It's 2016. Why does ANYONE use Tobacco?

[curmudgeon3]

Life expectancy in America is 78.74 years. If the left one don't get you then the right one will. --- "Big John".

[Gramps]

I hope my offspring & inspiring spend their $$ on other things related to their liberty.

Amen!

[WillOhWill]

I don't like it but why forbid it to others?

[pk47]

Chewing tobacco can be used to make a nice "tea" for a plant insecticide. Washes off later if you use it on vegetables.

[glocksmith]

Chewing tobacco can be used to make a nice "tea" for a plant insecticide. Washes off later if you use it on vegetables.

I've got a full bottle of "Black Leaf 40" which I'm saving for a special occasion

[JU-87]

I don't like it but why forbid it to others?

No one is forbidding it to others.

The purpose of posting this thread is to ask tobacco users in a straight forward way, With ALL the FACTS and DATA available-Why do you use a product that you know will kill you?

You have read there answers.

[glocksmith]

The purpose of posting this thread is to ask tobacco users in a straight forward way, With ALL the FACTS and DATA available-Why do you use a product that you know will kill you?

Alcohol will kill you...either because you wrapped your car around a telephone pole...or because you drank heavily for so long you got cancer or cirrhosis...but people still drink...yours truly included. Sunshine will kill you via metastasized melanoma....but everyone's not staying indoors. Fatty foods will kill you...and fast food joints are as busy and as profitable as ever. My parents have been eating a so-called healthy diet of low fat, high fiber, artificial sweeteners....and they both look as if they just walked out of the concentration camp...whereas I've got Dunlop Disease...aka beer gut. This is why I envy my Grandparents generation...they didn't worry about all these silly things...they lived their lives...they ate lard sandwiches, smoked heavily drank etc. etc. without worrying about the consequences...and they lived into their 90's and 100's. I'm not so sure I will last that long. As I like to say, "everyone's got to die from something", so pick your poison and enjoy life.

[DontTreadOnMe]

The purpose of posting this thread is to ask tobacco users in a straight forward way, With ALL the FACTS and DATA available-Why do you use a product that you know will kill you?

Alcohol will kill you...either because you wrapped your car around a telephone pole...or because you drank heavily for so long you got cancer or cirrhosis...but people still drink...yours truly included. Sunshine will kill you via metastasized melanoma....but everyone's not staying indoors. Fatty foods will kill you...and fast food joints are as busy and as profitable as ever.

I agree it's a person's choice and if they want to (and do so without exposing others to the risks) that's their business. It's still reasonable to wonder why someone would choose to start, given everything that's known.

The other things you mention all have widely recognized health benefits (even fast food - it is still food (marginally)) which can be achieved without experiencing the negative effects. Given nicotine's highly addictive properties, that's not true of smoking.

[bignflnut]

Dopamine reactions can be achieved many ways, though to varying degrees (aka your mileage may vary)

Tobacco
alcohol
drugs
exercise
food
physical "intimacy"
video games
target shooting
gambling
watching a sporting event with food and alcohol
building a lego set (for the youngsters)
making a bookcase (or other sense of accomplishment via repair or production)


Some of these methods are more addictive than others, some more or less potent...but it's WHY people do it...

[glocksmith]

I agree it's a person's choice and if they want to (and do so without exposing others to the risks) that's their business. It's still reasonable to wonder why someone would choose to start, given everything that's known.

That's an easy one. They had it programmed into their brain when they grew up watching their parents smoke. I had friends whose parents smoked...and once they got into their late teens, those friends started up smoking. They're still smoking to this day. My parents did not smoke...so I never started smoking. It really is that simple.

[502ci]

I agree it's a person's choice and if they want to (and do so without exposing others to the risks) that's their business. It's still reasonable to wonder why someone would choose to start, given everything that's known.

That's an easy one. They had it programmed into their brain when they grew up watching their parents smoke. I had friends whose parents smoked...and once they got into their late teens, those friends started up smoking. They're still smoking to this day. My parents did not smoke...so I never started smoking. It really is that simple.

Really?

My parents smoked excessively...as a kid I remember my Mom had a cigarette in her hand from the moment she woke up till the moment she went to bed, my Dad was slightly less. I have never touched a cigarette in my life nor has my younger sister...

[curmudgeon3]

Neither of my parents smoked; I started at about 14yo and worked up to a pack and a half a day until quitting about 13 years ago.

[glocksmith]

My parents smoked excessively...as a kid I remember my Mom had a cigarette in her hand from the moment she woke up till the moment she went to bed, my Dad was slightly less. I have never touched a cigarette in my life nor has my younger sister...

Yeah. Good for you. I didn't say in every single bleeping case. There's always the exception when your'e talking about a population of 280 million. People tend to mimic their parents behaviors, that is a fact.

[DontTreadOnMe]

I didn't say in every single bleeping case. There's always the exception when your'e talking about a population of 280 million. People tend to mimic their parents behaviors, that is a fact.

It's hardly "an exception" and while children mimic some behaviors of their parents it's not all, esp. the ones identified as being particularly harmful. According to Gallup polling the rate of US adult smokers is less than half now what it was in the 1950s, following a continual declining trend since the 1980s:



Also, just because a person starts smoking doesn't mean they continue.

A major reason for the difference in smoking rates by age is that many older Americans have quit the habit. For nearly every current smoker in the 30- to 49-year age bracket, there is another who says he or she used to smoke. Among those 50 to 64, the ratio of former smokers to current smokers is nearly 2-to-1, while among those 65 and older it swells to more than 5-to-1.

Frankly, your position almost seems like you're blaming your parents and think you have little to no choice in the matter. The above suggests otherwise.

[glocksmith]

Frankly, your position almost seems like you're blaming your parents and think you have little to no choice in the matter. The above suggests otherwise.

Nope, I don't need to blame my parents...I don't smoke and never have