O tobacco! Your glorious pedigree of shamans, kings, cranks, explorers, chiefs and heroes who drew upon your heavenly smoke has been thrown into the spitoon of history by the cold weight of scientific evidence.
It didn't take that long after its introduction, either. In 1604 diatribe, King James himself wrote that smoking was, "...a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse." And aside from that unnecessary reference to hell, the good King more or less hit it on the head. But the effects wouldn't really make themselves into a serious epidemic before the mass production of cigarettes in the Victorial era, and really before World War I. Whiling away the ennui in the trenches between engagements, soldiers were customarily provided cigarettes as part of their ration. At the outset of "All Quiet on the Western Front", the protagonist, Paul, explains how he has managed to beg, borrow and steal 80 cigarettes from his fellow soldiers - roughly what it would take to get him through the day.
Anyway, before long we had something similar to what appears in the chart at right. Lung cancer, previously a rare condition, began to grow in incidence in the population on a twenty year lag with the growth in cigarette consumption. Statistical analysis aside, the chart is a rather stark representation of the negative health impacts of smoking. Of course, if you have a few free hours, the whole spectrum of known tobacco-related ailments can be perused at this wiki. To date, there have been thousands on thousands of studies linking this behavior to cancer and other diseases. In economic terms, various studies have estimated lost productivity and health costs to be somewhere between $7 and $40 per pack.
What I'm saying here shouldn't come as a surprised to anyone. The first government-sponsored anti-smoking campaigns in North America began as early as 1964 at the Surgeon-General's behest, and have since become almost ubiqitous. As long as I've been able to watch television, or string latin characters together to form words, I and the rest of the North American population has been bombarded with anti-smoking public service messages. Celebrities from all walks of life were drafted to save the children including an unlikely pair of Star Wars adventurers. One might question the believability of tobacco's presence in a galaxy far, far away or even the lack of studies of nicotine's impact on 'droids, but to a North American child growing up in the eighties, the message would have been clear and powerful.
All this rests in addition to restrictions on the locations available to smokers to indulge, the tombstone warnings now mandatory on every pack saying that horrible consequences are inevitable should you smoke it to its inevitable conclusion, and the gradual end of the formerly uber-prevalant tobacco advertising. The end result has been that as of 2004, half of all North American adults who have ever smoked have successfully quit, and the incidence of smoking in the population as a whole had dropped by about 10 percent between 1970 and 1995 (as an aside, its use continues to grow substantially in the developing world - so much so, that the World Health Organization considers it the single biggest cause of premature death worldwide). Philip Morris has made the case that this will only lead to increased costs to social services as increasing numbers of non-smokers live longer (non-peer reviewed study), but I shan't get into that discussion now.
But, those of us who haven't lived inside a tree for the last thirty years know all this, so you are no doubt wondering where Oatmeal is going with all this stuff?
Well, if Jerry Springer has proven nothing else, it's that the outer fringes of Western society are awash with bizarre people and notions (though in some ways that can be said of Western society - save that for another post). It should therefore come across as no surprise to anyone that there is a fairly active cadre of conspiracy theorists who feel that anti-smoking activism is nothing less than pure, Soviet-era propaganda. That is, in the most pure definition, it presents mostly truthful information, omitting certain aspects so that the observer comes to specific conclusions such as, that tobacco is unhealthy.
Now in a sense that can be said to be true of all public messaging intended to increase or decrease the incidence of certain types of behavior (such as drunk driving, for example). Many of these presentations can be said to lack the clear nuances that one might see in a peer reviewed paper. But frankly, a picture of a lung rotten with cancer sends a far more effective message than a pie chart with mortality statistics. They are ends to a social goal whose rewards to society have already been well established.
The movement to restore the respectability of smoking and scrape away the taint left behind by thousands of science based studies has numerous berths on the ether, my favorite being Smoking Aloud. If you spend too much time reading their main page, you may find yourself kicking yourself for not indulging in the health benefits of smoking all this time. While they invest all kinds of room on their website criticizing years of research, while their latest post reads like the front page of the National Enquirer, rather reminding one of that time Bigfoot was seen jamming with Elvis. The Libertarian arguments found on the page regarding personal choice have no place in a society where health care is publicly funded, but that is another topic for further discussion.
