A Guaranteed Way to Quit Smoking October 29, 2006
Posted by Admin in Addiction, Canada, Smoking Cessation, Tobacco, health, lung cancer, nicotine, nicotine patches, smoking.trackback
Before I tell you the controversial solution to getting people to kick the smoking habit, let me first tell you a story that’s close to my heart.
In 1989, my Mother, a nicotine addict for more than 20 years finally quit smoking, cold turkey. Then one day in 1995, a combination of peer pressure, a still nagging addiction and stress pulled her back to her DuMaurier Special Milds during a coffee break with her UPS coworkers – bringing a successful six year smoking cessation period to an abrupt end.
A Guaranteed Solution: How to Quit Smoking
Heather and I were having a discussion this morning over brunch about those nasty pictures on the outside of cigarette packs. You know the ones: The rotted gums and nasty yellow teeth, the baby in an incubator, the pregnant woman, among others.
Do these pictures work, or is their sole purpose to just gross out the non smokers that have to look at those disgusting images after their colleague leaves their smokes sitting on their desk.
Digressing for a moment: We also compared the dangers of food to cigarettes. I told Heather I was sure it would only be a matter of time before a box of Twinkies, or King Dongs, or Miss Vickies chips had a pictures on them with an overweight, sweaty, rotted teeth thirty year old sitting on a couch, in an attempt to warn people about the negative health effects of ingesting certain types of food. Because that’s how smart our government is. Don’t think this will happen? How many of us, twenty years ago would have predicted the nasty pictures we have to look at on the outside of cigarette packs today?
Truth is certainly stranger than fiction.
FACTS ABOUT SMOKING & NICOTINE:
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FACT: |
Worldwide, tobacco causes one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths each year. An estimated 1.25 billion men and women around the globe smoke cigarettes. |
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FACT: |
In Canada, 30 per cent of fatal cancers can be linked to tobacco. Health Canada projects 70,400 cancer deaths for 2006. (Pat Wellenbach/Associated Press) |
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FACT: |
The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths) |
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FACT: |
The number of U.S. smokers – about 45 million – in 2005 was the same as in 2004, prompting suggestions that the eight-year tobacco battle has hit a lull. |
THE THREAT. Obviously, the threat is real. We have verifiable proof that thousands of people die from smoking and second hand smoke every day. People that don’t die can be subjected to some pretty scary diseases and general physical grossness (to use a technical term).
THE ADDICTION. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substance on this planet. Thousands of people try to quit every day, but the incentives just aren’t high enough when compared to the addictive hold of nicotine.
THE STATISTICS. Based on the facts above, Health Canada projects 21,120 smoking related deaths by the end of 2006. That’s 57 people per day. In the United States, that figure is 1,191. Globally, 3,835 people drop dead from smoking every day of the year.
If 3,835 people die each day, why do people continue to smoke?
The trouble is that smoking is like playing a game of Russian Roulette, with one exception: You play the game today and you don’t find out if you actually won for 20-30 years. The odds are not in your favour my friend, because there are only 6 chambers in the pistol, and at a pack a day, you’ve already pulled the trigger 219,000 times in 30 years.
THE SENSE OF URGENCY. In a world where people live with a buy now, pay later mentality (thank you Visa, Mastercard, AMEX), we are conditioned to act now and worry about the consequences of those actions later. We don’t invest in RRSPs for retirement for the same reason we don’t worry about smoking: The debt and the diseases won’t hit us until years later and by then it’s too late.
What we need is something that will make us act now, without hesitation. We need an immediate threat. Parents offer children immediate consequences for their misbehaviours, why shouldn’t we have a consequence for smokers?
What steps will we take to save the 1.4 million people who die each year? They can’t save themselves and the government has made it pretty clear that it is helpless in stopping the nicotine machine from growing; they need the tax money at the expense of it’s citizens health.
THE CRAZY SOLUTION (otherwise known as: DO YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA?). What if the tobacco companies were required by law to manufacture random cigarettes with a lethal dose of hydrogen cyanide? Inhalation of high concentrations of hydrogen cyanide causes a coma with seizures, apnea and cardiac arrest, with death following in a matter of minutes. Cigarettes already have this compound in them by the way… just not enough to kill you right away.
I’m not suggesting EVERY cigarette should have this lethal dose: only 3,835 cigarettes per day, the total number of people that die each and every day from smoking related illnesses.
A drastic measure to be sure, but as a society, would the immediacy of the mortality bring immediacy to the cause? Would people about to light up refrain, knowing that it might be their last cigarette?
If 3,835 bodies littered the streets you live on each day from these lethal cigarettes, what would you do? How would you cope? I know you’re thinking… who would pick up all those bodies? Probably the same people who pick them up today, I suppose.
Before you go, consider this:
By the end of the century, Tobacco is on course to kill a billion people this century — ten times the toll it exacted in the 20th century — if current trends continue.
What actions will we be willing to consider by then?
For more information, see the Progress Report on Cancer Control in Canada, an 80 page report published in 2002 by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Technorati Tags: smoking cessation – anti-smoking – cancer – lung cancer – smoking – Nicoderm – Canada – quit smoking – addiction – Toronto – politics – nicotine – statistics – tobacco – heart disease
LOL Cool post. Maybe they already do? Would we even notice? Why stop at cigarettes? Alcohol also kills millions, a few poisoned bottles would discourage excess consumption, that’s for sure.
Joking aside, smoking is a terrible problem, certainy can’t hurt to think outside the lines.
Doug
Ha! Thanks Doug. As I get older, I realize the solutions get more and more complicated… and unfortunately, we elect incompetent people to protect us.
