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Opinions on Smoking (and my View)


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All of a sudden I have become really worried about my grandad, he was a smoker, until he gave up when he was about 74, he is now 10 years older, and he coughs quite alot, sometimes 8 times in a row, everytime I have to ask if he is alright, and he always says he is, and sometimes jokes about it xD, but joking aside, as this isn't really the time, I am proud of him, because he gave up smoking just like that, and he has told me many times about it, I FUCKING HATE CIGARETTES, whoever invented them may not have known the effects, but they should never have been made, I ALWAYS HAVE AND ALWAYS WILL HATE SMOKING, IT HAS EFFECTED MY GRANDAD'S HEALTH, AND I LOVE HIM TO BITS, SO FUCK SMOKING! sometimes he even has trouble breathing when he has only walked ot the toilet and back :( makes me want to cry sometimes... sorry, I am really getting quite upset at this and also I mean no offense to any smokers, infact I mean quite the opposite, Please, if you do smoke, try and give it up, for yourself, and your friends/family.

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All of a sudden I have become really worried about my grandad, he was a smoker, until he gave up when he was about 74, he is now 10 years older, and he coughs quite alot, sometimes 8 times in a row, everytime I have to ask if he is alright, and he always says he is, and sometimes jokes about it xD, but joking aside, as this isn't really the time, I am proud of him, because he gave up smoking just like that, and he has told me many times about it, I FUCKING HATE CIGARETTES, whoever invented them may not have known the effects, but they should never have been made, I ALWAYS HAVE AND ALWAYS WILL HATE SMOKING, IT HAS EFFECTED MY GRANDAD'S HEALTH, AND I LOVE HIM TO BITS, SO FUCK SMOKING! sorry, I am really getting quite upset at this. Please, if you do smoke, try and give it up, for yourself, and your friends/family.
It's well known that smoking is unhealthy. That said, I don't mind if people want to smoke if they think it's entertaining. The onus is upon them to consider what effect this might have on their family, friends and loved ones. Besides, it's an expensive habit so if they want to do something that'll suck up their money as fast as cigarettes do they need to decide whether the good feeling is worth it.
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I believe that everybody has a right to do what they want, as long as it doesn't bother others. I don't care if people smoke, drink, do drugs, or whatever as long as it's their decision and they aren't harming anyone else by doing it. You could argue that the decreased life span typical of people that develop habits with those things could be argued as having a negative effect on your family members, but I could say that about watching too much TV or eating fatty foods too, and I don't see people getting nearly as angry about those things. We all have to die sometime, and I believe that we should be able to choose how to live our lives. However, if you are going to do this and not become a burden on others, you should be doing it responsibly. If you're going to choose to smoke, make sure that you are also setting aside the money for the inevitable hospital bills you will accrue, because I should not have to have the cost of my health insurance and hospital visits increased when you bankrupt out of your bills. You are responsible for your choices, whether right or wrong, and should put the burden onto anyone else.

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Very true' date=' and I wasnt forcing anything upon anyone btw (and I know you didnt say that to me) but it nearly took my beloved Grandads life. And my sister barely has money because of this habit.[/quote'] It's unfortunate, but it was their choice to pick it up, and if they have an addiction problem that makes it difficult for them to quit, that is one of the potential consequences. Everybody knows that smoking is addictive, we have tons of anti-smoking propaganda in this country (which I fucking hate) and there are surgeon general warnings posted everywhere, so it's not like people aren't aware of what it could do. Honestly, smoking (nor drugs, alcohol, etc...) is not nearly as bad as most people make it out to be, but its negative effects are exacerbated by the fact that most people that have the problems don't use those substances in moderation, in addition to having a poor diet and lifestyle habits to begin with. Over 30% of adult Japanese males smoke, which is a higher percentage than in the US, yet have less than half of the same problems that doctors deem to be smoking related. Not only do they tend to moderate their smoking more than we do, but they don't spend as much time sitting on the couch watching TV, and don't eat as many shitty processed foods. My wife's grandpa is having the same problem, he finally quit smoking after 50+ years of smoking 4 packs per day, but the change is not going to be enough to keep him here for long. It's not that I don't sympathize, because it does suck to watch people you care for destroy themselves, but in most cases you can't stop them, and you certainly can't blame a substance that they chose to use.
