

The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking - byrneseyeview
http://members.iinet.com.au/~ray/TSSOASb.html

======
JulianMorrison
Personally I don't smoke, never have, and consider it an expensive way to
gamble with your life. (They might cure cancer, they might invent cloned
lungs, are you feeling lucky, punk?)

But truthfully, the reason I wish people would stop smoking is not from
altruistic concern for them, and not for any personal fear - I just think it
stinks. It's as foul as farting and has much less excuse.

Just stop, please.

~~~
tdavis
I think you missed the entire point of the article: living is as much of a
gamble as smoking, statistically speaking. You inhale carcinogens daily. Your
mind is slowly decaying, along with all your other organs. You could die
tomorrow crossing the street or next year from a random cancer, a blood clot
in your brain, or the common flu. A friend's mother died while in the hospital
recovering from a routine procedure, due to a drug allergy nobody knew about
and no Doctor could diagnose quickly enough.

If all it takes for you to "feel lucky" is not smoking, you live a naive life
indeed.

~~~
axod
Smoking is anti social though. It's disgusting. It's like force feeding
everyone around you asparagus, just because you love asparagus.

Please stop smoking everyone.

~~~
tdavis
Driving a car is like force feeding me toxic exhaust when all I want to do is
walk down the sidewalk. It's disgusting. Please stop driving everyone. I don't
need to drive, why do you? I am within walking distance of everything I need;
you should be too. This is my city and I want to walk in it without your dirty
car offending my delicate nasal passages.

~~~
tentonova
Yes, people _should_ drive cars that don't produce such a large amount of
noxious fumes, they _should_ drive less -- cars are the number one accidental
killer at 40k deaths/year in the US.

Both of these things would naturally occur if drivers were not free
externalize the significant costs of their personal choices.

~~~
JulianMorrison
To heck with driving less. Drive electric.

~~~
tentonova
That's fine, but doesn't solve point 2, and doesn't take into account the
"social" costs of car-dedicated community infrastructure.

Of course, these costs are really not "social" at all, as easily observed by
reviewing the impact on surrounding neighborhood small businesses and property
values in areas where inner-city freeways were erected in the 50s-70s, and
then torn down again in the 90s or 00s. If you're interested in the pure
social costs, there's always the increase of crime, in-cohesive communities,
etc.

Cars aren't going anywhere, but that doesn't mean we should _always_ optimize
for them above all other concerns, though I agree that we should use more
efficient (and less polluting) vehicles.

This is a bit off-topic on a discussion regarding second hand smoke -- my
apologies.

------
Eliezer
If _this_ paper weren't biased, it would mention the chief source of evidence
in _favor_ of the idea that smoking damages your lungs: Men who smoke die of
lung cancer at 23 times the rate of nonsmokers.

Now, that may not be from a randomized trial. But nonetheless, I think that's
an important explanandum. See Judea Pearl's _Causality_ if you don't think
it's possible to get important data off of mere observational studies.

It just seems really unlikely that, you know, future lung cancer would cause
people to start smoking now, or that some common cause makes people decide to
start inhaling carcinogens and tar and then causes them to get lung cancer
later at 23 times the base rate.

But if anyone actually believes that, we can get a group of 1000 of them
together and have 500 of them start smoking with proper random assignment, and
see what happens.

~~~
herdrick
He didn't quite say that smoking doesn't damage your lungs, he said that
quitting doesn't improve your lifespan. For example he wrote that other forms
of cancer apparently are more common among quitters. Of course there are lots
of plausible explanations for that, among them that ceasing use of a stimulant
causes increased obesity which from what I understand increases risk of many
cancers.

Actually I read that really quickly. I hope I'm not completely wrong about
what he said.

------
lkrubner
At this point I think it is well known that quitting smoking doesn't have much
health benefit. I think it is exaggeration to call this a "scandal". I recall
this was talked about on television a lot back when Peter Jennings died - he
had quit smoking many decades earlier, but he still died of lung cancer.

However, here is the important fact: smokers die of lung cancer at a higher
rate than non-smokers. The above essay makes a big deal about the fact that
quitting seems to have no benefit. That does seem to be true. But never, ever
smoking does clearly have a health benefit. This should not be forgotten.

