The health of the people in our country
- Thread starter Glass1/2fullguy
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There is an interesting discussion to be had about freedom, vices, and the point at which an individual making a personal choice becomes a big enough societal liability that it needs to be addressed.
Alcohol has been a big enough part of the culture for so long that we have all decided to ignore its associated risks, but that is finally coming to an end. Many have urged for loosening of marijuana laws, but the results have not been all rainbows and sunshine. Legalized gambling has perhaps created more societal harm than any of the above.
Poor dietary and physical activity choices could be wrapped into this discussion, as well, although I assert these have as much to do with systems (our profit-driven food environment; the amount of time one must spend at work to make a living) as with personal choices.
Westernhawk
Well-Known Member
Great thoughts. I wonder if starting with some basic education on the topic would be a little bit helpful. I realize that education is likely not super effective, because alcohol hits the reward center (dopamine) pretty hard and logic doesn't always work when dopamine is involved.
Having said that, as you noted, alcohol is such a huge part of our culture, and we have been immersed in advertising that indicates alcohol is fun, sexy, cool, a reward for hard work, an expression of freedom, etc. I wouldn't want to negate that, but what if there was also some public education on the fact that alcohol is considered a carcinogen? I imagine that not everyone knows that alcohol has that serious negative health effect.
Heck, doctors used to smoke in hospitals and in their offices. Things change with more knowledge... sometimes.
I can't stand smoking but I don't think the government should ban it. What they've done is perfect. Stop advertising to kids, make it known how dangerous it is, and make non smoking areas to avoid second hand smoke. If they put more emphasis on making sure people know the dangers of alcohol, I'm all for it. If they find out there are dangers to vaccines and advertise that, I'm all for that too.
RFK has investigated the vaccine topic extensively and he says there's serious corruption that needs cleaned up. I'll say this again. He's not ignorant or confused. He's either right or he's outright lying. He's going to bring what he "knows" to light, and then people can decide what to believe. I'm not sure why people have such a problem with that.
RFK has investigated the vaccine topic extensively and he says there's serious corruption that needs cleaned up. I'll say this again. He's not ignorant or confused. He's either right or he's outright lying. He's going to bring what he "knows" to light, and then people can decide what to believe. I'm not sure why people have such a problem with that.
Fryowa
Administrator
They shouldn't ban it but I'd vote for a $20 per pack tax and banning loose tobacco sales.
There's a whole lot of my insurance premiums that go to offset the number of non-paying individuals who have tons of health issues from smoking.
All of these points (an the rest of the points about smoking in this thread) are completely moot, however.
1) Banning cigarettes or lowering nicotine will only lead to a thriving black market from our neighbors to the south. It's a whole lot easier to grow tobacco than manufacture meth or fentanyl.
2) Trump would just reverse it anyway.
Westernhawk
Well-Known Member
I think you're on to something, with the externalization of health care costs when people do things that are really bad for them, and then we all (collectively) pay through increased insurance rates.
Having maximum healthcare coverage and ultimately needing millions in care due to a lifetime of smoking, drinking, and obesity is a tough issue. It seems unfair to have others pay for your choices (which is what happens). Having said that, some people will not be able to help the fact they get heart disease, etc. Also, nicotine and alcohol are addictions that require education and treatment.
I'd be for some form of responsibility on the part of the covered person (patient), but it's a very challenging issue and a slippery slope.
Short of that solution, I'm all for taxing the hell out of alcohol and cigarettes to help with education and treatment efforts.
Fryowa
Administrator
I don't drink, but alcohol can be consumed at a level not detrimental to your health. Lots of people choose to have a couple beers watching a game, a glass of wine at supper, or a couple mixed drinks at a Christmas party. I have lots of friends and acquaintances who do just that. I don't think those people should be penalized for those who choose to go crazy with booze or can't choose not to go crazy with it.
Smoking on the other hand, is horrendous for every part of your body from the first drag. There's literally nothing that can come from it that isn't destructive and costly to the health care system and by association the insurance rates we pay. For those who can buy a pack of cigarettes and have it last them a month or two, a $30 pack of cigarettes isn't going to hurt them financially.
However, even with a huge tax cigarettes will just start coming from Mexico instead and be even cheaper than they are in stores. The reason it's expensive to smoke is because of the taxes already in place. Put a $20 tax on legally produced cigarettes and in about 6 months you'll be able to buy them indirectly from the cartel for 75 cents a pack. The problem won't get any better.
Fryowa
Administrator
I'll tack on my opinions on reaching outside our borders to help alleviate some of this. I am not a partisan to either of our governmental factions as I've more than clearly stated here before...
I am totally fine with declaring the cartels as terrorists and we should have Reaper drones flying over Mexico by the hundreds. The scourge that meth and opiates have brought on this country are orders of magnitude worse than any other single element, foreign or domestic, in the history of this country.