It didn't take that long after its introduction, either. In 1604 diatribe, King James himself wrote that smoking was, "...a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse." And aside from that unnecessary reference to hell, the good King more or less hit it on the head. But the effects wouldn't really make themselves into a serious epidemic before the mass production of cigarettes in the Victorial era, and really before World War I. Whiling away the ennui in the trenches between engagements, soldiers were customarily provided cigarettes as part of their ration. At the outset of "All Quiet on the Western Front", the protagonist, Paul, explains how he has managed to beg, borrow and steal 80 cigarettes from his fellow soldiers - roughly what it would take to get him through the day.
Anyway, before long we had something similar to what appears in the chart at right. Lung cancer, previously a rare condition, began to grow in incidence in the population on a twenty year lag with the growth in cigarette consumption. Statistical analysis aside, the chart is a rather stark representation of the negative health impacts of smoking. Of course, if you have a few free hours, the whole spectrum of known tobacco-related ailments can be perused at this wiki. To date, there have been thousands on thousands of studies linking this behavior to cancer and other diseases. In economic terms, various studies have estimated lost productivity and health costs to be somewhere between $7 and $40 per pack.
What I'm saying here shouldn't come as a surprised to anyone. The first government-sponsored anti-smoking campaigns in North America began as early as 1964 at the Surgeon-General's behest, and have since become almost ubiqitous. As long as I've been able to watch television, or string latin characters together to form words, I and the rest of the North American population has been bombarded with anti-smoking public service messages. Celebrities from all walks of life were drafted to save the children including an unlikely pair of Star Wars adventurers. One might question the believability of tobacco's presence in a galaxy far, far away or even the lack of studies of nicotine's impact on 'droids, but to a North American child growing up in the eighties, the message would have been clear and powerful.
All this rests in addition to restrictions on the locations available to smokers to indulge, the tombstone warnings now mandatory on every pack saying that horrible consequences are inevitable should you smoke it to its inevitable conclusion, and the gradual end of the formerly uber-prevalant tobacco advertising. The end result has been that as of 2004, half of all North American adults who have ever smoked have successfully quit, and the incidence of smoking in the population as a whole had dropped by about 10 percent between 1970 and 1995 (as an aside, its use continues to grow substantially in the developing world - so much so, that the World Health Organization considers it the single biggest cause of premature death worldwide). Philip Morris has made the case that this will only lead to increased costs to social services as increasing numbers of non-smokers live longer (non-peer reviewed study), but I shan't get into that discussion now.
But, those of us who haven't lived inside a tree for the last thirty years know all this, so you are no doubt wondering where Oatmeal is going with all this stuff?
Well, if Jerry Springer has proven nothing else, it's that the outer fringes of Western society are awash with bizarre people and notions (though in some ways that can be said of Western society - save that for another post). It should therefore come across as no surprise to anyone that there is a fairly active cadre of conspiracy theorists who feel that anti-smoking activism is nothing less than pure, Soviet-era propaganda. That is, in the most pure definition, it presents mostly truthful information, omitting certain aspects so that the observer comes to specific conclusions such as, that tobacco is unhealthy.
Now in a sense that can be said to be true of all public messaging intended to increase or decrease the incidence of certain types of behavior (such as drunk driving, for example). Many of these presentations can be said to lack the clear nuances that one might see in a peer reviewed paper. But frankly, a picture of a lung rotten with cancer sends a far more effective message than a pie chart with mortality statistics. They are ends to a social goal whose rewards to society have already been well established.
The movement to restore the respectability of smoking and scrape away the taint left behind by thousands of science based studies has numerous berths on the ether, my favorite being Smoking Aloud. If you spend too much time reading their main page, you may find yourself kicking yourself for not indulging in the health benefits of smoking all this time. While they invest all kinds of room on their website criticizing years of research, while their latest post reads like the front page of the National Enquirer, rather reminding one of that time Bigfoot was seen jamming with Elvis. The Libertarian arguments found on the page regarding personal choice have no place in a society where health care is publicly funded, but that is another topic for further discussion.
The Flat Earth Society was composed of individuals stricken with similar issues. Writing at the end of the 19th century, Samuel Rowbotham produced a thesis turning the physical world on its head. Starting as a project to insulate his literalist biblical belief system from reality, Sammy devised a model for reality which did away with the arrogant "Globo-centric" world that everyone thought had been comfortably established by that time. Instead, humanity existed on a giant platter while the known universe, a mere 3,000 miles away, spun about its environs like a garnish (perhaps this is in the bible, I'm not sure). Having spent time creatively devising explanations that somehow explained and supported it with rather dubious "scientific" experiments. He and his followers even managed to debate it successfully against more traditional researchers who had the combined weight of hundreds of years of data from astronomical observations and circumnavigations on their side.
