Posted on 06/02/2012 10:41:50 AM PDT by Olog-hai
It killed 695,000 people in the EU last year. But despite restaurant bans and gruesome health labels, the number of smokers is hardly going down.
A European Commission survey published for the UN's international anti-smoking day on Thursday (31 May) shows that 28 percent of the EU population smokes today compared to 29 percent in 2009.
The number is still going up in the Czech Republic, Finland and Slovenia.
Another 21 percent used to smoke but say they have given up.
The typical smoker's profile is unflattering: it is the most prevalent among young men aged 15 to 54 who left school early and who are unemployed and broke. …
Health commissioner John Dalli, from Malta (a heavy consumer), said on Wednesday he will in autumn toughen up the EU's 11-year-old Tobacco Products Directive, which governs nicotine levels and health warnings on packets.
He added that he is "deeply concerned" about cigarettes' appeal to young people.
The numbers come despite anti-smoking measures at national level and public support for tobacco austerity. …
(Excerpt) Read more at euobserver.com ...
But I have noticed that few Europeans are seen without a smoke.
There are two things that demand a smoke, sex and combat. If you have experienced either you understand.
When I first saw this, I thought they meant their addiction to spending and the Welfare State.
The two habits seem to go together over there.
That's by far not the worst of their suicidal addictions!
I agree. If they want to smoke, they choose to do so. It’s called freedom of choice. We seem to forget that at times.....more often than not.
I have experienced sex, though not combat, but I still don't understand why smoking would be necessary.
Cigarette smoking (like everythign else) is NOT harmful in moderation.
The reason there is so much negative press is because cigarette manufactures used to be HEAVY Republican donors
If they were heavy democrap supporters we would hear endless news (propaganda) stories about the “healthful benefits of bathing your lungs in cleansing smoke”
I have never smoked, never even tried it--always found it gross. However, I heard a guy on some health talk radio show, a few years, back, make some really interesting arguments for the health benefits of moderate smoking. It was interesting. I had had some friends who were smokers and I noticed that they rarely got sick. Something to do with the smoking and it's effects on your mucous membranes.
You obviously didn’t put enough into it.
Sure, the other 125 million will eventually die, as will the rest of the European Union population, but how can anyone be absolutely positive that one has died due to smoking (my Dad has emphysema and has never touched tobacco in his life - neither did his parents. Will he become a "tobacco statistic"?).
So who's to say? The anti-tobacco lobby? Take it with a grain of salt. BTW, I enjoy an occasional Arturo Fuentes Hemingway Classic.
I smoke.
There are many reasons to smoke. as noted, sex and combat. Being a White male in today’s America, you’re geting screwed in numerous ways and dealing with an American way of life being twisted and reconfigured to an alien, socialist model is like being in constant ‘’combat’’. Not a shooting war, not the horrific combat our warriors deal with every day, but a combat against an insidious enemy, personified in the 0bamanist regime.
Smoking keeps me from losing it and taking out whatever threats to me and my family I am confronted with. Take away my means of ‘’coping’’ and you reap what you will.
Yes, and they were also good prey for trial lawyers and tax revenue.
It was always such a transparent scam...well, transparent to some people.
Some years ago in Rome, we met an Italian family who had recently been kicked out of Malawi, where they had a tobacco farm. The Malawian government seized their farm and allowed them to come back annually to withdraw a limited amount of funds. I remarked to him once that I didn’t think anybody could smoke more than the Italians. Au contraire, he said. He was at the time working for the American Tobacco Co., and they studied the European smoking patterns, and they determined (in 1979) that per capita, the heaviest smokers in Europe were the Bulgarians.
The only reason that the governmental functionaries want to ban smoking is so that they can tax, regulate, and control your a** for 80 years instead of 70.
The longer you live the more taxes they get,control?.
Yup. A virus has no use for a host cell that's seriously damaged.
Well I’d had sex before combat and never smoked but after 11 months in the A Shau the first thing I’d grab from the C-Rats was those 4 packs of smokes. Didn’t matter what brand!
