[quote]orion wrote:
And yeah, those warning labels really do a world of good, because the problem is that people just dont know that smoking and drinking is bad for them.
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You really screwed up when you picked tobacco as an example.
It was only about 40-50 years ago that tobacco companies were spending millions of dollars advertising cigarettes as being HEALTHY. Many people who saw those ads are still alive - but only if they didn’t believe those ads. It was only 15 years ago that cigarette manufacturers denied knowing that cigarettes caused cancer, in court and under oath (perjury). You don’t have any context on how the tobacco companies have actually done business in America, up until just recently.
Only an ideologue or an immature dolt would argue that the tobacco companies need freer reign, to sell highly addictive products that they know will kill tens of thousands of people every year.
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So?
Cigarettes do have health benefits and that is the goddamn truth.
True they also kill quite a lot of their users, but warning labels came loooong after the dangers of smoking were very well documented.
Government came in long after this issue was resolved for a bit of posturing and grandstanding and that was all that it was.
I do not care about sodium because I do not eat packaged food.
It will just make people like me resent people like you and you do seem to forget that you require our cooperation.
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Exceptions to the rule (statistical outliers) shouldn’t be used as guidelines for sensible regulations. (Do you even believe there is such a thing as “sensible regulations”? Thank God most Americans do).
Whether sensible regulation irritates these statistical outliers is completely irrelevant.
The Smoker’s Paradox
Thanks to Surgeon General’s Warning labels, public smoking bans, strict regulation of advertising, excise taxes, and public service messages, nearly everyone in America is fully aware of the many health risks associated
with cigarette smoking. Ongoing research has continuously proven that smoking causes lung dysfunction, cancer, SIDS, heart disease, birth defects, preterm birth, and other serious health problems. Knowing this, the idea that cigarette smoking may offer health benefits may seem utterly absurd.
However, cigarette smoking has been confirmed to provide numerous benefits to the health of smokers. Surprisingly, the tobacco plant appears to have more to offer our bodies than a guarantee of certain death. Although the health benefits of smoking are far outweighed by the many very dire risks, tobacco may provide alternative relief or prevention for some diseases in certain individuals.
The most fascinating and widely recognized health benefit of smoking is its ability to seemingly alleviate symptoms of mental illnesses, including anxiety and schizophrenia. According to an article published in 1995 in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, schizophrenics have much higher smoking rates than people with other mental illnesses, and appear to use it as a method of self-medicating. The article postulates that nicotine found in cigarettes reduces psychiatric, cognitive, sensory, and physical effects of schizophrenia, and also provides relief of common side effects from antipsychotic drugs.
The treatment of schizophrenia isn’t the only positive effect that nicotine has on the brain. A series of very interesting studies from multiple academic sources confirms that the risk of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease is surprisingly higher in non-smokers than in smokers. Doctor Laura Fratiglioni of Huddinge University Hospital in Sweden states, “Cigarette smokers are 50% less likely to have PD or AD than are age- and gender-matched nonsmokers […] cigarette smoking exerts an undefined, biologic, neuroprotective influence against the development of PD and AD.”
[quote]orion wrote:
Cigarettes do have health benefits and that is the goddamn truth.
[/quote]
Well ALRIGHTY THEN!
I think our little conversation is over for now. Thank God most people are more sensible than you.
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Just because you believe everything you are told makes you not more informed than me, just ignorant of everything not covered in the MSM.
You would only have had to google it, but NOOOOOOO, the desire to remain willfully ignorant was stronger.
I can understand why though, because the desire to run other peoples lifes is incombatible with the realization how little you really can and ever will know as a human being.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Cigarettes may actually lower the risk of breast cancer among women with a gene mutation linked to high rates of the disease, a study indicates. But the researchers say other health risks of smoking far outweigh the possible benefits.
I do not care about sodium because I do not eat packaged food.
It will just make people like me resent people like you and you do seem to forget that you require our cooperation.
[/quote]
Exceptions to the rule (statistical outliers) shouldn’t be used as guidelines for sensible regulations. (Do you even believe there is such a thing as “sensible regulations”? Thank God most Americans do).
Whether sensible regulation irritates these statistical outliers is completely irrelevant.[/quote]
You seem to believe that regulations have no consequences when it comes to how people act.
It does however, and all you will breed is a generation that thinks everything the government tells is safe or healthy actually is which is of course dangerous nonsense.
Your politics practically creates the very same sheeple that demand more and more regulations and there is no limit to how lazy people will get.
However, turning over your responsibility for your own health to government is hardly a step in the right direction and to make it easier and easier to do that will not make people healthier, it will only lead to more and more obese slobs.
You seem to believe that regulations have no consequences when it comes to how people act.
It does however, and all you will breed is a generation that thinks everything the government tells is safe or healthy actually is which is of course dangerous nonsense.
Your politics practically creates the very same sheeple that demand more and more regulations and there is no limit to how lazy people will get.
However, turning over your responsibility for your own health to government is hardly a step in the right direction and to make it easier and easier to do that will not make people healthier, it will only lead to more and more obese slobs.