Rowbowtham's movement continues to this day, in no less freakish a form, defying reason to strike it down. Sadly, it doesn't, but it does make a point with regards to humanity's desire to lie to itself. Cognitive dissonance is a state in which reality argues with one's assumptions causing anxiety unless the argument is somehow resolved. It is a tool, really, that has helped human society evolve and jump forward, by helping our intelligence integrate radical new ideas, like evolution, the Copernican universe, or the negative health impact of a formerly-beloved habit. At other times, though something goes awry, and we need to grasp at straws rather than move forward.
Rowbowtham's movement continues to this day, in no less freakish a form, defying reason to strike it down. Sadly, it doesn't, but it does make a point with regards to humanity's desire to lie to itself. Cognitive dissonance is a state in which reality argues with one's assumptions causing anxiety unless the argument is somehow resolved. It is a tool, really, that has helped human society evolve and jump forward, by helping our intelligence integrate radical new ideas, like evolution, the Copernican universe, or the negative health impact of a formerly-beloved habit. At other times, though something goes awry, and we need to grasp at straws rather than move forward.
3 comments:
Fascinating, I had no idea about that highly correlative curve, or even that Star Wars commercial! But of course, even though I hadn't seen them, I think your article affirms what most people clearly know, that smoking is bad for your health. After all, there had been some lawsuits by dying smokers against Big Tobacco which were thrown out of court, because the warnings had already been disseminating since the 1960's.
But of course, the question is, once presented with strong evidence of the truth, one still has to examine what's important and make a decision one way or another.
I’d like to be clear. I’m not condoning smoking in any fashion. DON’T SMOKE, DON’T START and if you current do smoke STOP!!!
Now on to my musing:
You’re blog appears to question why human choose to ignore the truth and continue to partake in a habit that is with out question harmful to our health.
As a smoker I would like to attempt to convey why, cigarette after cigarette, cigar after cigar and even joint after joint, I choose to put this phallic cylinder shape objects to my mouth and, with self loathing and full knowledge that I am killing brain cells, increasing my risk of cancer, and shortening my life span, that I “choose” to inhale.
And that is exactly what it is, a choice… Please don’t hid behind the word “addiction” because its been proven that people can “choose” to overcome their addiction or allow their addictions to over come them.
Is it not in our human nature to do things that are harmful for us in general, whether it stems form a psychological aspect or physical? I mean, we bungee jump, we skydive, we tame lions and exotic wild beast for our pleasure. We put our lives in danger on a semi-regular basis and for why? Because it gives us a rush, a serge of adrenaline, a chemically induced state of exhilaration that can often leave us in a mild euphoria. Is not nicotine a similar sort of chemically induces pleasure releasing activity?
The point I’m trying to make is that, I think as humans we don’t truly feel alive until we feel the approach of death. There the old adage the “You start dying the day your born” so if that’s the case then wouldn’t it these fundamental animalistic tendencies be view as a “Death Wish”. Now please do give me some leniency here. I’m not saying we all want to die, I’m saying we all want to live and we never feel more alive then when we’ve over come the cold icy clutches of death!
Perhaps, in this simpleton’s view anyways, this is why we refuse to change our behaviours. I accept that smoking will cause me harm; I accept that smoking will cause those around me harm; I accept that my eventual health related illnesses will be a burden on our communal system of healthcare. Yet, with all that knowledge I have yet to find the strength to cut the tie to this horrible activity. My failure to quick is my failure along, not societies attempt to enlighten me. For this I apologise. But I guess holding a cigarette to my lips is just not as profound or as real as playing Russian Roulette. And realistically, that’s exactly what I’m doing, it’s just a matter of time, if it’s not already too late.
People don’t think “I shouldn’t be doing this” it only when the consequence of their action are being realised that they say “I shouldn’t have done that”.
We are reactionary by nature.
My complements to you, Electric Oatmeal. Your Blog has a quiet genius to it.
I appreciate that you feel entitled to your choice - I think most people (that includes myself!) would react indignance when the government or others attempt to interfere with their lifestyle choices. Here in Canada, where health care is state-subsidized, that tends to open a can of worms, considering the resource pressures that cancer treatment tends to impose.
I think addiction, from a phsyiological standpoint, can be considered a disease - or rather a condition. The power of certain substances to alter behavior and and motivation is generally well documented. Living in dowtown Ottawa, I see evidence of it daily. Certainly, it takes strong personality and solid willpower to get rid yourself of something that has become akin to breathing in the scope of your life.
That being said, I will not stop drinking coffee.
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