*related=https://videosift.com/video/Everything-We-Think-We-Know-About-Addiction-Is-Wrong

To be fair, addicts do bear some responsibility for their disease (although you could make the same argument for some cancer sufferers, e.g. smokers).

But even if they got the disease in a moment of vulnerability, that's still no reason to treat them the way we do.

EDIT: Based on past experience with his claims, that's not presenting the science, it's completely misrepresenting it. It's what this guy does, he cherry picks someone else's data, totally misrepresents the study and it's conclusions, and makes huge leaps and extrapolations to say things like 'eating meat is now proven to be the same carcinogenic cancer risk as being a chain smoker'....but anyone who can understand the study he cites, limited to highly processed cured meats and mentioning the levels of possible carcinogens was not measured but are likely infinitesimal, can see it said no such thing, and didn't even come close to implying it. That type of misuse of data gets my goat....I think lying about science and data are crimes against humanity, and I wish they were actionable.

Bullshit, that's not true at all. My wife eats cheese about 3-4 times a year, and enjoys it those times. Same with beef. No addiction cycle exists with that long of a period that I'm aware of.
Food preference/taste is in no way the same as addiction, and any "doctor" telling you differently is a liar.
Habits and addictions are different concepts, that's why they are spelled and pronounced differently.

They should have less risk. They don't have carcinogenic chemicals added to make them stay lit or preserve them, and they aren't inhaled (by those who know how to smoke them).
That doesn't mean they're safe, as you mentioned. I think oral and throat cancers, while still a risk, are more likely with cigarettes because of the extra chemicals.
You are right, there's very little data about cigar risks. It would be silly to pretend they don't have risks, though.

I would note that I've seen people publicly harass cigarette smokers, then come tell me how good my cigar smells. I've also never had someone complain about my cigar smoke, but heard it often back when I smoked cigarettes.

I had never heard it claimed that cigars pose less/different cancer risks than cigarettes.

Google search provides mixed (as you might expect) results.

Cancer.gov, the Mayo Clinic, and WebMD all seem to suggest that cigar smokers in general tend to have lower rates of lung cancer than cigarette smokers (because they generally don't inhale, which I didn't know), but higher than non-smokers. And they have comparable or possibly higher rates of other cancers (oral, esophageal ... pancreatic) as compared to cigarette smokers.

Several results suggest that there is less data about cigars, results aren't statistically significant, etc. etc. and that they believe that cigars are much safer than cigarettes, if not entirely safe. But frankly, the pages I see (in a cursory search that I don't really have a personal stake in) promoting that view don't seem as ... trustworthy to me as the Mayo Clinic, or Healthcare Triage videos like this one (that list references right in the video).


No holier-than-thou attitude intended. ...Although I can say that I'm personally very glad I never acquired a taste for tobacco products of any kind. And a very low interest in alcohol consumption -- I go months on up to a year+ between drinks of booze without ever missing it. I sometimes avoid social situations because of smoke, which I suppose is a downside. But on the other hand, I'm enough of an introvert that avoiding social situations is probably something I'd be doing anyway... So at the very least I have more money to waste on other things since I'm not a smoker or much of a drinker.

Everytime I see one of these "bus stop" commercials I'm 100% certain that:

1) they truthfully do put in the exact technology they say they do.
2) they never intend for it to work properly, if at all.
3) there's someone pressing a button nearby.
4) once they're finished filming, it all gets taken away.

I'm not QUITE to believing every smoker filmed was a plant, but I'm close.

The smokers seemed more amused than anything else really. Maybe they could make a better one that detects what brand you're smoking and makes pithy comments. Or one that detects weed and starts to get stoned.

I'm skeptical.

First up, I find it unlikely that a smoke detector would work that well outdoors at that distance.

Second, as evidenced by the comments above, I'm not sure this kind of finger-wagging actually dissuades smokers.

coffee and cigarettes are my last vice,and i ain't fucking giving them up!

how is that people feel perfectly at ease to just walk up to me,a total stranger,and offer health advice?

"you know those will kill ya,you should quit"

thanks captain obvious.

so i always offer them options,people LOVE options.

cigarettes or heroin i ask them.

which always stops them in their tracks and totally bewilders them,and gives me the silent giggles.

which of course they suggest neither,but i tell them i kicked my heroin addiction,my coke addiction,my painkiller addiction,my sex addiction,my porn addiction,i have plenty of experience with addictions.

