Majority of smokers do not have lung disease?

I am 50+ years old and have been a smoker for over 40 of those years. I have friends and family who have smoked for longer and some for shorter periods, none having health issues that could be directly tied to smoking. A friend of mine who was several years longer, died of lung cancer in his thirties having never smoked anything in his life. I am a case study. What I have observed throughout my life without question, trumps your hearsay by about 1000%. Your turn! Verify what you Put fourth as fact as I have!

To add, I have been both a smoker and a non-smoker. That also brings to the table experience.

reply to post by ajay59


I'm a living case study....LOL...... Got man, for a man who's 50+ years old you're really trolling this thread hard trying to defend smoking... Well I had a family member who smoked every day for 40 years who died of lung cancer, the doctors said that he did irreversible damage to his lungs and the smoking for so long was a direct result of him dying... Your health may be the exception to the rule, but to act like smoking isn't dangerous at all is just trolling and stupid on your part...

Now who knows, maybe that day comes when you start to get sick, doctors suggest its due to your smoking for 40+ years, I HOPE you own up to all the crap you're spewing today and don't blame it on the cigarettes... Because as we all know, there is ZERO scientific proof that shows smoking is harmful, right??

And to add one last thing, that sample size you're basing your claims off of is great...I guess you know more than all the scientists out there today....

Funny how you decided to not respond to my GMO question... I guess you don't like when someonecalls you out when you contradict yourself..

reply to post by jhn7537


What is stupid is when someone believes whatever they are told when all they have to do is observe for themselves. One who follows that philosophy is either a simpleton or a paid disinfo agent! Insulting me does nothing for you but show your frustration that you are unable to complete your mission and probably fear your uselessness will bring about your unemployment! See, two can play that game!



I will not respond to your rantings again. You have been weighed, you have been measured.

Originally posted by ajay59
reply to post by jhn7537

 

What is stupid is when someone believes whatever they are told when all they have to do is observe for themselves. One who follows that philosophy is either a simpleton or a paid disinfo agent! Insulting me does nothing for you but show your frustration that you are unable to complete your mission and probably fear your uselessness will bring about your unemployment! See, two can play that game!

I will not respond to your rantings again. You have been weighed, you have been measured.

edit on 29-1-2013 by ajay59 because: (no reason given)

When I smoked over a decade ago I had a blood pressure that was 160 over 120, once I quit smoking it dropped to 120/80... Smoking was a direct result and reason for my high blood pressure. That is just one personal example that argues against your own personal experience... now what?

So if I believe the studies that are out there I'm either a sheep or I'm being a disinfo agent. Those are the only two options? And because you and you friends and family haven't had issues with smoking must mean all the studies out there are a crock of bleep, right?

And once again.. you never answered my GMO question. How is it that you tell me that I need to do studies myself with smoking and that I can't use studies out there, but you hate on GMO food but haven't conducted any studies yourself, where you seem to be going off other peoples work?? You need to explain this or all your points are just crap on here... You can't blatantly contradict yourself and expect people to take you seriously...

I'm surprised you don't work for big tobacco knowing how hard you're defending cigarettes on here. You are honestly the first person I've ever met who defended cigarettes/tobacco suggesting it does no bad... you are the first and likely the last, because I don't believe there are other crazies like you in the world...

reply to post by ajay59


And I'll leave this argument saying that you offer no sort of proof to this discussion, you offer your personal experiences and act like they're stronger evidence than the studies that are out there. Just google it and loads of them pop up, but you can't find me any studies, not one, that states cigarettes/tobacco are not bad for you... So call me a sheep, call me a disinfo agent, but at least I know that I'm not living in lala land like you are. I don't deny what cigarettes can and can't do, I've read the studies and I've seen the research and to act like its not bad at all is just beyond ridiculous... Enjoy your cigarettes, enjoy the damage you're doing to your body, and best of luck to you when that day comes and you find yourself in the hospital. When it happens, I won't say "I told you so"... well, maybe I will...

