Anti-Smoking 
This Page is dedicated to
Anti-Smoking
At the height of happy hour, a man stood up and shouted. "All smokers are assholes!"
"Hey I resent that!" a guy at the end of the bar hollered back.
"Why?" the first man asked. "Are you a smoker?"
"No! I'm an asshole."
Excellent article by a local doctor discussing
the insanity of smoking
Sometimes I Wonder "Why Bother?": article
from my local paper
Here is a disturbing picture of a smoking woman complaining that construction
noise may be affecting her unborn child.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/pregnant.asp#photo
Smoke-free law 'would
save lives' according to British Doctors
"These doctors are telling us that partial measures don't work. It's time
for the UK Government to play fair, and protect everyone from exposure to second-hand
smoke at work."
Guy
throws cigarette out window, and it blows back in torching his SUV!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/18/BAGM9BDF021.DTL
Weyco, made
famous as one of the first major companies to ban smoking, EVEN AWAY FROM WORK!
Apparently
it is very legal, so other companies could do it
They offer to help employees quit
Click
Here to
go to Newest Input
.
Notes:
I wanted to make a clever page dedicated to anti-smoking but have discovered that I really can't compete with what's already out there. Check out the links at the bottom of the page to see some really detailed pages! If anyone has any suggestions to what I can do to enhance this page, or just some ideas to add to it, I can be E-mailed at keithco@comcast.net. I'm also looking for any relevant pictures to add to this page. Something like a disfigured lung might be nice. For now, this page is mainly a listing of facts that I've found from the newspaper, web pages and a few other sources.
This is a NON-SMOKING Web Page
In the papers released by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. under the settlement of a San Francisco lawsuit, it was revealed that the cigarette business is quite simple. If you haven't started smoking by age 18, you probably never will. If you do start, your first brand is the one you will stick with until it kills you. Therefore brand success depends on getting teenagers hooked.
Now the trick is how to get people hooked. The papers also revealed RJ's strategy: "The non-smoker does not start smoking to obtain undefined physiological gratifications or reliefs ... Rather, he appears to start to smoke for purely psychological reasons: to emulate a valued image, to conform, to experiment, to deity, to defy, to be daring, to have something to do with his hands." Basically this means that the positive (arguable) chemical effects they give you aren't what attracts teenagers to smoking, but instead the psychological high that you gain from supposedly improving your image.
Due to the recent apparent defeat of the major smoking manufacturers, some rejoicing should be done!
However, I'm a little worried that the public is being conned a little so that the heads of the cigarette companies are able to make profits for years to come. Hopefully this is a CEO version of 'raiding the royal coffers just before they are dethroned'. The deal appears to make it possible for the cigarette companies to continue making profits for at least a decade. I'm a little concerned that the companies are rich enough to be able to pay out $15 billion a year for the next 25 years. This should be a lesson as to what kinds of profits they are making at the expense of the country's health. The fact that the deal makes it impossible to ban nicotine until the year 2009 is especially disheartening.
I do think it is a plus that all the advertising and vending machines will be removed. I also like the fact that the cigarette companies are losing many of their easy venues into the children's market.
President Clinton certainly deserves a lot of credit for the negative strides that Cigarettes have made in the last 3-5 years or so. He has allowed the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assert jurisdiction over tobacco products; he made federal workplaces smoke-free, and he placed tobacco squarely on the public agenda. However, since the Republicans won the congressional race, he has had to back off severely, which is allowing the Cigarette companies time to regroup.
The Democrats have talked about making the Republicans’ refusal to push through the tobacco settlement a focal point of the November mid-term elections. And the tobacco firms are pointing out that the two anti-smoking lawyers that live in the White House have only two years left on their lease. The industry is already spending a reported $600m a year on lawyers’ fees alone
The smoking lobby appears to be trying to make a deal like they did in 1964 when the surgeon general first linked smoking with cancer. Before any ban could be made, the cigarette companies ran to Congress and made a deal to attach warning labels and restrictions on advertising. Now they are trying to compromise with statements regarding caps on lawsuits (or even not allowing them at all!), not allowing the FDA to be involved for 15 years, and a general free reign in all other venues. All these will be very detrimental to the cause of stopping smoking since the momentum should not be stopped.