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Everybody knows that smoking is addictive' date=' we have tons of anti-smoking propaganda in this country (which I fucking hate) and there are surgeon general warnings posted everywhere, so it's not like people aren't aware of what it could do.[/quote'] I think it is possible to go too far the other direction and have an excessive emphasis on health. While smoking does have inherent detriments, it's also true that trying too hard to be healthy is detrimental. Not quite because it emphasized healthy living, but because it generates the subconscious impression that medicine can save you. Luckily, because there's so much anti-smoking propaganda most people who decide to smoke know what they're getting into. I don't think anyone admits that medicine leads to immortality, but people often have really stupid expectations. Some wonder aloud 'why we don't have a cure for AIDS or malaria' when they haven't done one iota of bloody work. I hate it when people criticize the medical profession without evidence or even a medical background: it's pointless, ignorant and cruel. It's not fun for doctors to get told to 'try everything' and then when their patient does inevitably die due to medical complications, it's them that get blamed.
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I think it is possible to go too far the other direction and have an excessive emphasis on health. While smoking does have inherent detriments, it's also true that trying too hard to be healthy is detrimental. Not quite because it emphasized healthy living, but because it generates the subconscious impression that medicine can save you. Luckily, because there's so much anti-smoking propaganda most people who decide to smoke know what they're getting into. I don't think anyone admits that medicine leads to immortality, but people often have really stupid expectations. Some wonder aloud 'why we don't have a cure for AIDS or malaria' when they haven't done one iota of bloody work. I hate it when people criticize the medical profession without evidence or even a medical background: it's pointless, ignorant and cruel. It's not fun for doctors to get told to 'try everything' and then when their patient does inevitably die due to medical complications, it's them that get blamed.
_uHBFiAnpZs An emphasis on health is great, the problem is that most people have no idea what health is. If you're bouncing around between fad diets, doing useless workouts at the gym, and taking pharmaceuticals and calling that focusing on health, then yes that will be detrimental. Medicine will most certainly not save you, and the whole idea behind prescription medication is inherently flawed, yet people seem to have this idea that it's more complicated than it is. Drugs were created to perform a function that your body is not performing, but does so by circumventing your body's own natural process for taking care of itself. Instead of fixing the problem, it medicates the symptom and assures that the problem will never be solved. Our medical system has been built around this principal for about 100 years now, and it has succeeded because it's the kind of "practicing medicine" that makes the most money. Fixing the problem means that the revenue stream is cut off, and you wouldn't want to have that happen if you're business. I'm not saying that doctors are inherently corrupt, they're just doing it wrong because they don't know any better, that's how they were taught in medical school. Medication is not the answer, and much like many other things in our society, we have advanced so far with technology that we have forgotten how we made it to where we are and why we needed it in the first place, and all of those "old and archaic" traditions were thrown out in favor of something new and shiny. The problem is that we're training our bodies to not heal themselves by not giving them what they need to do so. Think about many of the things that we have gotten away from because of things like fast food and cost focused factory processed foods, eating only the things that are easiest to produce and in the least effective way. For instance, we have genetically modified much of our food in this country to grow in any condition, which is cheaper for farmers and produces a good stream of product. The problem with this is that you can fill your fields full all year with produce, but since they have been modified to grow without taking in the proper sustenance, they do not pass that sustenance on to us. Crops are not rotated as they once were, since each plant pulls different minerals from the ground, meaning that after the first year of growth, every crop is void of nutritional value. We no longer receive what we need to repair our bodies from the food we eat because of this, and because we no longer scatter the burnt remnants of our heat sources onto our fields to replenish the nutrients in the soil due to heating and power becoming much more simplified. Essentially, most things that we eat are just filler, and aside from the caloric value of the food itself, give us nothing that we actually need to function. When pairing this with drugs and bad/non-existent exercise habits and/or substance abuse, it's no wonder the general state of health is in the shitter.
