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I just had someone point out to me privately that I should step back and
look at this comment:

>I look at smoking as a disease. I think it should be illegal

And he asked if we should outlaw pneumonia next. Good point.

Easy enough. Excessive drinking is often a disease. We control it. You can't
drink and drive. You can't be publicly drunk. You can't give alcohol to
minors.

Heroin is also considered to be an addiction and therefore a disease. I'm
sure you would have no problem with its illegality or at least control.
Control. Perhaps that is a better word than "illegal." Tobacco should be a
controlled substance like heroine and cocaine.

Of course, then we get into the war on drugs which is a complete clusterf--k
and one of the worst abuses of individual liberties one can think of. I
didn't say this is going to be an easy problem to solve. It will take
creative thinking and a lot of resolve - and time.

But we're not helpless, what falls apart we can put together with the right
effort. How do we get there? I think that we're on the path. The efforts to
characterize smoking for what it is. To tell people the truth: that it's a
poison. To drive those who manipulate its effects to addict their customers
out of business. Where we can go from there we can discuss.

But certainly divers shouldn't smoke. That just seems like good sense.

Someone else asked about smokeless tobacco. It's just as bad if not worse.
Here's a webpage that seems to sum it up pretty well:

http://www.entassociates.com/smokeless.htm

Read the section labeled "Effects of Smokeless Tobacco." I thought the
sentence that read, "Constricted blood vessels: nicotine constricts the
blood vessels, slowing down the circulation of oxygen-rich blood to the
organs." Probably not a good thing when breathing compressed air and mixed
gases. 

Of course, you could always say that nicotine's positive effect is that it
could retard the onset of oxygen toxicity. Ya right. Then there's also the
part about higher blood pressure and irregular heart beats.

Those circulatory effects are the same for smoke and smokeless, BTW. I think
the answer is still, "DUH!"

Ya'll do know that the Marlboro man died of lung cancer, right?

Later,

JoeL

Here are some other webpages:

Some lovely cancer photos:

http://www.quittobacco.com/Facts/effects.htm

A quiz:

http://www.adha.org/oralhealth/cancerquiz.htm

Samples of weekly warnings that you can have sent to your smoking or dipping
friends:

http://www.weeklywarning.com/sample2.htm

And general cancer risks for smoking and smokeless tobaccy from the NIH:

http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_Pub_Interface/raterisk/risks67.html

Note this paragraph:

Among male cigarette smokers, the risk of lung cancer is more than 2,000
percent higher than among male nonsmokers; for women, the risks were
approximately 1,200 percent greater. Lung cancer is the single largest cause
of cancer mortality among both men and women and accounts for more than one
in every four cancer deaths nationally in the U.S.

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