~~~
jawngee
Well to be a contrarian, nicotine is a mood stabilizer in people with
depression and bipolar disorder. Consider it a cheap SSRI.

It also makes you look cool which can score you dates which can lead to sex,
and that's a healthy cardiovascular exercise. _sarcasm_

~~~
tokenadult
_nicotine is a mood stabilizer in people with depression and bipolar disorder_

Citations, please? I have the best regarded textbook on bipolar disorder

[http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-
Rec...](http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent-
Depression/dp/0195135792/)

at hand as I type this, and there is no recommendation of nicotine for any
patient there. I'm quite sure that "mood stabilizer" is an incorrect
characterization of the drug effect of nicotine. Nicotine has very harmful
effects on the personalities of long-term users. I've seen too many examples
in the previous generation to recommend it to anyone in my generation.

One study on harm of smoking:

Socioeconomic Status, Smoking, and Health: A Test of Competing Theories of
Cumulative Advantage # Fred C. Pampel and Richard G. Rogers # Journal of
Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 306-321

One study on personality factors interacting with nicotine use:

Nicotine dependence, psychological distress and personality traits as possible
predictors of smoking cessation. Results of a double-blind study with nicotine
patch

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VC9-4TGGCWY-1&_user=145269&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1149394097&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000012078&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=145269&md5=5c57d5e2d61723d16e754e56a9665982)

~~~
jawngee
Abstract Updated findings on the relationship between nicotine and depression
are presented. Clinical and preclinical research on nicotine use and
depression suggests that nicotine may have some properties in common with
antidepressants. Updated findings involve the comorbidity of smoking and major
depressive disorder (MDD), the influence of depression during withdrawal on
failure to quit smoking, the course of MDD without nicotine and the
neurobiology of smoking and depression.

<http://www.springerlink.com/content/101v75rn12174k61/>

------
patrickas
A couple interesting related posts from Overcoming Bias

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/smoking-followup.html>

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking-
studies...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking-studies.html)

Robin's conclusion:

"Bottom line: a randomized trial suggests a large smoking harm on bad lungs,
which can explain the entire apparently average smoking harm seen elsewhere.
My best guess: smokers die ~10-30% more on average, living about 2-6 months
less, but there’s much less net harm to strong lung folks."

------
teeja
People who have trouble considering this idea because of all the conditioning
can take a couple of hours online to investigate the scientific evidence for
the dangers of second-hand smoke. When I did, _they fell into the noise_ ...
within statistical error.

What is the measured, documented percentage of smokers who contract lung-
cancer? I never found that number. Furthermore, what other environmental
factors were controlled for?

These numbers may even exist somewhere. My point is that they never come up as
part of the arguments. Because "everyone knows" ...

~~~
berntb
>>take a couple of hours online to investigate the scientific evidence for the
dangers of second-hand smoke [fell into statistical noise when I investigated]

I spent twenty seconds to help you:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Effects_on_health>

" _Several studies have documented health and economic benefits related to
smoking bans. In the first 18 months after Pueblo, Colorado enacted a 2003
smoking ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped by 27% while
admissions in neighboring towns without smoking bans showed no change._ "

(I saw larger claims in a BBC article sometime for the smoking bans in British
pubs, but was too lazy to go find it.)

Edit: 20 more seconds.

>>What is the measured, documented percentage of smokers who contract lung-
cancer?

Here are some values for second hand smokers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Medical_and_scienti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Medical_and_scientific_basis_for_bans)

" _Specifically, meta-analyses show that lifelong non-smokers with partners
who smoke in the home have a 20–30% greater risk of lung cancer than non-
smokers who live with non-smokers. Non-smokers exposed to cigarette smoke in
the workplace have an increased lung cancer risk of 16–19%._ "

Edit 2: I went and found the BBC article (or another with the same content
:-).

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8267523.stm>

" _Smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by
up to a third, two studies report.

This "heart gain" is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10%
figure recently quoted by England's Department of Health.

[...]

The studies appear in two leading journals - Circulation and the Journal of
the American College of Cardiology.

[...]

But the latest work, based on the results of numerous different studies
collectively involving millions of people, indicated that smoking bans have
reduced heart attack rates by as much as 26% per year._"

Edit 3: Who votes up the parent comment?! :-) Less than a minute with Google
shows his claims to be totally wrong.

