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Smoking insanity

#81
Floyd Eye said:
The argument about smoking and healthcare costs is bunk. Particularly if these arguments are made by fat asses, or people who drink, play rugby, like bar fights, ride motorcycles, skydive, mountain climb, parasail, do drugs, drink soda, bang other guy's wives or any other activity which increases the odds of you needing medical care.

And when these arguments are made by people who don't even pay for their own health care it's pretty much like a guy on welfare bitching about how much tax liability Donald Trump avoids.
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Very intelligent.
 
#83
Smoking insanity? I thought you were going to go on a rant about how it is insane that anybody still smokes. Then I would have agreed with you! On the taxes? I do not care in the slightest. I quit 20 years ago. An excellent life choice!
 
#84
DwaynieAD said:
are you seriously going to sit here and try to tell me that the money the government confiscates thru sin taxes on tobacco are being sent to private for profit health care agencies to cover the costs of smokers long term health care?

cuz i got some ocean front property in arizona....
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Private health care costs are just one of the areas that smoking costs us money.

Aside from the money that they'll cost Medicare if they survive long enough, the most obvious cost is their lost productivity resulting from their unhealthy habit. Estimated to be around $100 billion in 2009.
 
#85
preside said:
No offence , and I understand about not wanting to be a jerk but... Do you drink soda and eat fast food? Obesity is almost epidemic in this country. How about raising the tax on sugary fatty food to 30 to 50% overnight. It's always easy to shrug when it's the other guy taking a hit.
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I see your point, but if taxes were raised on things that I consumed that weren't good for me anyway, I'd use it as more of an excuse to quit. I wouldn't keep using it and then complain at how expensive it was. It's unfair that the taxes shouldn't be imposed as a way to regulate what we put into our bodies but that's a separate argument. At the end of the day you can either pay for it and suck it up, or you can quit once you can no longer afford it and realize that it's not a habit you should have anyway.
 
#86
preside said:
No offence , and I understand about not wanting to be a jerk but... Do you drink soda and eat fast food? Obesity is almost epidemic in this country. How about raising the tax on sugary fatty food to 30 to 50% overnight. It's always easy to shrug when it's the other guy taking a hit.
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I'm 120lbs and very athletic. I drink 1-2 sodas per year and maybe have fast food 5-6 times per year.

Stick it to them, too. :p
 
#89
CTC564 said:
Ok...I'm going to come off a bit arrogant but the truth can be tough to deal with sometimes...

As an ex smoker for 30+ years and a Healthcare worker, I have ZERO compassion for "the smoker"

I do feel badly that smokers are vilified perhaps 100 times more than they should be and taxed "to death" for continuing TO CHOOSE to use tobacco

But that's what kills the argument...

You CHOOSE to continue to use some form of tobacco...

If you're THAT bothered by any of it...

QUIT

Thanks...all done here

Goodnight :-)
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Then let's ban all sports because that's a choice and 100% of athletes get injuries. Only 6.9% of smokers get cancer.
 
#90
spade2you said:
I'm just surprised we didn't have lots of brush fires last summer with the drought. I was always amazed with the number of people who simply flick their lit trash out the window and that was just at night when you can see it better.
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They are simply exercising their freedom to smoke and dispose of their butts without interference from the nanny state.
 
#91
Duuuuuuuuuude said:
Then let's ban all sports because that's a choice and 100% of athletes get injuries. Only 6.9% of smokers get cancer.
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Feel free to show us that 100% of athletes get injured and/or that only 6.9% of smokers get lung cancer. There are plenty more adverse side effects to smoking. Hell, my grandma smoked like a chimney and didn't get lung cancer. She died a horrible death from chronic bronchitis/pneumonia and emphysema.
 
#93
aborgman said:
In 2006 in the USA there were approximately 1.1 million cases of pneumonia requiring hospitalization... 3.8 million cases in total.

Direct medical cost - $4,000 per case.
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Out of interest, was there a breakdown of how many were smokers?

CDC stats put about 20% of the population as smokers, slightly more for men, slightly less for women. Given a population of ~310 million, that would make for ~62 million smokers in the US.

Just numbers being banded about, but claims seem to be that smoking gives a 3 fold increase in the risk of pnumonia, so taking that 3 fold increase in 20% of the population, it wouldn't be too out say that this 20% of the population accounts for close to half of the cases of pneumonia.

Rounding up to half, if 1.9 million cases were caused by smokers, a population of 62 million, they do cause a high proportion of cases but it still works out at less than one case per 30 years of a smokers life, that's a lot of time and a lot of ciggie tax (granted, that's just one disease, I suspect cancers will have a higher incidence and almost certainly a higher treatment cost).
 
#94
spade2you said:
Feel free to show us that 100% of athletes get injured and/or that only 6.9% of smokers get lung cancer. There are plenty more adverse side effects to smoking. Hell, my grandma smoked like a chimney and didn't get lung cancer. She died a horrible death from chronic bronchitis/pneumonia and emphysema.
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In addition, athletes exercise which reduces many chronic diseases. I am not aware of any chronic diseases that smoking prevents.
 
#97
i_got_a_mohawk said:
Out of interest, was there a breakdown of how many were smokers?
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Probably depends on the age brackets. If someone is under 40 and admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, very strong chance they've smoked 2 packs a day since they were 15. A patient in their 90's may have smoked a long time ago, but they're at a point where the body simply doesn't work as well as it used to.
 
#99
i_got_a_mohawk said:
Rounding up to half, if 1.9 million cases were caused by smokers, a population of 62 million, they do cause a high proportion of cases but it still works out at less than one case per 30 years of a smokers life, that's a lot of time and a lot of ciggie tax (granted, that's just one disease, I suspect cancers will have a higher incidence and almost certainly a higher treatment cost).
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Never mind lost productivity costs, and all the hundreds of other related diseases and illnesses...

According to the CDC -smoking cost the United States over $193 billion in 2004, an average of $4,260 per adult smoker.

Highest cigarette taxes? New York, where combined state and federal taxes will cost about $5.40/pack.

That would be about 2 packs a day, every day of the year - for the taxes to cover the average smoker costs.

...but the average smoker only smokes 14 cigarettes a day. Which means (even at the highest tax rates in the country on cigarettes) the average smokers costs about $2,900 per year more than they contribute in tobacco taxes.

Realistically, most folks pay way less than that in cig taxes - and as such are much further from the break even point.
 
#100
spade2you said:
Feel free to show us that 100% of athletes get injured and/or that only 6.9% of smokers get lung cancer. There are plenty more adverse side effects to smoking. Hell, my grandma smoked like a chimney and didn't get lung cancer. She died a horrible death from chronic bronchitis/pneumonia and emphysema.
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Feel free to name me one amateur or professional athlete who has never had an injury. Sprained ankle, torn muscle, broken finger, torn muscle, tendonitis, tennis elbow, torn ACL, rotator cuff injuries, concussions... doctors don't treat those for free. Sports are burden on the healthcare system! Let's put giant warning labels showing gruesome sports injuries on all sneaker boxes and tax them 400%! Why should my tax dollars go to treating their bad choices?!?

Okay, I'm obviously being absurd. We shouldn't tax sports. I'm just illustrating that if you draw the line on smokers, there's lots of other places you'd need to draw the line. Surfers go in the ocean with sharks, skydivers jump out of planes, people climb El Capiton with just a rope, skiers fly down the hill at 30mph. I don't hear anyone saying they should be taxed because of their choices.

Should we tax bass playing because it causes carpal tunnel syndrome?
 

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