Smoking is an Evil that needs to be erased from the planet. The companies behind cigarettes serve no purpose other than to make more people want to smoke more cigarettes. This is easy because cigarettes do nothing for an individual other than make him want more Cigarettes. Cigarette manufactures have redesigned cigarettes over the years to enhance their addictive qualities. Watching children smoking at a young age and realizing that the odds are that they won't stop until they're dead is very depressing.
It's easy to see just how addictive Cigarettes are by driving around your local town. Stop at your local 7-11 and watch the children in the parking lot begging for older people to purchase their cigarettes for them. Next drive around your local business districts. If you ever want to see the positive steps that society is taking towards making smokers feel like social outcasts, just take a look at all the unattractive overweight people standing outside the front doors of office buildings in the rain. These people would never choose to be sitting out there exposing their weakness off to the public unless nicotine addiction has removed their caring about their self image.
It is an unfortunate fact that keeping people from smoking must be far easier than getting them to quit. Parents who smoke in front of their children obviously don't understand or care about what message this sends to their children. This is disturbing on top of the fact that the 2nd hand smoke, damage to fetal tissue, and other harms that smoking around your children can do.
If cigarettes were invented yesterday, there is no way that they would be considered legal today. Almost all illegal drugs are considered illegal for most of the same facts that cigarettes also share. Not that I want to condone Pot or Alcohol, but at least these harmful drugs give the user some sense of being 'high'. Cigarettes are only harmful and addictive.
All through history society has known that cigarette smoking is addictive, dangerous, and generally annoying to those who don't smoke. However, since too many people consider it a 'necessary vice', we see smoking being done by those who want to be on the fringe of rebellion. This means that some kids will become addicts due to their possibly temporary urge to look cool, or to make a statement. It is a mistake for a child to consider smoking a cigarette in the same category as wearing a leather jacket or getting a nose ring.
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Q: How much does smoking affect a woman's fetus?
A: Before a pregnant woman lights up a cigarette, a healthy baby's heartbeat is steady and regular. Tobacco smoke, however constricts blood vessels in the mother and fetus, restricting the flow of blood. As the fetal heart starts beating louder and quicker, it tries to adjust to the toxins in the blood. Within 5 minutes, the fetal heart rate increases by 50 percent or more, and the mother's blood pressure increases. Tars, nicotine and other chemical deposits become integrated into the amniotic fluid. Whatever the mom takes, in, the baby also ingests and the fetus gets a lot more in proportion, because it is so tiny. Tobacco, like alcohol, is especially risky for a pregnant woman to consume in the first trimester, when all the major organs start developing in the fetus.
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October 31st, 2002 Additions:
There is good evidence that tobacco control advertising bans, warning labels, public information campaigns and various legal and economic interventions does curtail consumption. In much of the industrialised world, smoking rates are declining because of price increases on cigarettes, restrictions on smoking in public places and ample warnings about the health risks. Developing countries, where smoking rates are on the rise and expected to overtake rich-country levels over the next few years, have not yet introduced measures to change behaviour or to staunch the supply of cigarettes flowing in. The draft treaty, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, is aimed primarily at these poorer countries. Some 4.9m people die each year from smoking-related illnesses. The figure is likely to rise to more than 10m by 2030, when smoking is predicted to become the world’s leading cause of death. Most of these fatalities will occur in poor countries.
...
Price is the single most effective and efficient way to reduce consumption. Cigarette consumption can be expected to fall as prices rise, but revenues still increase because demand for cigarettes is relatively inelastic. Britain has raised cigarette taxes repeatedly over the past three decades. Consumption has fallen. Revenues, however, are still rising. Researchers estimate that in China, where smoking rates are rising quickly, a 10% increase in cigarette tax would cut consumption by 5% and increase revenues by 5%, enough to finance essential health care for a third of China’s poorest 100m people.
Governments, however, fear that price hikes give incentives to smugglers. Illicit trade, often involving organised crime, is a huge problem. A third of internationally exported cigarettes find their way into the contraband market, which represents a loss to governments of between $20 billion and $30 billion a year. The tobacco companies are accused of complicity in all this. They deny being actively involved. Treaty negotiators are looking at ways to crack down on crime, strengthen border controls, harmonise tax rates among countries in particular regions and phase out duty-free sales. Significantly, Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, has said the provisions regarding illicit trade ought to be strengthened.
Kicking the habit
Oct 28th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda
September 17, 2002 Additions:
For years, screenwriter and smoker Joe Eszterhas put cigarettes into the hands of actors. Now battling cancer, he is demanding that Hollywood stop glamorizing smoking, and the entertainment industry is bracing for renewed debate over its role in promoting the habit.