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Fair enough, but public health has improved over the course of the last 100 years, worldwide. The general state of health is far beyond dismal. It's the best it's been for centuries. Clearly something is working. I did a quick search on Gapminder and the public health of every single developed country has improved over the last 100 years: some quite substantially, such as South Korea, Luxembourg, the UK and the USA.

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Fair enough' date=' but public health has improved over the course of the last 100 years, [i']worldwide. The general state of health is far beyond dismal. It's the best it's been for centuries. Clearly something is working. I did a quick search on Gapminder and the public health of every single developed country has improved over the last 100 years: some quite substantially, such as South Korea, Luxembourg, the UK and the USA.
Actually, I read a recent study that stated that while average lifespans had increased greatly over the last 100 years, so had the level of suffering involved with that life. Prescription drugs do fulfill their functions and keep the problem at bay as long as you take them, but not only do they not fix the problem, they fuck up other parts of your body with side effects. Then you need more drugs for those problems, and eventually need to have surgery, transfusions, and more ghastly drugs to deal with those problems when they arise. All of this is great for keeping your heart beating longer, but your health is certainly not improving, though I'm sure that the statistics you named are looking at health in terms of life expectancy and not dying of things that are now easily preventable, like gangrene, tuberculosis, small pox, etc... Sure, some of that old stuff we don't even have to worry about anymore, but other things that are just as serious (if not even worse) are running rampant and killing more people than they ever have, like diabetes, cancer, auto-immune diseases, etc...
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Actually' date=' I read a recent study that stated that while average lifespans had increased greatly over the last 100 years, so had the level of suffering involved with that life. Prescription drugs do fulfill their functions and keep the problem at bay as long as you take them, but not only do they not fix the problem, they fuck up other parts of your body with side effects. Then you need more drugs for those problems, and eventually need to have surgery, transfusions, and more ghastly drugs to deal with those problems when they arise. All of this is great for keeping your heart beating longer, but your health is certainly not improving, though I'm sure that the statistics you named are looking at health in terms of life expectancy and not dying of things that are now easily preventable, like gangrene, tuberculosis, small pox, etc... Sure, some of that old stuff we don't even have to worry about anymore, but other things that are just as serious (if not even worse) are running rampant and killing more people than they ever have, like diabetes, cancer, auto-immune diseases, etc...[/quote'] The statistics map life expectancy, so overall life expectancy has gone up. That means that even if diabetes and cancer are more prevalent, the overall lifespan and life expectancy is still longer. Furthermore, what is 'suffering' and what is the 'level' or suffering? if it's described as time spent in hospital, as a percentage of total life span, then that would make sense, but if there's simply a higher gross amount of suffering then that's inherent in a longer lifestyle. Simply from personal experience, I've yet to see any prescription drug that screwed me up. I think I had one dermatology cream that hurt a bit, but really that's about it. The other big problem with cancer in particular is that it is not easy to treat. It has never been easy to treat. So I imagine it counts as the worst disease now because it's the next medical frontier. That's just the dynamic of research. Also, I checked up on the Cuban healthcare system, just to see whether or not the elimination of the corporate dynamic does indeed lead to better medicine. Cuba has an excellent life expectancy, but it is about on par with the US and Canada, both of whom have pharmaceutical markets.
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The statistics map life expectancy, so overall life expectancy has gone up. That means that even if diabetes and cancer are more prevalent, the overall lifespan and life expectancy is still longer. Furthermore, what is 'suffering' and what is the 'level' or suffering? if it's described as time spent in hospital, as a percentage of total life span, then that would make sense, but if there's simply a higher gross amount of suffering then that's inherent in a longer lifestyle. Simply from personal experience, I've yet to see any prescription drug that screwed me up. I think I had one dermatology cream that hurt a bit, but really that's about it. The other big problem with cancer in particular is that it is not easy to treat. It has never been easy to treat. So I imagine it counts as the worst disease now because it's the next medical frontier. That's just the dynamic of research. Also, I checked up on the Cuban healthcare system, just to see whether or not the elimination of the corporate dynamic does indeed lead to better medicine. Cuba has an excellent life expectancy, but it is about on par with the US and Canada, both of whom have pharmaceutical markets.