I smoked.. never had any problems... nor did my dad or grandparents, etc. My grandmother smoked a damned pipe ( it was her dad's) and inhaled.. lived into her 90's. I quit smoking due one of our kids having a liver transplant. My husband smoked and he had serious issues with it, his dad is dying of dying of lung cancer as we speak. I think that some are much more susceptible than others genetically. The husband and I are of different race and heritage.. and truly, I think there is a LOT to the x-factor in most health related issues.

Oh let me add here.. I started smoking around 16 and Im almost 50 now. I quit about 4 yrs ago or so. It wasnt like a smoked a few yrs and claim no ill health effects.

Smoking five or less cigarettes a day is beneficial to most people. over ten is where the problems with tobacco really start to outweigh the good with it. Under a pack a day doesn't cause emphysema unless other conditions are present. Trouble is that these conditions are present in the western diet.

I can't take a stance either way. I have seen just as many nonsmokers get lung and liver cancers as smokers, telling me that smoking is not the issue. The smokers I know don't show signs of sickness as much as the nonsmokers for some reason and most of those who smoke don't take any antidepressants. Seems like nonsmokers take more medicines for anxiety and depression than smokers. I study this kind of stuff and won't take sides on it because of what I have personally seen in this world. Most of what I have seen is that smoking does not directly cause cancer and emphysema. What do I know though, I don't own even one share of Pharmaceutical stock. If the Pharma companies give me a thousand shares of their stock, I may change my mind.

reply to post by ajay59


To take the view that because you smoke and you have not developed cancer just like your father or mother before you and your siblings and therefore smoking is harmless is a flawed argument. To demand evidence from other members to prove to you that smoking causes harm yet use this argument that smoking is harmless is just absurd. Your dismissive take on all medical research will only feed ignorance, I actually find it almost funny that you think by taking yourself as a case study, one man, is “evidence”. Try looking at a true qualitative study into the mortality rates of smokers that looks at thousands of men then you might have a case.

I could quite easily counter that argument by saying that my father and his sister both died of smoking related lung cancer which effectively nulifies your argument. The only way you can take such an approach and say that smoking is harmless is to look at objective data, not the subjective data you have taken as a “fact”. If you actually present a study that says actually smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer then you might start adding some substance to your argument. Thus far however you have failed to do so and your argument has been simply, rubbish.

I should have have waited till after class to make this thread, instead of rushing to get it out before I left this morning. There was more I wanted to say reading through all the posts has given me some insight as well. Thanks for everyone's replies.

Ok here's what I am reasonably sure is true:

Inhaling burning plant matter, regardless of the plant, is not good for lungs.

Tobacco companies are in the business of profit. For example:
They engineer tobacco to be more addictive
They use radioactive fertilizer to make bigger plants
The tobacco plant itself is very demanding on soil and so it requires LOTS and LOTS of radioactive fertilizer

Some smokers don't get lung disease

Some people get lung disease without smoking

Some smokers do get lung disease

Dying from lung lung disease is a horrible way to go

Having said all that, here is where I believe the discrepancy may lie:

Many, many, many, things in our daily lives can cause cancer.
Foods, air, water, my laptop has a warning on it that says California believes it contains carcinogens

People who smoke may be more likely to engage in other risky activities (Drinking, poor diets, lack of exercise)
These other activities may be increasing the amount of health problems (Lung, heart, total body) that are normally
associated with smoking.

Just as Big Tobacco exists to make profit$, so to I believe does Big Anti-Tobacco exist to make Profit$.
My political science textbook puts it pretty clearly

Whenever you are trying to understand a confusing aspect of politics, simply ask "Who benefits?" and "How do they benefit?"

And Big Tobacco is definitely part of our politics these days.

