but someone has to support the economy $5 at a time!

in russia, EVERYBODY smokes. though facilitating interaction seems like a weird reason to get cancer. "lets get it together, we can share oxygen tanks!!!!"

tobacco use would not even be an issue if smokers actually paid for their own medical bills.

The first guy I was ever really really into smoked, so now I love the taste of smoky mouth, unlike many non-smokers.

YOU NEEDED TO KNOW THIS ABOUT ME.

@tetracycloide: Let's not go there, please?

I am a smoker who has run out of options. I have tried every thing there is to quit. I hate it, but love it at the same time.
In March I am going back to the patches for the 9th time.
Staying pregnant-forever and ever- is the one way I know I won't light up.

But, have the tax increases here in the US really contributed to less smoking?

@tetracycloide: Okay, I have to ask: Do you think ALL smokers are uninsured, don't pay FICA out of their paychecks or what exactly?

@TheUptightMidwesterner: You could be like the good Mrs. Dugger!

[www.duggarfamily.com]

@StupidFace: Sorry, DuggAr.

I would like to point out that they have a game entitled 'Name that Duggar'. All their children have names that start with J, so I bet with all EIGHTEEN MILLION OF THEM it would get pretty tricky!

tmmkitten: if you get could a pack of malboros for a dollar, I'd bet that everyone would smoke here too.

Whatever, we're suffering from overpopulation anyway, aren't we?

Also, I smoked 2 packs a day for 5 years, and quit. I think it's a mental thing - like weight. If you want to change habits, you do. If you don't, nothing changes.

That's right. I'm Judgy McJudgerson today. But it's okay, you can judge me back, I'm fat *wink*

i'm really naive. i really am. so don't get angry. and withdrawel sucks, i'm sure...but if you don't want to smoke...just don't buy them?

@tetracycloide: There is nothing so high and friggin mighty than a non-smoker. Not trying to start a flame-war here, but cool the condescention. *Puff, flick*

@TheUptightMidwesterner: You're trying, that's something. My father has been smoking for 30-odd years. My mother and I bug him but I empathize with how hard it must be to quit.

Bullshit on the higher taxes. That's not going to stop addicts from smoking.

I never understood the smoking as an appetite suppressant. I smoked for a few years and would often get nauseous, then I would need to eat something to make it go away. I never lost weight while smoking.

@titania1285: It's not that easy when you're addicted to something.

@TheUptightMidwesterner: It's hard as hell but you can do it! It's all about making a plan, getting the support you need (books, friends, nicotine gum or whatever) and believing you can do it.

@warmaiden: A huge part of it habitual. The only time I would smoke was in the car, as I have an hour commute each way. I would get sooooo damn bored. It was the car, Red Bulls/coffee and loud dance music that would trigger me.

Price will never truly influence smokers. I've often said when cigarettes reach $X per pack, I'll quit, but I never do. I know its bad; I've cut down to three a day or so, but quitting entirely, for sustained periods of time is really hard for me because I genuinely enjoy smoking the way some people enjoy drinking or other recreational substances. I'll also add that smoking as an appetite suppressant is quite effective. I quit over winter break and wanted to eat everything in sight.

@StupidFace: Oh, fuck! I was just telling my cousin about them. Hate!

@JessicaLovejoy: My favorite old boyfriend had the most heavenly light smoke breath. And he was the best. kisser. ever! Ooh, nostalgia.

@dotcomdork: i know. that's why i had the disclaimer first. it seems so logical to someone who's not addicted... :(

@sjct: do you think all smokers are contributing to their health insurance or state sponsored insurance proportionally to the amount of increased risk their smoking presents?

@TheUptightMidwesterner: I think it just has to be the right time. The hubs and I quit cold turkey 8 years ago, but it was tough, lots of minor relapses, but we had hit our bottom, like with alcoholics.
In New Orleans, New Years Eve, 2000. Fun times, but ouch!
Good Luck!!

@FemiNuisance: flame war... punny

@Elevendy: I KNOW! Building God's Army one creepy child at a time!

