is the position that was taken from the inception of the US up to the first income taxes were introduced between 1862 and 1911. Up until then, either through internal taxation or import duties, funding for the government was through a ‘pay at the pump’ concept, primarily on stuff like tobacco and alcohol.
Times are much more complicated now but a ‘pay at the pump’ approach to tobacco and alcohol is not only not unAmerican, but directly practical.
In most other more advanced nations, our peer nations, tobacco and alcohol is taxed at a much higher rate. These funds may or may not wholly or in part be used to offset the damage and cost some may inflict on all but they are available. In most instances some, if not all revenue is applied to universal health care. So, this is not appropriate, has no precedent, has no successful examples?
In these countries people still imbibe. No one suffers.
isaac, I’m not sure if I should give you credit or be scared that openly accept the govt. stealing property from citizens with the disguise that it will be used for a specific purpose only to give it away to others.
You never answered about people playing sports or runners who end up with injuries. Should we tax the hell out of sneakers?
I also think you are just plain wrong that the tax is why people quit. Education of the effects of smoking has way more to due with it. People are smarter sometimes than the lemmings you wish they were.
Jim22
You seem to think that all money government collects should go exactly where it is supposed to. It may come from varied sources but it all goes into one big pot. Then it is appropriated based on the political and oligarchical power structure. The bottom line is the more money the better. If tobacco costs all of us by taking from the big pot, then let smokers put more back in. Whether or not the health costs are offset is another issue. However, if there is less money, the issue is moot, dead before it comes up.
My arguments are not so much ideological but essentially, one should pay for one’s way. If you smoke ten packs of $20 a pack cigarette a month then you don’t pay so much tax and you don’t do so much damage that will cost us all. If you smoke ten packs a week then you pay more for the more expensive care we will all end up paying for. If the high cost of smoking persuades you to quit then it is a win win-no ideology, just simple math.
Karen-same with private health insurance. It is one of the reasons we pay two to three times more than we should. Just math.
Issac
Aridog showed me a great plan concept is embodied in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Employees_Health_Benefits_Program and here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr3319
He said to me he had great ideas to share with you if you were interested.
Fifty two years ago when I read that smokers, on the average, lived 10 years less than non-smokers, I quit the next day. I had smoked for 12 years. Never went back to smoking, and, for at least 30 years had occasional dreams where I was smoking, but rationalized it away (in the dreams) because I was a regular runner. Lots of powerful addiction with smoking.
“reason people change”
Karen, You just don’t get it. isaac believes that the only reason change is if a govt. tax moves them in that way. We could have never figured out that smoking was bad on ourselves. Thank God the govt. took money from smokers and passed it on to what ever they wanted. isaac won’t believe this but taxing hasn’t stopped smokers, education of the health issues did.
Karen S. said ….
If a nonprofit health insurance company arose that trimmed premiums and improved quality of care, it would be wildly successful, and out-compete all other business models, all on its own, without government mandating it.
That may very well explain my choice of provider and supplemental insurer…both non-profit, and more affordable by far than most others in my locale, and I suspect elsewhere as well. In some 30+ years of this service, both carrier and provider, I haven’t a serious complaint.
My largest out of pocket expenses are for medications, and they are reduced by a good co-pay system. My largest out of pocket expenses for direct care usually amount to $16 or so occasionally…less than the contracted co-pays in fact. This can only happen, given I am under Medicare as well, by efficient operation. So, it IS possible and it IS done in some locations.
BTW..once I had to take Medicare (at age 65), my premium costs overall went up by a factor of 4:1…so spare me the argument that federal care is less costly. I still have no complaint, even with the higher premiums. The system I am cared for under is both efficient economically and physically…as I’ve said elsewhere, I am a twice now cancer survivor.
Why are other nations less obese and more healthy? Several reasons:
1. Less popularity of processed food and fast food, and higher emphasis on cuisine, fresh whole foods, and home cooked meals. (Have you seen the school lunch menus in France?) As fast food chains open up, obesity rates rise.
2. More physically active. Walking and biking are more popular in other countries.
I do not believe that the French are taxed into health and fitness, although they are taxed to within a centimeter of their lives.
Isaac:
“Regarding drawing the line, when it can be established that certain products are harmful to a consumer’s health and also cost even those that do not consume them, there should be a tax levied to offset the expense.”
Voters passed the tobacco taxes to fund anti-smoking initiatives, which would save costs to society as smoking went down. It’s usually quite easy to pass taxes that a minority pay. However, as the link I’ve included somewhere above shows, only a distressingly tiny fraction of this revenue actually went to its stated purpose. The rest is free “pork” for the politicians. For instance, it is one of the controversial sources of revenue that Governor Brown is using to fund his pork high speed rail project. And you know how much I HATE tax-and-spend wastefulness. Predictably, as smoking has become less acceptable socially all on its own, that revenue has decreased. So the politicians just propose another tax hike on tobacco, having wasted almost all of the money already.
I agree with you that smoking is bad. I disagree that we should give politicians apparently little to no accountability on a room full of treasure paid for by addicts, and then allow them to keep squeezing them for more.
Isaac:
“My opposition to the private for profit health care insurance system is based primarily on statistics that illustrate that the several hundred thousand redundant insurance workers are factored into our premiums.”
If a nonprofit health insurance company arose that trimmed premiums and improved quality of care, it would be wildly successful, and outcompete all other business models, all on its own, without government mandating it.
The government apparently cannot mandate efficiency or cost savings. Look at its attempt at “saving American families $2500 a year.” Because of their “help” my premiums more than doubled and my deductible increased 1100%, and I often have to pay out of pocket to see a doctor. And the annual spending cap does NOT include premiums, according to my insurance documents.
And there is no need to mandate something like this. If it saves people money and is higher quality, they will vote with their feet and their wallets.
Look at how successful and mainstream organic foods and products have become, all on their own, using the will of the people and market forces. What does government support? Monsanto’s GMOs.