"so why not lose the cigarette addiction?"

because i don't want to i reply,as i sip my coffee and take a drag of my cigarette.

and they got nothing,and they know it.

smokers realize that smoking is bad for them.that it will facilitate future health issues and most likely result in an early death.

so when you walk up to a stranger smoking and preach the dangers of smoking.you are not revealing some secret truth that they are not already fully aware of,your intentions may be good and your heart coming from the right place,but it is extremely condescending and patronizing.

and the dangers of second hand smoke have been proven to be totally over-blown.it is just rude of a smoker to be forcing anyone to be in the same air space while they enjoy their addiction.

i do not smoke in someone elses car,or in their home.i don't blow smoke in peoples faces.i go out to smoke on the patio.i try to be respectful.

and when you look at the statistics,fewer and fewer young people are picking up the habit of smoking.for all the tobacco companies whining and crying,it appears education is the very simply answer to address a very nasty habit,and even worse addiction.

so to all you well-inentioned do-gooders out there.please do not waste your time or energy pointing out the obvious to people like me.who will be turning 50 in a few months.save that energy for the young people.

coffee and cigarettes are my last addictions.think i will keep them.

hmmmm....coffee sounds good right about now.

I realized one day that cigarettes were interfering with how many bong hits I could take....I quit in that moment and never had another.

This passive aggressive coercion is quite distasteful to me. I hate people who do this, pretend the smoke is bothering them when in reality it's the fact that someone is smoking that bothers them....not the smoke. What's hilarious is to see those kinds of people try to publicly shame a cigarette smoker with their fake coughing and death stares, then I'll spark a cigar and they'll not say a word or even tell me it smells great.
I used to ask people who complain about cigarettes (usually a fake health complaint) if they drive...then I would offer to sit in a closet smoking if they sit in their car with a hose from the tailpipe going in the window and see who cracks first. No one ever took me up on the challenge.

Your arguments are the same kind used by black lung / coal miner or cancer / smoking skeptics. Sure, it seems like when we control for every other factor in longitudinal studies that these factors are strong predictors. But you can't guarantee that all coal miner will get black lung or a smoker will get cancer. So it must be some other lifestyle factor.

Same with climate change. Your right wing blogs / websites argue that just because you can't create a model with perfect certainty, the inexorable trend isn't obvious. No thanks, I'd rather go with a 97% scientific consensus that has convinced most scientific organisations, large multinational companies (without a countervailing interest) and national governments from America to China.

If you're so certain that the science is wrong, why not publish a countervailing journal article? Oh wait, no, you almost certainly don't have training in the field or actual understanding of the science, and are just copy pasting fancy phrases like "decadal scale oscillations" because it makes you sound more credible.

Well lets start with chess.

The story is another guy was hired for the role but he was a heavy smoker and deadly sick when they started shooting. So Brooks called up his buddy Gene and said "get yer butt down here"

Someone else confirm it with googling ... I know I heard and read the same story many times.

The very definition of collateral damage is unintentional destruction/injury. The warplane doesn't go out of it's way to cause it. The goal of the warplane is a valid one, but unfortunate things can still happen.

People are absolutely better or worse beings, based on their actions or inaction. Don't sell yourself short - you're a better person for quitting smoking.
However you didn't quite smoking so you could go up to smokers and pride over them. You did it for yourself or your loved ones.

It's the same for any other choice that means less harm or improvement to someone else life. People who do that are better people.

You're really comparing the chemical reactions of plants vs the thought driven actions of animals? And you wonder why people with that attitude are called barbarians? Please tell me you can tell the difference, and you're just being stubborn.

I've never seen a plant scream and writhe in pain to try to make it stop. I've never seen a plant look depressed, or cower away because of bad memories.
You couldn't be more wrong about the way animals react to pain: Even when animals hear another animal in agony, they will stop doing the thing which they think is causing it. There have been studies where even pigeons will stop pressing a button that gives them food, and even starve themselves when they know that button also causes pain to another animal.

I grew up on a farm too, and the animals were never abused, but they were killed. There is a big difference between how the farm animals behave and how animals in a sanctuary behave - they run around like pets.

Let's be realistic, most of the work our war planes do has collateral damage. We don't simply use them on 'the bad guys', but again that is a simplification to allow you moral latitude.

Non-smokers are no better than smokers, I know since I used to be a smoker. Just because I decided that I no longer wanted to smoke doesn't mean I feel the need to go up to someone smoking and start telling them how much better I am that I quit. Again, I'm not any better of a person than they are, I just chose to do something different. That is one of the things you can't seem to grasp, because you continue to say that morally you are more good than someone who does not practice a vegan lifestyle. You aren't.