If you smoke after sex, you should probably be using a personal lubricant.
I just spent a couple of weeks in Paris, where I saw more beautiful women than I ever have in my life. They were all slimmer than the average American woman, but nearly all of them smoked.
So the largest cash crop grown for centuries in the formerly solid democrat south is really a pet of the republican party? Really?
I theorize that there exists a shadowy arm of the law that observes them, sort of like the old Stasi or KGB. When they have failed to observe a youngster smoking for a period of time, they take her off the street and stick her in a reeducation camp, where the kid is subjected to primitive but effective techniques of behavior modification.
She'll come out puffing, like her peers.
In a way, socialist societies depend on their smokers. Not just for confiscatory tax revenues from smokers when they are still earning, but also for their early demise from various cancers or heart disease, which eases the old-age pension burden on the welfare system.
[ One half of a ≤}B^) ]
Europeans cannot shake suicidal habit (entitlement)
At least their Victory Cigarettes are still produced by a relatively free market . . .
Either way, you won't get out of life alive.
But, you know, those Euros, they are so much more sophisticated than us redneck Americans. We could learn a thing or two from them. Like smoking, walking around with flasks of gut rot liquor to drink through out the day and stopping to urinate on the sides of roads in random places. All favorite Euro pastimes.
Heh. Blasphemy. Photoshop that tobacco out at once . . .
I'm a lady, and it's taking all my strength to resist making the obvious retort. ;-)
Why the bitterness?
They have similar stereotypes about us, that start with obesity and move on from there.
Maybe, but they can’t smoke them anywhere.
I would think smoking in the modern US would rather repel than attract most young American women—and thus diminish one’s chances of indulging in consensual, non-transactional sex.
This could be the start of a beautiful friendship...
Um, exactly because they think they are superior to us and having lived among them several times I know what folly and self delusion that truly is.
Cigarette smoking (like everythign else) is NOT harmful in moderation.
I have never smoked, never even tried it—always found it gross. However, I heard a guy on some health talk radio show, a few years, back, make some really interesting arguments for the health benefits of moderate smoking. It was interesting. I had had some friends who were smokers and I noticed that they rarely got sick. Something to do with the smoking and it’s effects on your mucous membranes.
______________________________
Former smoker here:
Benefits of smoking:
Causes people to stop every couple of hours and deep breathe and relax
reduces anxiety
reduces appitite
reduces hypothyroidism
Personally I think that the increase in anxiety, depression and obesty is related to the reduction in smoking and alcohol use.
We never fix anything, we just make tradeoffs.
I rarely laugh out loud but that one elicited such a response.
Since I am not in the market for consensual, non-transactional sex with young American women, that is not an issue.
If I were in the market for consensual, non-transactional sex with young American women, they would likely make exceptions for my rather well developed talents and attributes.
Not saying it's right, I just don't think they had another iconic portrait of Johnson that DIDN'T have a cigarette.
Kinda like my dad. I was looking at some pics of him from when I was a kid and in every single one he's holding a smoke.
And he's still very much alive, thank you. (But he doesn't smoke anymore)
Nobody besides James Dean made smoking look so damn cool.
That's something new. Our hard working Congress at work.
There've been other similar cases not involving U.S. Stamps.
If you watch old movies, not necessarily even those with the poor cough, coughing (off screen) Humphrey Bogart, you’ll notice how much dramatical mileage is gained through lighting, puffing and putting out those poison sticks. Characters speak, scream and shout without saying a word. It’s all missing from the current movies, or is employed self-consciously, clumsily and over the top.
In a word - Yes.
I will now finish reading the thread, but it needed to be said- - again even if others have said it.
Some people are actually born with it although never show symptoms. Others contract it later in life for a variety of reasons.
i read that study too- i cannot remembwe where either (sorry folks)
It was something along the lines of “that which does not kill me, makes me stronger”
A little smoke (and it seems a little radiation) cause the body to react to strengthen your defenses
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