~~~
billswift
Wikipedia and BBC are NOT scientific studies. I followed up some of the (VERY
FEW) links from the Wikipedia article to medical papers, and they were just
what the original article said - studies that claimed improvements on this or
that scale with no evidence of actual life extension.

~~~
berntb
>>Wikipedia and BBC are NOT scientific studies.

Good counter to my argument that they are! :-)

Both Wikipedia and BBC referenced real studies.

You seems to claim that there is a conspiracy (with Wikipedia editors, BBC and
the rest of the medias) against the tobacco companies?

I count all conspiracy theories as "extraordinare claims", so do you have any
"extraordinary support"?

~~~
billswift
I don't see any need to invoke conspiracies. Most probably they are just
reading somewhat uncertain and vague data to support what they think is true
(confirmation bias?).

~~~
berntb
So, it is not a conspiracy theory to assume the world's complete collection of
newspapers are totally wrong in their description of the research consensus?
Despite decades of big advertisement budgets from tobacco companies, saying
differently?

Go away, troll.

------
maxklein
That page is on a website offered for free from an ISP. That's the universal
home for all conspiracy theories nuts.

~~~
damienkatz
Yes, but are the claims true? Have studies failed to show stopping smoking
doesn't help you live longer?

And the Japanese _are_ fairly heavy smokers yet have very long lives.

That's not to say I don't thinking smoking is really bad for you. It's an
addictive drug, reduces lung capacity and I've known people being treated for
emphysema in their 30's etc. But the article makes some interesting claims
about how politically charged the issue around smoking is, real science is
getting squelched, people ask earnest questions and have their sanity
questioned.

Don't know if any of it's true, but with the Global Warming "science" we've
been seeing lately, it wouldn't surprise me if the risk of cigarettes has been
way oversold.

~~~
patrickas
I think the claims are true, but the headline and content is a bit over
dramatized.

Here are the studies, you can draw your own conclusions:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1573365>

"The subjects were 1445 male smokers, initially aged 40-59 years" ... 20 years
later "total mortality was 7% lower" for people who stopped smoking (7% is
barely significant given the sample size)

And also <http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00000487>

Showing similar results.

~~~
elai
How about people who start smoking in their teens, and then stop in their
early/mid twenties? The effects of quitting smoking then would probably far
more beneficial than a smoker who's been smoking for 30 years and then quits.

------
tokenadult
See Peter Norvig's article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and
Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

for Warning Sign I9: Being Too Clever, which relates directly to the point of
this thread.

------
prat
There is no doubt that there is propaganda on both sides. First, the govt
taxes a pack of cigarettes at the rate of 85% over the actual cost of
production, distribution and advertising with profit margin included. Since it
is harmful for you, we will make you pay more for it - but we won't ban it
because we want to give you the freedom of choice. On the other hand, the
article goes on great length describing studies trying to find correlation
between life expectancy and smoking, debunking the govt's claim along the way;
However, it steers clear from talking about the high association found between
lung cancer and smoking. Even if lung cancer deducts only a few months from
your life, it still is a cancer and has effects OTHER than causing early
death.

------
blahedo
I'm curious about the points about inhaling---not being a smoker, I just
always assumed that (nearly) all smokers inhaled the smoke. That's why Bill
Clinton's pot claim ("but I never inhaled") was such a joke, right? Or is
there something more going on there?

~~~
Imprecate
When smoking a cigar or pipe most smokers don't inhale deeply like one does
with a cigarette. There are still health risks for heavy cigar smokers like
mouth cancer, IIRC.

------
abecedarius
Compulsory smoking in schools? Apparently yes, in the 1666 plague some schools
like Eton made students smoke as a preventative. Huh. But the original post
seemed to imply a broader requirement everywhere; this is all I found in a
hasty googling.

------
donniefitz2
I was smoking a Partagas 1845 while reading the article. I think it made the
article more enjoyable.

------
Tichy
I expect the anti-global-warming crowd to start smoking in droves now.

~~~
astine
Do you mean the folks who are against global warming, or the folks who don't
_believe_ in global warming?

~~~
Tichy
the ones who don't believe