I was kind of a social smoker but never had the nicomonkey on my back, knock on wood. If I have a few ciggies in a week and get pissed off about something and then WANT one, I know that is the ciggie not to smoke.

Now I only smoke when drunk or in a particular mood.

Not too useful if you've been smoking since you were 14 or whatever, I know. Many of my friends and exes smoke- you guys have my sympathies.

46.6 million people in the USA did not have medical insurance in 2005. In 2004 44.5 million people in the USA smoked according the CDC. Smokers in the US continue to smoke, even when they pay their own medical bills. Smoking is more addictive than heroin. Addiction isn't influenced by a medical bill.

I quit over 9 months ago using Chantix. If you can afford it, I highly recommend it. I have moments still where I crave a ciggie, but not hacking up black loogies or coughing like a 90-year-old emphysema patient is worth it.

My mom also quit using Chantix. She smoked half a pack a day for 30 years; I smoked a pack a day for 8. It can be done!! Be strong, ladies!!! And check out this website: [www.chantix.com]

@TheUptightMidwesterner: My uncle almost died of pnemonia before he quit. His doctor told him if he'd been a non-smoker he wouldn't have ended up in the hospital at all. He stopped a 30 year long pack a day habbit. His daughter was scared into quitting for two days and then started again. Her attitude is "fuck it, I'm going to die of something, I might as well enjoy a cigarette while I wait to get hit by a bus."

Isn't smoking Darwinism at work?

@girlinterrupted:
Chantix has some risk..I was on it and totally went off my rocker- totally negated my urge to smoke, but that was becasue I was barfing, and it made my anti-sads not work AT ALL>

I think that the main thing that people miss when they talk about the "increased costs" to the healthcare system brought on by smokers is that EVERYBODY DIES. End-of-life care is damn expensive, and it doesn't matter if it's a 55-year old pack-a-dayer coughing up his last lung, or a 90-year old nonsmoking teetotaler slowly succumbing to alzheimers. It's really easy to isolate certain behaviours and talk about the burden they place on public health care (obesity, driving a car, mountaineering), but trying to progressively prohibit behaviours through laws (as we appear to be wont to do) just leads to nightmares. And it doesn't change the fact that we'll all die in a hospital bed, anyway! So leave the smokers alone. And the fatties, too!

@girlinterrupted: Did you ever try Welbutrin, and how does Chantix compare to it? I ask because for me, Welbutrin, while it reduces the urge to smoke and makes cigarettes taste funny, it greatly increases my urge to curl up in a ball and cry uncontrollably.

@laos: if end of life care is a fixed cost who is better paying for that care given a periodic insurance payment, someone that dies at 55 or someone that dies at 90?

the bush administration sunk SCHIP, a programme that would have paid for millions of uninsured kids to have access to healthcare for TEN years, all because it would have taxed TOBACCO. grrrrrr.....

@laos: ahhhhhmen

@tetracycloide: I don't like generalities because as soon as you say something like you did, you are wrong. But, let's say the average smoker might get cancer after 40 years of addiction. During those four decades they pay 15% of their paycheck plus wherever additional to insurance. Surely, that adds up to the cost of their end term treatments. Then, they die.

I have a personal example: My mother smoked for 55 years, got brain cancer and died. The total bill was around $150K. She worked most of her life and therefore put approximately $210K into Social Security, $350K into the insurance risk pool and my father still had to make $20K in co-pays. So how did she impact your pocketbook exactly?

On the other hand, my father is still alive and quite healthy at 90 years of age. He has been drawing on his SS benefits for 25 years already. I suspect he is costing society more than my mother did.

I was enticed to smoke because, when I was 15, my cool as anything boyfriend smoked.

Gotta love peer pressure.

We smokers are a dying breed.

@tetracycloide: Okay, I disagree with you, but we are friends again.

@tetracycloide: O, that's weird. I swear I was writing my reply when you used 55 and 90 as age examples.

Your attention, please! The library is closing in two minutes!

God, I can't wait to spark up a Springwater.