Let our military operate like it was designed to...to protect the country. Mexico has had literally decades of time to fix it themselves and they can't. Target the cartels with unmanned drones, and let the special forces infiltrate. Seals, Rangers, and Green Berets are the type of folks who wouldn't bat an eye at being let off their leashes to kill people who want to get opiates and meth across our border. We have HUNDREDS of C-130s sitting on the ground at any given time in our country that could defoliate millions of acres of drug fields no problem. Want to shoot at our planes targeting the cartel? Find a hole to hide in.
And no, I'm not a Trumper. I hate the guy.
I'm an American, and I've seen first hand what meth, opiates, and tobacco do to people.
We have the solution to the drug problem. It's sitting right here at our air bases and in Army and Navy bases just waiting to be used for something good.
I am totally fine with declaring the cartels as terrorists and we should have Reaper drones flying over Mexico by the hundreds. The scourge that meth and opiates have brought on this country are orders of magnitude worse than any other single element, foreign or domestic, in the history of this country.
Let our military operate like it was designed to...to protect the country. Mexico has had literally decades of time to fix it themselves and they can't. Target the cartels with unmanned drones, and let the special forces infiltrate. Seals, Rangers, and Green Berets are the type of folks who wouldn't bat an eye at being let off their leashes to kill people who want to get opiates and meth across our border. We have HUNDREDS of C-130s sitting on the ground at any given time in our country that could defoliate millions of acres of drug fields no problem. Want to shoot at our planes targeting the cartel? Find a hole to hide in.
And no, I'm not a Trumper. I hate the guy.
I'm an American, and I've seen first hand what meth, opiates, and tobacco do to people.
We have the solution to the drug problem. It's sitting right here at our air bases and in Army and Navy bases just waiting to be used for something good.
Banning smoking advertising makes sense. With that in mind, isn't crazy how inundated we are with sports gambling ads? And the fact that they allow gambling apps to exist? I overhear the students in my classes talking about the bets they are making, and as a parent, I would be more comfortable with my kid taking up a pack-a-day habit than getting hooked on sports gambling. I appreciate that most who gamble do not get hooked, but for those who do, it destroys lives fast.
Is that true? I thought one of the reasons fentanyl has taken off as it has is that it is much easier to synthesize than other narcotics. Any crop is going to take a lot of labor to bring a product to market (not sure how automated the tobacco raising process is).
To the point about black-market vs. open-market, I heard some interesting discussion of some of the knock-off effects of legalization of marijuana. While one of the arguments for legalization was eliminating the black market, hence allowing tax revenue and the ability to regulate the legal market, the application of unfettered capitalism to the marijuana industry has greatly increased the number of consumers. And while some claim marijuana has few downsides, objective reality indicates it lies somewhere in the neighborhood of alcohol and tobacco with regard to harms (individually and societally). It shouldn't be a schedule I drug, but there should be much stricter regulations with regard to the formulations in which it can be distributed, the places it can be distributed, and the ways it can be advertised.
As a society, it seems we have trouble finding a reasonable middle ground on some of these issues.
Fryowa
Administrator
With some quick google-foo, there are currently 180,000 acres of tobacco harvested in the US and I see that between 12-15% of that is exported. I also see that the US cigarette industry gets roughly 40% of its tobacco domestically and 60% imported. So let's be SUPER conservative and say that the United States' smoking habit takes 900,000 acres of tobacco to be fully supported.
Mexico has 79 million acres of agricultural land with 42 million of that land being cultivated already.
If you all of a sudden ban cigarette production in the US, do you honestly think for a second that there wouldn't be several hundred thousand acres of tobacco planted immediately? The cartels already lose billions every year due to expected costs of doing business such as violence, drug busts, having to fight the DEA, etc. It's the literal Wild West down there. Tobacco is a perfectly legal crop to grow and can be done under legitimate conditions. That black market is going to spring into action overnight, man. You would make so much money in Mexico growing it that you could pay hundreds of thousands of workers more than they already make and build factories upon factories.
China and India are by far and away the biggest tobacco producers on the planet, all a cartel would have to do is balance between buying a few shiploads a month from them and operating their own farms and factories. Cigarettes aren't going to bring even close to the amount of heat that narcotics do and cost an infinitesimal fraction to produce and distribute, who cares if a few semi loads get caught in the process?
You know how Vito and Michael Corleone always had dreams of going legit and finally getting the monkeys off their backs? Well, banning cigarettes is going to be a golden ticket to legitimacy in the cartels' minds. They don't care if they're legit in America, they'll be legit where it counts. In their home countries. Banning them here would be nothing but a boost for them.
I've talked to people who've gone abroad and in countries outside of Europe and the US cigarettes are so cheap as to be almost free. A pack here in the states costs $6-7, the cartels could end up setting prices that come out to the end-user here at $1.00 a pack and still make billions. Phillip Morris made $34 billion (with a "B") last year in revenue.
This would be the thing that finally lets the cartels win.
thedukeofearl
Well-Known Member
Meth and Fentanyl are Killers and we certainly can't rely on the Mexican Government to stop
the production and flow
I am fairly certain that the authorities in Mexico are reaping millions and millions, over and over
again, allowing the drugs to be produced and to keep the borders porous
Fryowa
Administrator
Absolutely outrageous take there. I mean that respectfully.