Web Master's comment: My only complaint is that it took Cancer to make him realize the error of his ways...
Brando's Smoking Performance
Film legend Marlon Brando was given a standing ovation by restaurant goers after threatening to throw out a cigarette-smoking diner. The Oscar-winning actor threatened to hurl actor Harry Dean Stanton out of the window for polluting the eaterie with his filthy habit. Brando, who is strongly anti-cigarettes, was dining in a Los Angeles diner when the disagreement kicked off.
June 2, 2001 Additions:
Smoke Screens Giving ammunition to activist groups that have attacked Hollywood for glamorizing cigarette smoking, a study conducted by Harvard University has indicated that smoking is being given unrealistic prominence in films -- especially among women, with 42 percent of actresses smoking on screen compared with the U.S. average for women of 25 percent. Young actresses were four times more likely to smoke in films than older ones. According to the study, which was published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, male actors were likely to be shown smoking in order to depict "masculine qualities." Actresses, on the other hand, were likely to be shown smoking in order to control their emotions or manifest sex appeal.
Tobacco Company Polls The Insider Moviegoers:
Hundreds of filmgoers leaving theaters showing Disney's Insider, The (1999/I) were met by
poll takers for the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, which said that the results of
the poll will be used to help it decide whether to sue Disney for libel, Bloomberg news
reported today (Monday). The financial news service said that audience members exiting
theaters were handed cards asking them to dial a toll-free number to answer "a few
important questions" about the movie. (Brown & Williamson figures prominently in
the film, since it was the tobacco company that industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, the
movie's central character, worked for.) However, Bloomberg observed, neither the cards nor
the recorded questions on the phone line disclosed that Brown & Williamson was behind
the poll. A spokesman for the tobacco company said that it did not disclose its name in
order to prevent the results from becoming skewed.
"60 minutes" just had a special talking about how Florida policeman actually ticket kids under the age of 18 who are caught smoking. They have to pay a $53 fine, or perform community service and need a parent to go to court with them. After 3 tickets, they lose their licence, or cannot get one until they are 18. The show discussed the possibility that this could backfire due to smoking being enforced as illegal may make more kids smoke. The fact that the cigarette manufacturers are backing this 'wholeheartedly', makes them (and me) wonder why. I think it's because by backing this bill, the cigarette manufacturers can claim they are not trying to encourage teenagers to smoke. Overall, I think this is a great thing since it is important for the government to make a stance that smoking isn't cool. If the entertainment industry would only take this stance as well, the number of nicotine addicts could decrease dramatically!
December, 1998 Additions:
I was told that in December '98, a now-defunct subsidiary of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corporation pleaded guilty and had to pay $15 million for its role in a large Canadian cigarette smuggling operation. The guilty plea marks the first time an affiliate of a major tobacco company has admitted to illegally conspiring with smugglers.
November 8, 1998 Additions:
"60 minutes" just did a 20 minutes special saying that smoking can be directly linked to impotence....
October 2, 1998 Additions:
Teen Males who smoke risk sperm damage
Teenage males who smoke cigarettes appear to be risking sperm damage that can cause gentic abnormalities in their children, researchers said yesterday. More specifically the birth defects that include abnormal duplicates of certain chromosomes that children inherit from their fathers. Such defects have been associated with mental deficits and shorter life spans in some offspring, researchers said. Now we can add possibly causing a genetic change to your offspring to the long list of destruction that Smoking can cause to your bodies.
New research shows that smoking can lead to impotence in men. I like to think that this alone can turn many men away from smoking more than the fear of lung cancer, and becoming a social outcast. And apparently so do many of the anti-smoking groups. I have already seen ads on TV showing men smoking going 'limp' while trying to impress ladies with their smoking.
July 9th, 1998 Additions:
The Cigarette companies lost a major class action lawsuit in Florida where the Cigarette companies were held liable for their action... (need to get more info on this!)
May 4th, 1998 Additions:
President Clinton has been lobbying hard against Tobacco companies again in the last few weeks. The Senate approved a bill that would raise cigarette prices by $1.10 a pack over five years. Clinton continues to say "We are not trying to put the tobacco companies out of business. We want to put them out of the business of selling cigaretttes to kids." I don't fully understand this, since it makes sense to me to put the Tobacco companies out of business, but progress is progress.