Going forward, I think smoking, while not good for you, may not be as risky as Big Anti-Tobacco would have us believe. Possibly an otherwise healthy lifestyle may keep your body's natural defenses active enough to fight off harmful effects of smoking. There is also a chance however small, that one radioactive isotope can remain in a piece of tobacco after whatever refinement processes it goes through. Inhaling this one radioactive isotope could be the literal nail in your coffin that causes a lump in your lung.

It's a risk. There are benefits to the risks that a non-smoker will never know. It's the feeling of satisfying an addiction. An unnecessary benefit, since we're creating the desire ourselves, but a benefit still.

I was reading something about the radioactive fertilizer being required by law, on erowid . org , not sure how true it is.


Tobacco crops grown in the United States are fertilized by law
with phosphates rich in radium 226. In addition, many soils have
a natural radium 226 content. Radium 226 breaks down into two long
lived 'daughter' elements -- lead 210 and polonium 210. These
radioactive particles become airborne, and attach themselves to the
fine hairs on tobacco leaves.

reply to post by MarioOnTheFly


MarioOnTheFly

Sorry to have to correct you. There is a very important B vitamin in cigarette smoke. When oxidized (burned), nicotene breaks down into Nicotenic Acid,also known as Niacin or vitamin B3.

en.wikipedia.org...

Nicotenic Acid or Naicin has many benefits including natural control of Blood Pressure. As a matter of fact, you can buy it at a drug store for that purpose.

Nicotene itself has many physical benefits and is being investigated by Big Pharma for drug use.

health.howstuffworks.com...

Big Pharma is the one who is funding a lot of the anti-smoking campaigns. They are basically in competition with Big Tobacco to provide a delivery system for nicotene. Smoking is one way to get it. Patches, inhalors, gums etc. are another way. As a delivery system, smoking has Big Pharma beat all to hell delivering nicotene and Vitamin B3 to the brain in under 7 seconds!

When it comes to lung cancer - check out the HPV connection.

health.usnews.com...

There is a rising trend with some doctors observing that 80 % of lung cancer victims are now non-smokers!

cfrankdavis.wordpress.com...

Tired of Control Freaks

Is it worth it for the puffs on the cancer stick? Seeing it in person brought me to quit as a life time smoker by whatever means it took and I did. over 2 years now with no regrets and no cravings to this day, once I was 100% clear and nicotine detox'ed.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Congratulations Wrabbit for quitting. That had to be a tough thing to overcome. I'm sure there a lot of other smokers out there that wish they can do the same thing. Not only did you benefit health wise, you're probably saving a lot of money a year not buying all those packs of cigarettes.

There were some studies done recently that showed that lung cancer develops when people have a genetic predisposition to it and smoke.
But that really is irrelevant. Smoking causes a multitude of diseases. IMO, lung cancer is the least of a person's worries.

Plus, once someone develops lung cancer their life expectancy drops rapidly. It's something that usually takes about 20 years of smoking to develop. So all of the 20-40 year old smokers(the majority) are unlikely to have lung cancer or COPD. So yeah, most of the smokers who are alive, won't have lung cancer or other diseases. Because once they get them, they usually either quit smoking or die shortly thereafter.

And anyone saying smoking doesn't effect a person's lungs is just stupid. Every single person(myself included) who has quit smoking finds that they breath and exercise much easier after quitting.

Smoking is bad, make that terrible for you. There's not really any discussion about it. If you want to smoke, do it. But don't try telling people it's not bad for you.

Originally posted by WeRpeons

Is it worth it for the puffs on the cancer stick? Seeing it in person brought me to quit as a life time smoker by whatever means it took and I did. over 2 years now with no regrets and no cravings to this day, once I was 100% clear and nicotine detox'ed.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

Congratulations Wrabbit for quitting. That had to be a tough thing to overcome. I'm sure there a lot of other smokers out there that wish they can do the same thing. Not only did you benefit health wise, you're probably saving a lot of money a year not buying all those packs of cigarettes.