@tetracycloide: Yes, of course it is. But my point was that once smoking eventually falls out of favour (and it will - that battle has been lost), something will crop up to replace it as the percieved number one public health threat. And then what? Do we deny healthcare to fat people? to people genetically predisposed to be at a higher risk for breast cancer? If you limit health services to only the healthiest (lifestyle and genetics-wise), you're gonna be living in a pretty shitty world.

As a former 3-pack a day smoker (affectionately known as Nicotina by my good friends), is it too harsh for me to say "Survival of the fittest?" I mean, really, we all know it is like crack, what else can you say? If you choose to smoke, then so be it. More power to you. As a society, we'll let you make that choice as long as you don't expect us to die with you.

Disclaimers: I started lighting up when I was 15, didn't finally make the quit until 29. I'm asthmatic. I still dream about smoking A LOT, and I love the vicarious--and immense--pleasure I get from those dreams. And I also know that I can never, ever, smoke another cigarette again, because I can never, EVER, quit again. And if I make it past 80, I'm lighting up on my birthday and every day until my end. That is all.

I'm a social smoker. I don't really have a desire to quit right now, so I know it would probably be futile of me to try since I'm not committed to it(and then be disappointed by my failed effort a couple years down the road when I really do want to quit). It's hard for me to conceive of the health issues associated with smoking because none of them have affected me so far. I'm a distance runner, never short of breath, no nagging cough, etc...I know that if I had some of these problems I'd be much more likely to quit, but right now it just feels like a lark - something that I do when I'm drinking and damaging my body that way, too.

@TheUptightMidwesterner: Both my parents smoked for over 30 years, tried many times to quit, etc. I don't wanna sound like I'm advertising for drug companies or anything, but they both successfully quit using Chantix. I knoe, prolly not for everyone...

i smoked for a few years, and as a nervous person, ah it was delicious. i've quit now, about two months.

i believe that then number of smokers has gone down because of all the public smoking restrictions. I went overseas recently and actually became nauseous in all restaurants, cinemas, bars that smoking. if you are kicked out all the time, you smoke less. believe me, its made a HUGE difference. it also makes the distinction between people smoking for leisure, and the real addiction, as people are forced separate themselves from friends, go outside and light one up.

what i'm driving at is that it only matters what people do when someone else covers the cost. if everyone paid their own way then no one should have any right to deny anyone their dangerous vices. it's only an issue because it's public money funding the care and it will always be an issue as long as there is public money funding the care.

I was a pack-a-day for about three years and I quit with the help of this wonderful book. Buy it, love it, carry it around.

The main thing about smoking which makes it different from many behaviors that people want to legislate is that it poses a very real health risk to all people, smokers and non-smokers alike, in close proximity to a smoking person. Personally I think the only part of the smoking habit that should be legislated is the 'where it is allowed', but I tend to be really strict about this. I would be really happy if we could outlaw smoking inside private residences that house minor children as a form of child abuse. On the one hand, I know that kind of invasion of privacy is a really slippery slope, but on the other - kids don't have a choice where they live, and if their home is full of secondhand smoke, they need some advocacy.

Darwinism at work. He always wins in the end!

@TheUptightMidwesterner: If you haven't, try hypnosis (with someone who comes highly recommended). It can be amazingly effective.

@distractedbyshinyobjects: Exactly. Smoke all you want, but don't blow that shit in my face. Or your kid's face. Or my kid's face (if I had a kid).

No government can legislate someone away from his/her risky habit, hobby, or legal occupation. The cost-to-others economic argument is your basic slippery slope.

Two things will work in reducing the harm form smoking--convicing kids that smokers are losers and just don't start (very hard, thanks to the tobacco companies), and restricting the places where one may smoke.

And, smokers, governments snatching away folks their rights to do what they wish where they wish happens every day. It's as democratic as Athens. I'd love to drive as fast as I wish and let luck or Darwin determine who gets through intersections alive, but the government won't let me.

@tetracycloide: " . . . it only matters what people do when someone else covers the cost." You could make the same argument for dozens of other health hazards. I don't drive; why should I have to cover the cost of thousands' asthma treatments?

Should we outlaw cars? Fast food? Alcohol? Childbirth?

@tetracycloide: I work for the highest federally funded hospital in the country. I get insanely awesome hea