I grew up in a house with parents who were pack-a-day plus smokers and I'll die earlier because of it. I went to school every single day smelling like a forest fire and got made fun of non stop. Nothing I could do about it. As I got older and could drive I started sneaking my clothes out of the house to the laundromat but it didn't help. After long enough nothing gets that smell out. And as soon as I walked in the house I smelled like it anyway.
My dad had a stroke at 37 and I was sitting in the living room alone with him when he had another one at 44. I was 13 years old and watched it. Google the risk factors for stroke and find me the ones that aren't enhanced ten-fold by smoking. He died in his sleep of a stroke at age 57. I helped the EMTs get him out of bed into the stretcher because I'm the one who went to check on him and found him. He was ice cold and I still remember that whole day like it was yesterday.
My mom had COPD from the time she was mid 40s on and I watched her very slowly spiral into death and it was the ugliest thing I've ever seen. She had breast cancer surgery in 1997 and it took years for her incisions etc to heal. She blamed it on botched surgery but she kept smoking the same throughout. She was in constant pain for YEARS but also constant denial that smoking was causing it. She was on oxygen at 50 years old, but never stopped...she'd shut her oxygen off, smoke a cigarette, and turn it back on. This went on for years, and eventually she ended up in the hospital every few weeks for low oxygen levels. She'd pass out from it and I spent about 3 years leaving work 15 miles away to go check on her when she wouldn't answer the phone on my lunch break. I can't tell you how many times I went to her apartment (she couldn't work and had no money because of her health so she was in assisted income housing) and found her passed out in a chair with a lit cigarette in her hand. Thank god they eventually mandated those cigarettes that extinguish themselves if you don't puff on them for a while.
The very last time my mom went in the hospital her apartment manager said no more. She ended up going to a nursing home. I drove to Sioux City, took her out to my car in a wheel chair, and drove her to the only place around that had a Title 19 bed (remember, she had no money) in Sibley, IA. I also remember she had been in the hospital for 2 weeks and looked great, said she felt better too. Because she couldn't smoke. The very first thing she asked me to do was to stop and get her a pack of cigarettes. I had spent the last 10 years constantly bitching and fighting with her about it and that day I just said f*ck it. I got it for her because I knew she wasn't gonna last long and I didn't want to spend that time fighting with her.
Carried her into the nursing home and to her little cinder block shit hole of a room. People on Title 19 don't get nice rooms, they get broom closets. Two weeks later they called me to tell me she was refusing her medications, a week after that she was dead, also at 57 years old.
Don't ever fucking let the thought cross your mind that you'd rather have your kids smoke cigarettes dude. Ever. You can rebuild bank accounts and credit and families. You can't rebuild what my mom (and millions of other people) did to herself.
This isn't me taking a shot at you because I'm sure you didn't grow up the way I did. But what I am doing is telling you that smoking will fucking kill you and it will be in the most miserable way possible. Your kids may grow up to be the most well-adjusted, successful people you could hope for, but if they also become smokers their own families will watch them die from it in some way, at some point.
I don't know if your conclusion is valid (I also have no basis to conclude it isn't), but I appreciate the effort you put in to get there!
If I remember right I've heard you talk about people in your family not living to an old age so you don't expect to (sorry if I'm missing remembering). So after reading that post, why do you think that has anything to do with your longevity? The mind is a powerful thing. Don't go assuming you will die early over shit your family did or it will likely happen.
Men in my family have died early from heart conditions so I used to assume that would happen to me. I've blocked that shit out of my mind and chalked it up to them having unhealthy lifestyles. I made a conscious choice to not let past family's life choices dictate my thoughts on the future I have. Get yearly physicals and make relatively smart health choices and you won't be dead at 57.
Westernhawk
Well-Known Member
The biggest issue with opioids is demand, and that's coming from America. With a high demand for an illicit product, smart criminals will find a way to get it here.
The war on drugs never worked, and it likely never will. The Mexicans aren't forcing folks in rural places like Iowa to take Meth and Fentanyl, for example.
The key is decreasing demand through education and treatment.
Yes, there may be some effect by ratcheting up our interdiction efforts and border security, but it won't be enough if the demand continues to grow.
I would love to think that bombing drug production sites will work, but it won't, I'm afraid.
Hay Man
Well-Known Member
I'm guessing he's saying that because he inhaled so much second hand smoke throughout his childhood. That can get you as much as being the one smoking.
Shitty thing to do to your own kids, but it's like any addiction, it controls a lot of your actions.
Fryowa
Administrator
I have no idea how long I'll live, but my guess would be sub 70 years old. My dad's side is terrible, I don't know if I can think of a male who lived past 62. But all were overweight and smoked etc.
I'm not worried about it at all, you can only do what you can do and the rest is up to the roll of the dice.
But I do know that smoking is by far the most deadly thing that people commonly do to themselves that's preventable. More so than even shitty diets. Shitty diets are real, real bad, but smoking is worse.
Fryowa
Administrator
Correct. I've never had a cigarette in my mouth but I effectively smoked every day from birth to 19 years old.