As far as the functional capacity for feelings, of course animals feel pain, it is a stimuli that helps in their survival instinct. That instinct is what drives them to avoid pain because it means they might not survive. It doesn't mean that they have the logical thought capacity to relate pain to more than an instinctual response. I am pretty sure that no pig ever felt pain and said to itself, I feel pain therefore I exist as a being, they felt the pain and instinct told them to get away from it. Plants even have stimuli that they will respond to in order to grow or try to avoid damaging forces, but they aren't self-aware. Neither are animals until you get to a certain level of intelligence, like dolphins or great apes.

I grew up in the country, I have seen first hand and used my hands in regards to the butchery you speak of. Never once have I had a pig who had seen another be slaughtered do anything that would give me the belief that they were responding in any other fashion than a "shit, flight time since I might be next" natural instinct that is in all prey animals. Factory farms may not be totally humane, and that should be reformed, but all they are doing in the end is killing prey animals on a much larger scale than I did growing up.

The warplane is designed to kill, but who is it killing - is it killing an evil dictator in order to save innocents? It might be on a peace keeping mission to discourage any killing. If it the warplane is killing only people who would otherwise be killing the innocent, then it's a tool used for good, it's saving more lives than it's taking, and more importantly it's saving lives that are more important to maintaining a civilized society.
I'd even say that it would be less moral to not build the warplane and let innocents die through inaction, when the consequences are well known.

Even further down the chain, killing isn't inherently bad, there are plenty justifiable reasons to kill someone.

It's the same with veganism -making choices which are less harmful, not necessarily perfect.


Non smokers are definitely way better people than smokers. Especially given that 2nd and even 3rd hand smoke causes cancer. Even if smoking only harmed the smoker, it's still a strange idea to be harming yourself. Perhaps they lack the appreciation of how lucky they are to be alive. I mean the odds of being born are like winning the lotto, let alone being born healthy, being born in this day and age, in a civilized country, being born to the dominate species, being born on the only planet that seems to have developed life. Some people have rough starts to life, but harming themselves isn't going to make it better, just shorter.


I agree that everyone is capable of making good moral stances, you've obviously drawn the line somewhere (otherwise you'd be going all Genghis Khan on everyone). But where the line is drawn is tends to be influenced a lot by misleading information and lack of information. And that makes it very hard to make logically sound choices. It's even harder when in order to understand the real impact means having to watch footage of animal cruelty. Most people find it confronting and uncomfortable at best, so it's easier to put it away, not think about it and continue consuming.

I know most people are moral, but if they don't act on it, it doesn't mean much to the puppies being strayed in the eyes with chemicals, or to the piglets being slammed into the concrete floor for the crime of being born male.


Regardless of how you categorize it, analyze it, or philosophize it, this always remains true: Animals feel and respond to pain, they will do their best to avoid suffering, and they have a will to live.

Coming back to the topic, anti-abortionists do not realize that you cant force people to be your version of moral.

You can enforce common concepts of morality by law but you first have to stop lying to yourselves about what those common concepts are and then be willing to accept a compromise.

An overwhelming majority of educated, civilized people now (as oppposed to a hundred years ago) believe (yep that stupid word again) that women, non-whites, marihuana smokers and liberals AND social democrats AND atheists, among others, are acceptable members of society capable to decide on their own what is good and bad, moral and immoral. Not just the grumpy rich old white anglo-saxon gentlemen club members anymore.

It is not a good tactic to try to decide approved morality for these "other" people either by means of social or real slavery, legislation, economic pressure or plain old brute force or gunpoint.

Rubio mentioned (off of one of his implanted CD´s) in one of the debates something about liberals wanting to legalize abortions to up to one day before the scheduled birth. It doesn´t get much more stupid than that.

Trump apparently switched to pro-life a couple of years ago in a press release.

Cruz favours condoms over abortion (which is IMHO fine BTW), oblivious to what the true christian stance is on condoms.

So anyway it is very difficult for the majority of civilized, educated people to accept this notion that ALL abortion is immoral and should be illegal just because SOME people maintain that view based on ideology and belief.

Once you get that in your head you can start having a discussion about which possible abortion cases are really immoral and unacceptable and in which cases you should concentrate on helping the woman rather than the little glob of cells trying to survive in a hostile environment.

If you REALLY want babies to survive you have to help the women, Bob, you cant go against them.