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15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 2778

To read the editorial that I was talking about below, Google "Burned by a Tobacco Bill".

Happy reading!

Jim

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 3/5/2008
Smoke-Free Days: 475
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 11,875
Amount Saved: $1,959.38
Life Gained:
Days: 80 Hrs: 12 Mins: 58 Seconds: 33

Quit Meter

$45,817.50

Amount Saved
Quit Meter

Days: 1096 Hours: 14

Minutes: 17 Seconds: 31

Life Gained
Quit Meter

6109

Smoke Free Days
Quit Meter

183,270

Cigarettes Not Smoked

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1904

Good points Hot Sio2, I think that more than one article has appeared recently about smoking. There was a short article on msnbc.com the other day about convincing social smokers that they are indeed smokers. My guess is when it comes to an all out ban of cigarettes, the government really should tread lightly. In Chicago cigarettes are between $7.50 and $10.50/pack. Gangs and people who travel to other states to buy them already sell them out of the trunks of their cars. I really believe that prohibition will not work and that it is disingenuous to take something that has been legal for hundreds of years and make it illegal. With a signature, millions of people would instantly be made crooks. At the same time, I don't believe that I would have ever started smoking had it been illegal--had I had to walk through a dark alley in the wee hours of the morning to get my fix. I also do believe that quitting would be easier if they were not so readily available. However, recovering alcoholics are in the same fix.
My Milage:

My Quit Date: 5/1/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 49
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,323
Amount Saved: $496.13
Life Gained:
Days: 5 Hrs: 10 Mins: 37 Seconds: 51

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 916

I agree with Karren !

If you already know all the damage that cigarrettes cause. why do yo need to smoke in social ocassions? I think is the mental part of the addiction telling the person: you won't have fun if you don't smoke.\ I have some friends that do smoke in social ocassions. But guess what happens if they run out of cigarrettes in the middle of the party?..They go crazy!! They have to have them!! They will go out in the middle of the night (not a safe thing to do in Mexico) looking for cigarrettes!

It happened last weekend, and I was so relieved I didn't need them. I was always the one that could bring a spare pack to the party! Now they know they can't count on me!

Marivi

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 1/23/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 147
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 2,205
Amount Saved: $220.50
Life Gained:
Days: 16 Hrs: 18 Mins: 42 Seconds: 29

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 222

I agree about the taxes this is the same in most country the amount of tax they get on the cigarettes funds a huge amount of program's not all to do with smoking. On another note about passive smoking I do believe this causes great problems for non smokers. We had next door neighbor's the husband was a chain smoker the wife never smoked he died from cancer the wife got emphysema and has lived for many years attached to oxygen the doctor told her it was from passive smoking.

It has to be the worse addiction ever. I just wish I had never smoked.

Lillyput

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 1/2/2008
Smoke-Free Days: 534
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 16,020
Amount Saved: �5,847.30
Life Gained:
Days: 74 Hrs: 11 Mins: 39 Seconds: 59

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1080

My sister-in-law says she is a 'social smoker' she smokes about 5 cigarettes a day (not in a social occasion way) and she also says she can give up at any time.

My question is this, if that is true then why would you choose an anti social habit to be sociable?? Why would you smoke when you say you dont actually need to. I can think of far better and safer habits to participate in than smoking if I didn't need to!

Allen Carr says ( and I do too), one cigarette a day mean you are a smoker-fact!

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 5/10/2008
Smoke-Free Days: 405
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 10,125
Amount Saved: $6,075.00
Life Gained:
Days: 47 Hrs: 19 Mins: 43 Seconds: 25

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 2778

Indeed... most of us started out a Social Smokers! Then we became addicts who have tried and tried, sometimes for years, to be free of the addiction! More power to those "Social Smokers" who can go weeks without lighting up... they are still dumb for lighting up at all because the bottom line is that it's still killing them!!!

As far as that editorial goes, it was written by George Will of the Washington Post. There are several points brought forward and the biggie was that Congress has been trying to get a bill passed for years that would further regulate the tobacco industry. Now the sponsors and supporters are busy patting themselves on the back! More business as usual going on in Washington. One of the problems that Will pointed out was that Congress "COULD" have passed a bill with big teeth in it, but failed!!! Will said, "Congress could ban cigarettes, therefore it could ban tobacco advertising! Instead, tobacco advertising and promotions will be even more severely curtailed." Whoopee!!!

Phillip Morris backs the legislation and will continue to flourish under the new restrictions! If they thought that it would have had such a dramatic affect on their bottom line, you can bet that they would have put up a stink like the rest of the industry has! Smaller companies will lose even more market share to PM because they don't have the resources to keep up with the big boys' marketing schemes!

Another interesting tid bit...something similar to what Bgainshunter was stating... Our government DEPENDS on the taxes from big tobacco!!! They really seem to be brothers-in-arms!!! The gov't. wants all of these programs, such as State Children's Health Insurance Program, which was to be funded by the increase in the tobacco tax. The government doesn't want everyone to quit smoking because they are dependant (read ADDICTED) to this revenue stream!!! I'm just hoping that our elected officials don't pat themselves on their backs too much and break their freakin' arms!!!