I would assume that it was based on hospital checkups, visits, and information gathered from those visits. Most doctors will ask you what your pain level is for various things, and over the course of the study it may have gone up in recent years. Also, drugs tend to screw you up more than you might realize, just in more subtle ways than you would think. For instance, antacids actually block digestion and cause you to no get the full benefit from your food, as suppressing the acid means that you do not fully digest it. As another example, it's common for doctors to recommend removing the gallbladder when it gets infected because "it doesn't really do anything", but it actually secrets enzymes that break down the fat in your food into something your body can use, in addition to generating hormones for regulating bodily functions. These things would not seem bad at the time, as having the pain go away from your infected gallbladder or heartburn, and they're subtle things that take a toll on you over time. And yes, drugs still frequently have adverse reactions with your body that are frequently deadly. An example of this just happened to my brother in law only a week ago. Upon joining the army, they administer all kinds of tests to see what diseases you may have that they don't want spread throughout the ranks. His sister picked up tuberculosis when working in a retirement home, and as a result of still living with her at the time, his skin test showed that he was positive for exposure to it. The regulation stated that he had to be put on a prescription drug called rifampin, that if he took it daily for six months was supposed to neutralize any threat he had of spreading it. Just over a week ago, I had to pick up his deliveries from him because he was doubled over in pain on the side of the road and had to be taken to the ER. By the time I arrived, his skin was yellow, he was on morphine from the pain, and his urine was brown. After running through all kinds of possibilities for what it could be, a test they did showed that his red blood cell count was critically low. The rifampin had been killing off his red blood cells, and by the time they had it flushed out of his system, they told us that he was only 2-3 hours away from liver failure and death. There are many things to blame for this, but the bottom line is that this drug circumvented his immune system to attempt to take care of a problem, only to nearly kill him. What we should be focusing on is building up our own natural defenses that have kept us alive for years before modern medicine, instead of believing that pills and surgeries can fix all of our problems. The issue is a widespread one with many facets and many things to blame, the laziness of our current society, the greed of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the uninformed poor decisions of doctors, and our own shortsightedness of forgetting how are bodies are supposed to function and have always functioned. Cancer is another animal entirely, and our system will continue to go without a cure for it as long as they can keep charging ridiculous amounts of money for treatment. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments are completely ineffective, they're essentially destroying your body in hopes that the cancer will die before you do, no longer having a suitable host to live in in the wake of destruction caused by them. The costs for these "treatments" that are killing you is outlandish, before my grandpa died of cancer 15 years ago, his last year of medical bills totaled over $100,000. Perhaps a better answer for it isn't out there just yet, but that doesn't mean that paying to die is a good solution, nor an ethical one. I think that you're looking at your Cuba comparison the wrong way. Without a large healthcare system taking up a good chunk of their GDP, nor competition for large pharmaceutical companies, their life expectancy is comparable to ours. I would think that this would be proof that our system is a failure, as at its very best this means that it's MUCH more costly a system for something that yields no better results than any other system, or lack thereof.
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I have a quick question about your brother: was this drug a new experimental drug? I know that military personnel are subject to medical testing, so even if that is an egregious oversight it's not necessarily representative of the whole. The argument about cancer is fair if the chemotherapy does not extend one's lifespan and if it doesn't work. The thing is, it can. I might blame this less on a general unwillingness to find a cure than I would on the idea that people are willing to spend any amount of money to keep themselves or loved ones alive. From what I understand the problem with cancer is that it infects cells and is impossible to target properly, so chemotherapy is the best bet. Most doctors readily admit it's a lousy form of treatment but that it's better than nothing. From what I remember the healthcare system in Cuba does take up a large chunk of their GDP because the state controls the whole thing. From the Index of Economic Freedom on Cuba: "public-sector spending remains high at over 70 percent of total domestic output." How much of this is healthcare I don't know, but given that their GDP is low I imagine it's a lot. Furthermore, price controls ensure a massive amount of debt to keep this healthcare system afloat, so that not only is one person's bill high, but everyone's bill is high. At least in the US one has the ability to opt out of buying healthcare in the first place.