Fortunately the president and others are pressuring that last June's tobacco settlement be replaced by a more costlier one, from 368.5 billion to $506 billion over the next 25 years and it omits the firms' legal protections and rasied the maximum liability cap to $6.5 billion annually. The lack of legal protection is what seems to be the largest complaint by the cigarette manufacturers.
January 25th, 1998 Additions:
Well it's been a few weeks since the major California ban forcing all restaurants and bars to prohibit smoking inside their establishments. Here, in Marin, this has been the case for many years for the majority of restaurants, but now it is law for all those that initially didn't care. It has been in the news as of late that many bars are quite simply not complying with the laws, or just don't care if patrons smoke, even though they have removed ashtrays and smoking machines from inside their premises. The fines and penalties are going to start fairly soon, and I would predict.their non-enforcement will stop within six months.
I saw a news clip showing a Bingo parlor in Sacramento that was still allowing smoking, and they interviewed a patron on the news saying that "The cops are coming in here and harassing tax-paying citizens who aren't hurting anyone or anything!". Well, I guess she forgot that cigarettes DO harm herself and anyone else around her, so I guess there is still an education process that hasn't hit everyone yet.
I haven't heard much about the large state-sponsored smoking law suits that were such a big story not so long ago. I'm hoping that the screws will keep tightening while President Clinton still has his full power and isn't pressured by his attacks from all sides. He seemed to be the most likely president to eventually push forward the criminalization of smoking.
In a recent newspaper article, the National Academy of Sciences officially suggested adding a $2 tax on cigarettes. Their idea is a good one, since although this would make smoking somewhat trendier among high-school kids, but more likely they would be forced to try and cutback/quit simply because they couldn't afford to smoke as often.
On January 14th, documents were found proving that about a decade ago,
R.J. Reynolds aimed a new ad campaign specifically to encourage 13 year olds to start
smoking. Duh! This has been obvious to all but the southern congressman and governors for
years now. Hell, just ask any smoker (reformed or not) and they will tell you about how
old they were when they started, and how a number of their fellow students did the same.
R.J. Reynolds documents show that teens of ages 13-18 were targeted, and Joe Camel was the
result. RJ says that the memo was a typo and should have said 18 years old. Nice try.
Fortunately even the media has been reporting that excuse with a little tongue-in-cheek
humor.
September 22nd, 1997 Additions:
A study made by UCSF shows that a major character smoked in 50% of every movie made between 1990 and 1995. This figure was only 29% for all movies in the 70s. Last year, 77% of all films featured a smoking character, and 100% of the films that were nominated for best picture. Smoking has been traditionally the habit of the bad guy. Unfortunately in the last 5 years, the bad guy tends to be the one we 'love to hate' and remember the most when the film is over. I feel this gives smoking the aura of being both reckless and taboo, intensifying the attraction to teenagers. Certainly this must have something to do with the large increase in teen smoking who tend to be attracted to these things.
Why has smoking become so common in recent films, yet so seldom seen in recent TV shows? Everyone who watches both mediums knows that while TV has taken a dramatic leap up in the quality of its drama in the last decade, films have taken a dramatic leap down in dramatic quality (American made films that is). On one episode of the TV show "Touched by an Angel" the angel advised her client that God wants him to stop working for the Fairchild tobacco company and to stop smoking. I have read that every villain in the "X-files" has smoked. I'd be surprised if EVERY villain did, but I seem to remember that most of them do. Especially all those shadowy figures we tend to see in the beginning of the more recent seasons.
Of course it hasn't always been like this. The pilot episode of "Dr. Kildare" has the good doctor offering a light to one of his troubled patients. Back then, this was supposed to show that the Doctor really cared about his patients emotionally as well as physically.
It still worries me that the Tobacco Companies seem to want the large 368+ billion dollar deal to go through. They win because they will gain immunity from all the costly state lawsuits over health costs. The states also want the deal because they will receive this money to help pay their health costs.
