frumnotyeshivish -“I have never met a person who quit smoking who didn’t truly want and decide to quit; and I have never (yet) met a smoker who truly wanted to and decided to quit, and then failed.”
The second part I disagree with because even though “When there is a will – there is a way”, and although true some really have no will, but most don’t know how to quit. They aren’t aware how to get help. They aren’t aware of the meds or counselling. So there are many who truly want to quit, but can’t!
“I don’t smoke (anymore) BTW.”
I’m proud of you. 🙂
“I don’t appreciate the manipulation of numbers that anti-smokers use to try to influence mass behavior, even if some of it is true.”
There is no manipulation!
“A correlation between a behavior and a higher incidence rate of a disease does not prove that the behavior causes the disease.
A smoker is more statistically likely to get heart disease.
That does not mean that a smoker who got heart disease got it from smoking – heart disease is common among non-smokers. Same with stroke.”
Obviously, but most who do come down with these diseases -come from smoking. It’s foolish to think otherwise. Go see the pts. with Heart Disease, like I have and do a history on them. When you do the history a good portion of the time all you find from risk factors is the smoking. So maybe Heart Disease comes from something else like sleeping or maybe, just maybe -it’s because this person has been smoking umteen years?!?!?
“Another point – “Smokers are 20 times more likely to get lung cancer,” vs. “Non-Smokers have a 1/7200 incidence of lung cancer, smokers have 1/360 incidence of lung cancer” The CDC said the first one, I said the second one (based on info from the CDC). Both are true.”
So -What IS your point here?
“I can turn it around. Someone who quits smoking has an 80% likelihood of gaining weight. Perhaps it is healthier to smoke.”
Naarish!! The best thing is Not to start smoking. If you smoke, you should quit. If you quit, you shouldn’t do it on your own because then it’s a good chance you’ll trade one problem for another. You should quit under medical care. Hopefully this will prevent complications such as obesity due to the lack of smoking.
“Remember, figures can’t lie but liars can figure. Trying to maximize the emotional effect by being tricky, just because it is the most practical way to lower healthcare spending is wrong. Again, the incidence rate I posted is 100% neutral, and 100% agenda free. Stating the percentage increase without stating the original numbers, is a big fat manipulative lie.”
That’s your opinion, but the opinion of the researchers who know how to do statistics and aren’t with any bias like you are, have found smoking is dangerous to your health. And btw, this research was done way before the country became concerned about healthcare spending. And a good portion of why this country has had such a tremendous increase in healthcare spending is because of so many people smoking! And I agree with “figures can’t lie but liars can figure”, but this applies to you -not to the researchers!
So tell me –Why DID you quit smoking?