Is it really worth it?

[Lucky13]

As the title says....
A friend of mine, who were going to get some teeth fixed, found out at the time that he had throat cancer, he passed away this last Sunday, all this in less than a month!

For all of you that smoke, look at your family and your friends and ask yourself....

Is it really worth it?

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Quit 10 years ago. Best thing I ever did...

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

And sorry for your loss. My condolences.

 

[fubar57]

Sorry about your friend Jan. I've quit for 22 years now

 

[Gnomey]

No it isn't.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

No it isn't.

No it really isn't. Smoking had zero pros, and all cons...

Unhealthy
Causes Cancer
Waste of money
Makes food taste like shit
Makes you smell horribly bad and disgusting

I quit 10 years ago, and wish I had quit sooner (or never started). Food tastes better, I feel healthier, my bank account appreciates it, and you never realize how terrible you smell until you quit.

 

[Wurger]

I gave up smoking over 23 years ago. And I agree with Chris here. Smoking had zero pros and all cons ...

 

[mikewint]

Jan, first my most sincere condolences on the death of your friend. It is terribly, terribly sad but to a degree he chose to ignore all the warnings and reports of the dangers posed by cigs. It's the usual "it can't happen to me" and "my grandma smoked three packs a day her entire life and lived to be 98" mindset.
Above I posted "TO A DEGREE", the other side of this coin is the way/manner in which Big Tobacco engineered their product. The tobacco industry has manipulated cigarettes to increase addictiveness by loading cigarettes with chemical compounds. Bronchodilators were added so that tobacco smoke can more easily enter the lungs. Sugars, flavors and menthol were increased to dull the harshness of smoke and make it easier to inhale. Ammonia was added so that nicotine travels to the brain faster.

Increasing the amount of nicotine was of paramount importance to tobacco company executives. Big Tobacco companies genetically engineered their tobacco crops to contain two times the amount of nicotine and adjusted their cigarette design so that the nicotine delivered to smokers increased by 14.5 percent. As Phillip Morris Principal Scientist W.L. Dunn said in 1972, "No one has ever become a cigarette smoker by smoking cigarettes without nicotine."

The Big tobacco companies were forced to publicly release scientific studies and internal documents in 1998. They have also been forced to publicly admit their strategies. In November 2017, tobacco companies began a court-ordered advertisement campaign admitting the variety of ways they manipulated the public, including that they designed cigarettes to be more addictive and lied about it. Four Big Tobacco companies paid for the campaign after a U.S. district judge ordered them to set the record straight with corrective statements to counter years of misleading marketing.

The result of these "innovations" in cigarette design is devastating. The surgeon general found that "today's cigarette smokers — both men and women — have a much higher risk for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than smokers in 1964, despite smoking fewer cigarettes." Even though there are fewer smokers today than there were decades ago, smoking remains the number one cause of preventable death, accounting for 1,300 American deaths every day.

 

[pbehn]

Is anything worth it? The worst way to die is through no real cause at all.

 

[michael rauls]

My condolences. A friend of mine just passed away last week. A stroke was the stated cause but I'm pretty sure heavy smoking and drinking had something to do with it. It's to bad. He was a good guy and just retired this year after working hard all his life.
I quit about 15 years ago. Probably the smartest thing I ever did, except maybe marrying my lovely wife.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Like everyone here my condolences. I was a heavy dip user for years, to the point that every bump and lump I found in my mouth I swore was cancer. I figured that monkey would be on my back until the end. But I was able to quit due to the incidental side effects of medicine I was taking to address a wholly different destructive condition I was experiencing. Point is, for those who want to quit there is a myriad of drugs on the market that make it much easier to achieve. Believe me, I thought nothing would help with the cravings and the tactile feel associated with tobacco use...but it did thank the gods.

 

[Lucky13]

Many thanks my dear friends!

 

[GrauGeist]

Sorry to hear of your friend's passing, Jan.
It's never easy to lose a friend, regardless of how they came to their end.

That being said, I've smoked since my late teens and was in perfect health until I got my ass kicked by an 85 year old woman in a Buick. so in my case, it wasn't smoking that ruined my health, it was a GM product...

 

[mikewint]

85 year old woman in a Buick

Nothing worse than Grandma Wrinkles in 4 tons of American iron on a public road!!!

 

[at6]

My condolences to you for your loss. Unfortunately I'm still smoking and keep trying to quit. My cardiologist told me that smoking was the cause of the 90 percent blockage that required a stint when I was 60 years old.

 

[EDFN]

My deepest condolences. Dying from cancer must be absolutely horrible.
Smoking definitely is not worth it: Some 14 years ago, my mum, who never smoked in earnest, suffered from a stroke. At that time, I still used to smoke 1 or 2 pipes a day. Afterwards, a friend of mine, who is a general practitioner, very calmly asked me to tell him the established risk factors that lead to a stroke. So I listed them. Then, he asked me to list what the risks of smoking are. Both of those enumerations are basically identical. And then he just as calmly asked me to draw my conclusions. This did it.

 

[chipieal]

As the title says....
A friend of mine, who were going to get some teeth fixed, found out at the time that he had throat cancer, he passed away this last Sunday, all this in less than a month!

For all of you that smoke, look at your family and your friends and ask yourself....

Is it really worth it?

Sir with all due respect to you and your deceased friend -- if you get beyond the hysteria, misinformation and downright lies the truth is simple. Cancer is triggered by a BIOLOGICAL process controlled in the genes. If you have that gene, you WILL get cancer. Smoking has no real causal relationship to this disease.

 

[Gnomey]

Alcohol and obesity are the other silent killers...

 

[GrauGeist]

Nothing worse than Grandma Wrinkles in 4 tons of American iron on a public road!!!

No sh!t Mike, worst beating I ever received, and Lord knows I've had a few in my time (this is not saying that that they were all un-deserved, either)

But on a serious note:
My Grandfather was an old Montana Cowboy and WWI vet (and later, a US Army guard at Tule Lake), he smoked until the day of his passing in 1960. He died of a non-smoking related illness.

On the otherhand, my Dad, who was a regional sales manager for Phillip Morris for years, passed away in 2012 from heart failure...and he never smoked a cigarette in his lifetime and his mother, my grandmother, smoked regularly and lived to be 97 before she passed away (in 2011).

The Ancient Egyptians suffered from it, the Ancient Greeks suffered from it, the Romans suffered from it and so on - ro be honest, after 3,000+ years, we still have no real clue as to what causes cancer.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

No sh!t Mike, worst beating I ever received, and Lord knows I've had a few in my time (this is not saying that that they were all un-deserved, either)

But on a serious note:
My Grandfather was an old Montana Cowboy and WWI vet (and later, a US Army guard at Tule Lake), he smoked until the day of his passing in 1960. He died of a non-smoking related illness.

On the otherhand, my Dad, who was a regional sales manager for Phillip Morris for years, passed away in 2012 from heart failure...and he never smoked a cigarette in his lifetime and his mother, my grandmother, smoked regularly and lived to be 97 before she passed away (in 2011).

The Ancient Egyptians suffered from it, the Ancient Greeks suffered from it, the Romans suffered from it and so on - ro be honest, after 3,000+ years, we still have no real clue as to what causes cancer.

Actually we do...

Genetics
The sun (see radiation)
Radiation
Certain chemicals
Smoking
Tobacco (see smoking)

There are so many things that can contribute to cancer, but to deny (as some are doing above) is ridiculous. Some will get it, some will not, but there are certain things that can increase your chances.