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Can't believe you have such a long discussion about smoking. I get tired by just scrolling past it XD I say: Smoke all you want, but i dont like the smell of it. And i hate that it sticks to you clothes so easy. Then i have to have that disgusting smell in my nose until i change. Thats not ok.

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I have a quick question about your brother: was this drug a new experimental drug? I know that military personnel are subject to medical testing, so even if that is an egregious oversight it's not necessarily representative of the whole. The argument about cancer is fair if the chemotherapy does not extend one's lifespan and if it doesn't work. The thing is, it can. I might blame this less on a general unwillingness to find a cure than I would on the idea that people are willing to spend any amount of money to keep themselves or loved ones alive. From what I understand the problem with cancer is that it infects cells and is impossible to target properly, so chemotherapy is the best bet. Most doctors readily admit it's a lousy form of treatment but that it's better than nothing. From what I remember the healthcare system in Cuba does take up a large chunk of their GDP because the state controls the whole thing. From the Index of Economic Freedom on Cuba: "public-sector spending remains high at over 70 percent of total domestic output." How much of this is healthcare I don't know, but given that their GDP is low I imagine it's a lot. Furthermore, price controls ensure a massive amount of debt to keep this healthcare system afloat, so that not only is one person's bill high, but everyone's bill is high. At least in the US one has the ability to opt out of buying healthcare in the first place.
No, it's a supposedly standard treatment for this problem, which would likely never have amounted to anything anyhow. He had a similar issue on it a couple of months ago, but his doctors cannot override the military doctors without a specialist's approval, as they are government property to be used at their whims. You don't want to get me started on that one though, as the reasons that my grandpa got cancer was due to agent orange exposure in Vietnam. They were also stationed in Dugway, UT, which is a chemical weapons testing and storage base, and my grandma, dad, and aunt have all had at least one variety of cancer that they have all thankfully survived. The thing about chemotherapy is that even if it does manage to kill your cancer, it takes you down with it, which is what it was designed for. I worked with a guy named Leo that had testicular cancer as a 20 year old, and after only a few rounds of chemo, radiation, and surgery to remove one of his testicles, he was said to be in remission. However, his doctors told him that the "treatments" had physiologically aged him over 10 years, and even cancer free most 40 year olds are in better shape than he was at 30. While exposure to radiation and chemicals is inevitable, not actively subjecting yourself to them, and rebuilding your body's own system to fight off cancer seem like a better route to go. Either way, you're going to die at some point, but I would personally rather live a few years less and be able to eat without vomiting, not lose my hair, and be able to walk to the bathroom without fatigue, and take my chances fighting it a different way. While I know Wikipedia is not viewed by all as the most credible source out there, all of the material in the healthcare section of the United States GDP page are well sourced. Here is the disturbing and sad picture it paints about what we get for what we spend, and just how far behind other developed nations we are: Many distinct organizations provide health care in the US. facilities are largely owned and operated by private sector businesses. Health insurance for public sector employees is primarily provided by the government. 60-65% of healthcare provision and spending comes from programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Veterans Health Administration. Most of the population under 65 is insured by their or a family member's employer, some buy health insurance on their own, and the remainder are uninsured. On March 23, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) became law, providing for major changes in health insurance. 220px-Life_expectancy_vs_healthcare_spending.jpg magnify-clip.png Life expectancy compared to healthcare spending from 1970 to 2008, in the US and the next 19 most wealthy countries by total GDP.[201] Of 17 high-income countries studied by the National Institutes of Health in 2013, the United States was at or near the bottom in infant mortality, heart and lung disease, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancies, injuries, homicides, and rates of disability. Together, such issues place the U.S. at the bottom of the list for life expectancy. On average, a U.S. male can be expected to live almost four fewer years than those in the top-ranked country.[42] According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States spent more on health care per capita ($7,146), and more on health care as percentage of its GDP (15.2%), than any other nation in 2008. The Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among similar countries, and notes U.S. care costs the most. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 49.9 million residents, 16.3% of the population, were uninsured in 2010 (up from 49.0 million residents, 16.1% of the population, in 2009). A 2004 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report said: "The United States is among the few industrialized nations in the world that does not guarantee access to health care for its population." A 2004 OECD report said: "With the exception of Mexico, Turkey, and the United States, all OECD countries had achieved universal or near-universal (at least 98.4% insured) coverage of their populations by 1990." A 2010 report observed that lack of health insurance causes roughly 48,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States.[43] In 2007, 62.1% of filers for bankruptcies claimed high medical expenses. A 2013 study found that about 25% of all senior citizens declare bankruptcy due to medical expenses, and 43% are forced to mortgage or sell their primary residence.[44]
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Can't believe you have such a long discussion about smoking. I get tired by just scrolling past it XD I say: Smoke all you want, but i dont like the smell of it. And i hate that it sticks to you clothes so easy. Then i have to have that disgusting smell in my nose until i change. Thats not ok.
We've been talking more about general health than smoking for most of the posts in here. As you say, "smoke all you want" is pretty much how I feel about it. People should have the freedom to do what they want, so long as they don't harm others in the process and take accountability for whatever consequences it may have.
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We've been talking more about general health than smoking for most of the posts in here. As you say' date=' "smoke all you want" is pretty much how I feel about it. People should have the freedom to do what they want, so long as they don't harm others in the process and take accountability for whatever consequences it may have.[/quote'] Alright. Well i like when its like it is at hospitals here in Sweden, There is a booth outside the building, beside a parking lot or similar where you are allowed to smoke, and nowhere else in the area. for perhaps maybe a few balcony's.
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Alright. Well i like when its like it is at hospitals here in Sweden' date=' There is a booth outside the building, beside a parking lot or similar where you are allowed to smoke, and nowhere else in the area. for perhaps maybe a few balcony's.[/quote'] I agree, it is like that here. Most large public facilities have designated smoking sections, like hospitals, airports, etc... that are either closed off or outside the facility. Where I think it goes way too far is in places where smoking is banned even outside. The smoke is being dispersed through the air, and if you're too close to the smoker and can smell the smoke, you can always leave the area. It basically makes it so smokers in these states are forced to smoke inside of their houses, which is not good for their families, nor the smell in their house. It amazes me how far the propaganda has taken our culture, it's just way too controlling for my taste.
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Well... there are many things to say about this. I am pretty afected by smoking lately. There are people who smoke and this doesn't do them so much harm, but it surely damages others and doesn't help with anything. Now as I'm working I feel all the time how my smoking collegues socialize and take breaks much more often than I do, not because I can't but because when I have work to do I don't think of going out smoking. And there goes the positive thing about cigarettes. Recently a friend of mine went through a severe lung cancer operation at an age you're not supposed to go through such a thing. I was worried dead and even if now it's ok I'm still worried as hell something might go wrong still. He smoked a lot, now he quit , and I hope this will be a final decision! So yup at this point I hate the effect of cigarettes pretty much

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There are no good points at all about it' date=' I still don't understand why people still do it tbh[/quote'] Rebellion. People might continue smoking because it tastes good (although I hear that tobacco and cigars are apparently more enjoyable), but I suspect people first decide to smoke for a desire for rebellion. Believe it or not, there is a massive health craze in the US at the moment. It is pretty easy to find organic or vegan food in this country, and there are a great many ads emphasizing the idea of a healthy lifestyle. However, I suspect many people are tired of being told that they have to avoid enjoying themselves in order to live long. I would suspect that many people think smoking shows that you really don't care about what society thinks of you. The prog metal head I met on campus smokes.
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