Anyways, they didn't go far enough... Tobacco will now be regulated by the FDA. They are going to have to set this all up in the agency and are going to be getting $500 million from the tobacco industry to run this next newest big beauracracy! Then they are going to get the tobacco industry to declare what the 6000 chemicals are in cigarettes and then they can regulate the bad stuff out of the cigarettes and they will be able to place limits on the amount of nicotine in them. This will all take time and the tobacco companies know this and will have new schemes ready for all the new regulations.

The bottom line is that 6000 people a day die from tobacco related illnesses and the tobacco companies will do whatever it takes to get that many people addicted EVERY DAY!!! If it's not here, it will be in other countries... with or without the new regulations, big tobacco will not go down without a fight!!! The other part of this equation is that Big Tobacco won't have to fight the big fight alone!!! Our Big Brothers will be fighting with them every step of the way!!! As Will puts it... "Governments cannot loot tobacco companies that do not flourish! In a 1998 settlement, 46 states conspired to seize $206 BILLION from companies selling legal tobacco products made from a commodity subsidized by the governments that subsidize treatment of tobacco-related illnesses!!!"

It's a really interesting article and you should look it up and read it! So much for our liberal politicians trying to further protect us!

Have a great SMOKE-FREE Weekend, everyone!!!

Jim

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 3/5/2008
Smoke-Free Days: 471
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 11,775
Amount Saved: $1,942.88
Life Gained:
Days: 79 Hrs: 20 Mins: 53 Seconds: 30

Quit Meter

$45,817.50

Amount Saved
Quit Meter

Days: 1096 Hours: 14

Minutes: 17 Seconds: 32

Life Gained
Quit Meter

6109

Smoke Free Days
Quit Meter

183,270

Cigarettes Not Smoked

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 2631

Gosh - How I envied those Social Smokers - especially the first summer that I quit smoking. I agree that if I had the capability to be a Social Smoker, I would not likely have come here.

I think that biggest danger in this whole thing would be if we ever tried to convince ourselves that we could just have "one"....

Windy

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 9/11/2006
Smoke-Free Days: 1012
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 25,300
Amount Saved: $7,084.00
Life Gained:
Days: 101 Hrs: 6 Mins: 3 Seconds: 33

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1904

If you smoke a cigarette a year, doctors will tell you that smoking is the cause of your arthritis.

I wrote recently on another site and have said that I get disgusted by the tobacco companies, because they are obviously trying to kill us. However, the anti-smoking forces, I believe, do just a much lying. "Secondhand smoke is more deadly than firsthand smoke." I think there re more social smokers because of the high price of cigarettes. "We're raising cigarette prices to help smokers quit." The taxes are overwhelmingly used to fund programs that have nothing to do with smoking, such as children's health care. If we were all to quit smoking tomorrow, the government would struggle to pay for those programs. The government obviously does not raise cigarette taxes to get anyone to quit. It's done to make money. I'm especially peeved by the fact that the government does not make NRT affordable.

Now I believe that anyone who smokes is a smoker. However, I don't believe that everyone who smokes is addictive. I've read the addiction rate is 70%, but it could be 89%. It's really high either way. Higher than cocaine and heroin. But that does mean that there are a sliver of smokers who are not nicotine dependent.

I'm not trying to make excuses for my any of us should ever smoke again, especailly myself. I am, we are, addicts. For me, it's all or nothing. The dependence is absolutely unacceptable. I'm just trying to see things as straight as possible, because my Nicodemon's a genius. He will eventually find the holes in my thinking and exploit them, even the optimistic thinking, if it has little basis in reality.

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 5/1/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 49
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,323
Amount Saved: $496.13
Life Gained:
Days: 5 Hrs: 9 Mins: 29 Seconds: 12

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 11226

Great discussion, very interesting thoughts coming from everyone.

bgaineshunter, according to Health Canada dependency rates differ depending on the individual but 89% of smokers have to have one cigarette every hour or two.

Additionally, The American Psychiatric Association states that 1.1 billion people worldwide smoke. The Canadian Institute of Health Research says that 3.5 million people a year die from smoking.

I hope this answers your question.

Ashley, Health Educator

Here to help :)

15 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1843

When I shared with a co-worker my 300 day smoke free milestone a couple days ago, she told me that her doctor recently told her she needed to quit smoking. I had no idea she smoked. She was a secret social smoker. She never smoked at work. Or after work when I was around. She would smoke about a pack or two a month, if she was out with some smoking friends, or when she got stressed. Even at a couple packs a month, her doctor is concerned. He gave her tough love. Hang out with non smoking friends and see a therapist if you are stressed! Both are better options than smoking, if only smoking 1 pack a month!

P.S. This thread reminds me of people who only smoke OPC cigarettes. They never buy a pack of cigarettes, they just smoke Other People's Cigarettes! I am no longer supplying cancer sticks to my OPC friends!!!

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/20/2008
Smoke-Free Days: 303
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 12,120
Amount Saved: $3,030.00
Life Gained:
Days: 45 Hrs: 5 Mins: 12 Seconds: 37

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