Clinton has been stalling the passing of the landslide Tobacco deal for weeks now. I would have to say I trust whatever he is doing since I'm sure he is not the branch of government that is partially supported by the Tobacco industries. He could gain a very easy victory by approving it, and could use it as an example to show him as a 'health care conscious president'. We must wonder why he hasn't taken the easy road here. Hopefully it is so that he can do even more good. I support his stance that there should be another $1.50 tax added onto the sale of every pack of cigarettes (this would have to stop some of the cheaper and younger people from smoking as much) and by threatening to tack on $50 billion dollars to the deal to make up for the sneaky approval Senate almost gave the tobacco firms to write off $50 billion dollars worth of taxes, thus lowering their penalties. Apparently the Tobacco companies got Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich to slip the waiver on $.15 tax as a deduction into July's massive tax cut legislation. The tax break was never debated because word slipped out about it beforehand and the public backlash was swift. Once it was in the public eye, only the two North Carolina senators and Mitch McConnel of Kentucky still voted for it. It lost 3-95 votes!!
On January 1st, both Bars and Casinos will lose their exemption status that prohibits smoking in an indoor workplace. Does this mean that Bar customers have to go outside to light up. This could do wonders for decreasing teen smoking, since who wants to have to risk coming back inside and showing your fake ID again after having a light?
August 10th, 1997 Additions:
This week President Clinton signs a bill banning smoking from all federal buildings, but he backed off plans outlawing smoking in doorways and courtyards of said buildings. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad idea, since in some ways it is good to see smokers on display, kicked outdoors so their addiction and weakness can provide a warning.
Humorist Dave Barry suggested in his column, that the best
way to reduce smoking would be by making cigarette labels say: "Cigarettes Contain
Fat". This way Americans would never use them, and since apparently the fear of
cancer doesn't seem to do the trick.
Some Facts
How Cigarettes work:
Famous Smoking Related Deaths:
John Wayne (lung cancer), Humphrey Bogart, Sammy Davis Jr., Betty Grable, Walt Disney, Michael Landon, Harry Reasoner, Redd Foxx, Leonard Bernstein, Yul Brenner, Edward R. Murrow, Nat "King" Cole and Buster Keaton.
More than 60,000 scientific studies attest to tobacco’s role as a major health hazard.
Each year 3 million people die of tobacco related causes; 539,000 in the United
States Alone.
Cigarettes kill more people in a year than all these put together; AIDS, heroin,
cocaine, alcohol, fires, automobile accidents, homicide and suicide.
Second hand smoke kills 4,700 annually in California alone
Second hand smoke is blamed for up to 36,000 cases of bronchitis or pneumonia
in California.
Smoke from parent’s cigarettes is also responsible for an estimated 120
cases a year of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
A new recent study has shown that mothers who smoke while carrying a child have four times the chances of having a child who suffers from anti-social behavior disorders that includes general cruelty, delinquency, and worse.
Nearly 90% of all lung cancer deaths are caused by cigarette smoking. About 170,000 new lung cancer cases and 149,000 lung cancer deaths are recorded in the United States each year. 70% of the patients die within one year of diagnosis. 87% are dead within 5 years.
Smokers are driven outdoors to light up. They stand in the doorways in bad weather under a nimbus of smoke that includes arsenic (a poison), ammonia (also used as a toilet cleaner), carbon monoxide (car-exhaust fumes), methane (swamp gas), acetone (nail polish remover) and formaldehyde (used to preserve dead bodies). They must smoke quickly these days, because the modern downsized corporation does not shrug off these breaks as easily as before. Some companies won’t hire smokers. Insurance companies charge them more. Can any romance be found where one smokes and the other doesn’t?
The Economic Argument. Studies have found that smoking related illness costs the United States about $60 billion each year, including doctor bills, drugs, hospital and nursing home care, lost income and premature death. When you do the arithmetic, each pack sold carries a $2.17 cost to the economy.
If nicotine was removed from cigarettes, it is estimated that the number of cigarettes smoked in this country would drop from about 500 billion to around 25 billion a year. And because one in four smokers dies prematurely, at least 10 million lives would be prolonged.
Girl Teenagers who smoke tend to be more spunky and rebellious, while teenage boys who take up the habit are more likely to be socially insecure.
King James I of England, said in 1604: "Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless". After 392 years, this statement still cannot really be improved upon!
Minors buy 1.6 million in tobacco annually
U.S. deaths:
Cardiovascular effects: 35000-62000
Lung Cancer: 3000
Cases of Baby low birth weight: 9700-18600
SIDS deaths: 1900-27000
The English magazine "The Economist" contains great articles on Smoking:
10/2/99 - US vs. smoking
4/24/99 - teenagers & tobacco
Temporary Newest Info not included up above yet:
smoking page:
Euan Semple says, "Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like
making a peeing section in a swimming pool?"