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Regulation and freedom is not a zero sum game, the way you try to describe it.
Also, you should try shopping at my grocery stores… 80% of the food is garbage. Your objection to federal guidlines on what to eat has never translated over to the marketplace - food manufacturers outspend the government “educating” them on food choices, by 100 to 1, I would guess. (Billions are spent on advertising for garbage food). There is almost no real choice on what to eat, the way you pretend, when actually at the market. But you think the risk here is that people might “turn over responsibility to the government”.
You argue on purely ideological basis, with no basis in immediate practical effects. You think it’s better that people die from lung cancer, than have mean old Uncle Sam tell them not to smoke!
Oh. This was all you needed to say. I would’ve walked away a long time ago, realizing that you were too ignorant to be convinced if you had said something like this all along.
I see your disdain for facts runs deeper than I had previously estimated. Run along now, before my communism rubs off on you.
The funniest part is, after being so thoroughly refuted, you will still be convinced of your correctness, despite the fact that you were unable to demonstrate it. Ah, zealots.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
I see your disdain for facts runs deeper than I had previously estimated. Run along now, before my communism rubs off on you.
The funniest part is, after being so thoroughly refuted, you will still be convinced of your correctness, despite the fact that you were unable to demonstrate it. Ah, zealots.[/quote]
He didn’t really just say this:
This applies to you, too. You’ve made multiple objections to my statements, yet I can’t remember you ever substantiating one. If you have a problem, let’s hear it. But don’t deride “the left” for being idiots, misguided, indoctrinated, etc., when you can’t back up anything you say.
Or is too much to ask you to live up to your own standards?
kind of funny seeing people from a country who has a government who send young boys to die in iraq and afganistan, a goverment who steps on the citizens rights with laws like “the patriot act”, a government who has a concentration camp in cuba. And its health care and regulation of sodium who makes them scream evil government. its really funny.
I say, who cares if they regulates it or not, either way its not going to alter the world.
This applies to you, too. You’ve made multiple objections to my statements, yet I can’t remember you ever substantiating one. If you have a problem, let’s hear it. But don’t deride “the left” for being idiots, misguided, indoctrinated, etc., when you can’t back up anything you say.
Or is too much to ask you to live up to your own standards?
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He didn’t really just say this too:
[quote]florelius wrote:
kind of funny seeing people from a country who has a government who send young boys to die in iraq and afganistan, a goverment who steps on the citizens rights with laws like “the patriot act”, a government who has a concentration camp in cuba. And its health care and regulation of sodium who makes them scream evil government. its really funny.
I say, who cares if they regulates it or not, either way its not going to alter the world.[/quote]
And you know that we all support these things…how exactly?
[quote]florelius wrote:
kind of funny seeing people from a country who has a government who send young boys to die in iraq and afganistan, a goverment who steps on the citizens rights with laws like “the patriot act”, a government who has a concentration camp in cuba. And its health care and regulation of sodium who makes them scream evil government. its really funny.
I say, who cares if they regulates it or not, either way its not going to alter the world.[/quote]
And you know that we all support these things…how exactly?[/quote]
did I say all of you support those things? some of you do, some of you dont.
I just tried to put this sodium thing in perspectiv in a jokish way.
[quote]Artemisia wrote: it’s a stupid substance to target.
Of all the things to go after…they ignore questionable chemical additives and trans-fats (allowed to say “0 g trans-fats” on the label if it’s less than .5 g trans-fats per serving) in favor of effing salt. [/quote]
Not really a bad target… high blood pressure is spiking, and is more likely the older you get. It’s also a complicating factor in other diseases like diabetes.
Also, you object that trans fats were not targeted first… so for you, it’s mainly a matter of the order of importance?
BTW, there has already been a lot of voluntary improvements regarding trans fats. Apparently, that is less true with salt.
If the government has no role to play in attempting to protect peoples’ health, then why not take the warning labels off cigarettes, lets allow liquor advertising next to our elementary schools, lets remove the fetal warnings on alcohol, and so on. Lets bring back “Joe Camel”. Oh, I know there are some dopes who post here, who will dumbly agree to that, because rigid ideology is easier than applying logic and sensible judgement.[/quote]
Sodium is only one of many possible contributing factors to hypertension (and it depends on the individual). People with various sodium-sensitive disease states should rely on nutritional labels to determine if they should consume a product; that’s why companies are required to list ingredients and sodium content in addition to other information.
Re: trans-fats - not objecting: please don’t put words in my mouth…just expressing surprise that after all of the brouhaha over it in the past few years it wasn’t the first thing on the docket.
[quote]florelius wrote:
kind of funny seeing people from a country who has a government who send young boys to die in iraq and afganistan, a goverment who steps on the citizens rights with laws like “the patriot act”, a government who has a concentration camp in cuba. And its health care and regulation of sodium who makes them scream evil government. its really funny.
I say, who cares if they regulates it or not, either way its not going to alter the world.[/quote]
And you know that we all support these things…how exactly?[/quote]
did I say all of you support those things? some of you do, some of you dont.
I just tried to put this sodium thing in perspectiv in a jokish way.
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