Coming Out: Closet Smokers Feel Shame No More

Fact checked
Smoking Deaths This Year Counter Billboard on Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles, California

Smoking Tobacco ≠ Lung Cancer

While not gaining much support, the late 1920s saw rise to the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history lead by Germans after German scientists found a link between smoking and lung cancer. But not until the 1980s did we see a widespread campaign against smoking once “scientific” evidence started mounting. However, the actual science shows no proof that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. Yet today children are learning in schools that if they smoke, they will die, and inhaling the second hand smoke from others will kill them too.

Cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A. provides commuters with a lovely view of the famously grim smoking death counter billboard seen above. We are being scaremongered daily by anti-smoking ads through our media. And because of such efforts, the percentage of smokers in the Western world has greatly decreased, but yet, sales on tobacco products are more profitable that ever!

 

What Does The Science Say?

Tobacco executives once testified to the United States Congress that they did not believe that smoking caused cancer, their answers were probably truthful to their knowledge and the science will corroborate that statement. Now, if they were asked if smoking increases the risk of getting lung cancer, then their answer based upon current evidence should be “yes.” But even so, the risk of smokers getting lung cancer is negligeable. Based upon what the media and anti-tobacco organizations say, one would think that the majority of those who smoke, get lung cancer. In fact, only around 8% of smokers and 1% of non-smokers ever die of lung cancer. And actually, the data used is biased against smokers in the way that it was collected, so, the actual risk for a smoker is probably even less.

The process of developing cancer is complex and multifactorial. It involves genetics, the immune system, cellular irritation, DNA alteration, dose and duration of exposure, and much more. Some of the known risk factors include genetics, asbestos exposure, sex, HIV status, vitamin deficiency, diet, pollution, shipbuilding, and even simply just being lazy. When some of these factors are combined they can have a synergistic effect, but none of these risk factors are directly and independently responsible for “causing” lung cancer!

Life Itself is Full of Risks

Many of the things we humans do on a daily basis involve risk, but that doesn’t hinder us from doing them because no one tries to convince us not to like they do with smoking tobacco. So what’s the agaenda behind the mass spread of misinformation and anti-smoking propaganda? Is it maybe so governments can tax the hell out of these products to make record levels of tax revenue off of them? So big tobacco and other large corporations can make billions on smoking ceasation products? Whatever it may be, you decide.

 

 

 

 

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