Thanks! It has literally been a life changer. When I was smoking a pack and a half a day on the truck I could barely sweep one run up and down my trailer at 53 feet without being winded. It had to take a couple breaks, without exception for doing the whole thing when required.

Within a year of quitting? I was taking stairs at the college 2 at a time and drawing odd looks from the high schooler's there for AP and credit classes. Now? I can take those 2 at a time with a full laptop bag of books and computer. I never imagined before quitting that I'd ever be able to enjoy hard physical exertion that didn't have me coughing up lung cookies at the end and trying to catch breath which wouldn't come. I sure couldn't literally run up two flights of stairs just for the fun of it ..and not breathe the least bit heavy on top.

* However hard quitting may be for those out there struggling? I smoked my whole adult life and going back to age 13. It's worth it and there is no such thing as 'I've smoked too long to matter'. Oh heck no.... If I could have a night/day difference in quality of life after all those years sucking smoke like it was oxygen...anyone can.

My own personal experience with this is that I know a lot of people who smoke I used to but quit because I got tired of the smell on everything. I only know one person who actually died of lung disease. I am 55 so if they're gonna go they will probably go soon. But they look pretty healthy to me. My grandfather smoked and lived to be 98 ! He died in a car accident if you believe that !

There's actually a BIG conspiracy going on against the use of Tobacco itself.

Tobacco by itself is not harmful; it is actually beneficial in some cases. Native Americans were noted to have higher immunity from cold related illnesses from smoking pure tobacco. That being said, the Native Americans did not smoke tobacco like we do today.

What is harmful is 1. The way it is dried 2. Organic synthetic pesticides being used on the tobacco plants ( Organic meaning carbon containing and synthetic meaning man-made )

Prior to and during the 40's, smoking was promoted to be beneficial for one's health. Assuming from information given by people during those times, smoking was a habit a lot easier to quit than it is now. During the 40's and early 50's, this is when DDT was first being as a pesticide on the majority of crops, one crop being the tobacco plant. DDT was manufactured in a lab in the mid 30's? where the reasons for are clouded in secrecy..During the 50's, this is when scientific evidence began to surface that there were links to lung cancer and smoking. During the 50's, this is when a lot of people began feeling "sick" from smoking tobacco. Methinks the tobacco was not the cause, but the pesticides.

Dr. Richard Passey, a researcher at London's Chester Beattie Research Institute, conducted an experiment and his experiments concluded that there is no correlation to smoking pure air dried tobacco and lung cancer, but there was a correlation between smoking flue dried sugar added tobacco and lung cancer. When you have flue dried tobacco, the sugar level naturally rises. What companies do is compact more sugar in the tobacco after it has been flue dried. Flue dried is the process in which a drying room is artificially heated to quicken the drying process.

I smell a huge conspiracy here, and the fact that the government take bribes from both smoking and anti smoking groups, in my mind, affirms that something is amiss.
books.google.com...,+a+researcher+at+London's+Chester+Beattie+Research+Institute&so urce=bl&ots=f9ASwWAywW&sig=gzn9u2b1MnH_pKvgu_4gHs7_5C4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zoQIUaKrE7GQ0QGz_YHwDQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Dr.%20Richard%20Passey%2C%20a% 20researcher%20at%20London's%20Chester%20Beattie%20Research%20Institute&f=false

If you want more information on Passey's experiment, the above link will go to a page with the meat of the experiment. It's a fascinating read, to be honest.

AGAIN, this is just a theory of mine that I have concluded after research of my own. Please do not parrot this as truth and do your own research.

reply to post by DelayedChristmas

(sigh) The conspiracy was about big tobacco lying for decades about the fact their product kills. They KNEW it kills and they actively worked by all means to cover the fact it kills. It takes a bit of research for those who didn't watch the hearings and investigations at the time but the Tobacco companies weren't forced to pay 10's of billions (which never went where it was supposed to anyway) because the Government asked. They were forced, finally, to admit they KNEW this for a long time on both the addiction and the health hazards and death rates.