[...] Smokers and non-smokers alike will have something to say about this post on The Court Jester. Nice one, Ben! [...]
Ben, good post.
Cut the disclaimer off at the end and take the hard stance that “smoking *should* kill” and you’ll watch this one go crazy viral.
Good point Engtech. No argument here! I like the “ka-pow” – you’re dead – approach… die now or die later, you’re still killing yourself smoking these things.
well, sorry to spoil the fun, but I’ll have to disagree. While you are right about the Russian roulette thing, I still don’t understand the aggression behind such a proposal? The thing is this: A lot of people want to quit, a lot of them aren’t able. Which leaves them with guilt and failure. Many of these feel more or less pressured to quit from their doctors, their well-meaning kids and parents or their bosses. Which leaves them with guilt and feeling like a failure. People should just leave smokers alone, because if they did smokers would live happier lives and therefore live longer and happier lives, and who cares if they die 5 years before their time? At least they lived a happy life, free of guilt and feeling like a failure.
Hey Pete, thanks for the post and the insight. For the purpose of full disclosure, are you a smoker? My post has less to do with feelings of guilt and failure (that’s a much larger topic altogether) and more to do with an immediate, post action consequence.
For instance, I risk the chance of going blind by eating too much sugar and becoming a diabetic. Will I cut down my sugar today because of this? Probably not. If somebody told me I will die immediately after eating this bowl of ice cream, would I go ahead and eat it anyway? Probably not.
I’m not suggesting the tobacco companies lace cigarettes with hydrogen cyanide. I was using an extreme example to serve my point: the lack of immediate consequences of a smoker’s actions delay the genuine act of quitting by smokers.
I am an occasional smoker. Monday through Friday I don’t smoke at all, but perhaps as much as 20-30 during a weekend.
Other than that, I agree with your point. If there was a potential for that lethal consequence, no people would smoke at all. MY point was that for a lot of those people, life would be a tad bit more dismal.
Hey Ben, I loved your post and featured an exccerpt from it on my blog, with a link to your blog for people who wanted to read more. Howzzat? -farrukh
Makes me wonder how widespread smoking would be if there wasn’t a giant industry promoting it. People do lots of things that have a potential for immediate lethal consequence, there’s always going to be some. Fugu fish comes to mind, people still pay a fortune to eat same, some die every year. There’d still be some smokers if you laced the occasional one with cyanide, but it would change the culture and reduce the attraction. I’m a very occasional smoker myself, but I don’t have a problem with banning it in buildings and such. Interesting topic.
Doug
Technically, contrary to smoking, a FUGU fish properly prepared will NOT poison you. The FUGU risk probably fits in the category of flying in an airplane, riding a motorcycle, or dating an ex-girlfriend. The difference is, a cigarette will ALWAYS poison you. It’s a great point Doug, thanks for bringing it up!
Sure, a cigarette will ALWAYS poison you, but these mortality statistics only apply to “pack-a-day” smokers. What about casual “weekend cigar” smokers, or “cigarette-a-day” smokers? Those who smoke every now and then, because they enjoy it?
And sure, those “pack-a-day” smokers might be killing themselves, but really, who cares? Unless it’s a loved one or it starts interfering with daily life, why bother with what the other 45 million people are doing with their lives? If they choose to commit slow suicide then let them.
Until we start implementing laws to get fat people to exercise and diet better, we (as Americans) have no right to tell smokers to stop their own habits.
While public smoking laws are in place for public safety, regulating the sale and possession of cigarettes or other tobacco products has no room in the USA.
Jason, thanks for writing. This article was a discussion focused on nicotine addicts and how significant the threat of illness or death had to be before a nicotine addict would consider kicking their habit for good.
I disagree with your statement about “why bother with what the other 45 million people are doing in their own lives?” Although it’s not the topic at hand, we as a society should be concerned about these people since they eventually do become a burden to the health care system – whether it’s in the US or in Canada.
Your view that: “…Until we start implementing laws to get fat people to exercise and diet better, we (as Americans) have no right to tell smokers to stop their own habits.” is an unfortunate one. It sounds like you’re saying: Since we can’t fix the world’s problems all at once, we have no business focusing on a specific group.
But we have to start somewhere though, don’t we?
From a strictly logical standpoint, no one would purchase the tainted cigarettes. So those companies would go out of business or quit selling in that region.
Then a black market would spring up, with people smuggling cigarettes in from areas/countries where they are not made with poison.
So, the rate of smoking would diminish, but certainly would not be stopped completely.
I don’t believe you can legislate morality. Human nature will always win. Look at prohibition in the U.S. It failed miserably and was eventually repealed.
The bottom line is that people have to make their own choices to be content and free of resentment. If a smoker is forced to quit by the government, they aren’t truly quitting. They simply would be pausing their habit until they can do it again, if only to get back at authority. Isn’t that one of the biggest reasons smokers start in the first place?
Is smoking tragic? Yes. But even more tragic would be removal of free will. True triumph will come when people finally decide, own their own, that smoking is no longer wanted.
I’d actually like to get some cyanide – it would beat living in a world where you have no freedoms left because of fellow citizens ‘concerns for your health’.
What I’m really looking forward to is this: The clientele of most expensive restaurants consist mostly of non smokers / ex smokers / anti smokers. I know, I’m in the business.
So let’s make a 10,000 % increase in the restaurant tax, because it is proven that eating in restaurants causes obesity, another well documented health risk. Then people will be forced to not eat out anymore, and everyone will benefit!
Sound good chubby nonsmokers? Don’t laugh. Now that you gave the government the green light on such measures with your antismoking crusades, this is next. Feel free to not believe me on this. I know it’s coming – because I can SEE it. And you can all blame yourselves for it.