These days? The conspiracy has nothing to do with saying smoking is not somehow bad for health (Ask a firefighter if inhaling smoke is a healthy thing )

It's about Government needing to look big and tough against smoking on ONE hand while knowing a good amount of money they could NEVER replace at this point without taxes no one would tolerate being raised depends 100% on MORE people smoking to pay the outrageous per-pack prices every day with those precious taxes built in.

The revenue generated by cigarettes is something they both hate and REQUIRE.

Now that is the only conspiracy I see and it's a whopper. I'm kinda beside myself that anyone would even joke about inhaling CHEMICALS as being anything but bad for one's health. This is nothing like the Tobacco the nation's founders grew and there is nothing natural about what people are smoking these days.

Deny Ignorance folks. It's a much healthier place to be in this case.

it's not just lung cancer that cigarettes cause. mr research just died this month from kidney cancer. He had his kidney removed, but spread like crazy and was dead about 4 weeks later.

they said not genetic but from his parents (both) smoking in the 50's...everyone smoked in that generation, have you seen the crazy cigarette ads from back then. Does this mean we (who have/had parents in the 50's) are all doomed to have cancer at some point???

I do my best not to dwell on this, but makes one wonder doesn't it? I don't know what to believe anymore.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by DelayedChristmas

 

(sigh) The conspiracy was about big tobacco lying for decades about the fact their product kills. They KNEW it kills and they actively worked by all means to cover the fact it kills. It takes a bit of research for those who didn't watch the hearings and investigations at the time but the Tobacco companies weren't forced to pay 10's of billions (which never went where it was supposed to anyway) because the Government asked. They were forced, finally, to admit they KNEW this for a long time on both the addiction and the health hazards and death rates.

These days? The conspiracy has nothing to do with saying smoking is not somehow bad for health (Ask a firefighter if inhaling smoke is a healthy thing

)

It's about Government needing to look big and tough against smoking on ONE hand while knowing a good amount of money they could NEVER replace at this point without taxes no one would tolerate being raised depends 100% on MORE people smoking to pay the outrageous per-pack prices every day with those precious taxes built in.

The revenue generated by cigarettes is something they both hate and REQUIRE.

Now that is the only conspiracy I see and it's a whopper. I'm kinda beside myself that anyone would even joke about inhaling CHEMICALS as being anything but bad for one's health. This is nothing like the Tobacco the nation's founders grew and there is nothing natural about what people are smoking these days.

Deny Ignorance folks. It's a much healthier place to be in this case.

What are you trying to say? I don't want to there to be any miscommunication.

My point still stands: smoking pure air dried tobacco in moderate doses is beneficial for one's health, although, I wouldn't be surprised if, like another poster stated, that genetic predisposition plays a big role in all of this.

The Tobacco Companies' products are not just tobacco, but tobacco mixed in with sugar and pesticides.

reply to post by DelayedChristmas

You've gotta be kidding me?

We've gone from simply saying tobacco isn't bad to saying it's GOOD for your health? Now this is embarrassing to imagine folks might wander on here and see a thing like this. Thank goodness there are reasonable people around to counter such a silly suggestion.

I must say....this is a first here with the comments on this thread. I've heard many smokers rationalize their own actions by saying it isn't bad..or maybe it's only bad for some (No. only SOME die from it...it's BAD for everybody.) but I can't say I've ever heard anyone make the argument that smoking tobacco is actually GOOD for one's health.

I'd love to see any support you can post or link to with research to back this. Anything at all? Perhaps the ATS members here can analyze such evidence and determine for ourselves how credible or accurate it may be. Anecdotal evidence is totally overwhelmed by the hard fought research proving 100% the opposite.

* Nice editing for significant content change to your message....by the way. I edit all the time for typos. Call me Captain Typo, in fact. However, I rarely edit material facts out and when I do...I note that.