What do you think causes more innocent death, directly or indirectly?

[jpgray]

I find it absolutely fascinating how anxious some DUers are to ban smoking utterly, or enact laws specifically punishing private smokers. I am not a smoker, but I find this behavior frightening from ostensible progressives--a farcical and illogical case is made for harm, and then is used as justification for bigotry. As far as what causes more harm and what costs innocents more, I think obesity and drunk driving are far higher on the list than smoking, but there seems to be much less of a groundswell for draconian legislation against those behaviors--why is that?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. People want to ban smoking utterly?

Really?

anyway: drunk driving causes about 15,000 deaths per year, U.S.

Smoking: ~ half a million.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Person sounds a bit facetious

[jpgray]

16. What gives you that impression?

"Inexplicably legal," "should be banned altogether," etc.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Well, that bit at the end...

about how he thinks the employer is in the wrong.

[jpgray]

20. That doesn't really have any rhetorical impact on his view for banning smoking

"employers shouldn't be able to control what a person does on his or her own time, especially an activity that is still inexplicably legal."

I don't see how that indicates in any objective sense that the comments on prohibiting smoking are facetious.

[jpgray]

13. 500,000 non-smokers die from smoking every year?

Link? I don't classify smokers who die from smoking as innocent people, since they are themselves engaging in the damaging behavior.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. I'd consider smokers who died to be innocent...

because smoking isn't a crime, and they don't deserve to die.

Smoking is a much more serious problem than drunken driving.

[John Gauger]

43. I have to agree there.

They're guilty of smoking, but they aren't guilty of any crime.

[Clark2008]

65. But the problem is that deaths may be caused by any number

of other things - pollution being the biggest - but smoking is blamed because it's convenient. I really don't think they try to study beyond, "Well, he/she was a smoker. That's what did 'em in."

I quit because I'm pregnant and my breathing has gotten WORSE - and I think it's all the pollution in the air.

[uppityperson]

2. "innocent" death?

If you are asking if drunk drivers kill more people or if smoking kills more non-smokers, that is different than do drunk drivers kill more people or does smoking kill more people. Are you leaving out the drunk drivers and smokers and asking about them harming others, or about drunk driving vs smoking?

[jpgray]

5. Innocent death--as in people who do not smoke or drive drunk

I don't think smoking is anywhere near as lethal as drunk driving insofar as affecting those who do not partake.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. Whoa -- I consider a smoker to be an innocent person.

Hence I voted smoking. And I utterly abhor those anti-personal-privacy laws and policies.

[jpgray]

11. Ah okay--I meant those who do not partake in the damaging behavior

As in those who are affected by smoking or drunk driving but do not engage in the harmful activity themselves.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

27. I'll freely admit I haven't the foggiest idea what the numbers are without research

But I agree if you take the smokers themselves out of the equation, the number of casualties has to drop significantly. Second hand smoke is undeniably bad, but not nearly as bad as filling your lungs completely with incandescent toxic fumes.

[jpgray]

29. I think most people are ignorant of the numbers

I know secondhand smoke is developmentally very harmful to infants/toddlers/children, but then parental alcoholism has a very negative impact on kids as well--it's just very hard to quantify, and I don't feel like I can say anyone's opinion is "wrong" because of that (or that mine is "right"). So no worries. :D

[in_cog_ni_to]

4. Because it's not THEM. "First They Came for the Jews"

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.


Pastor Martin Niemöller

[jpgray]

6. I was hoping Niemoller would not make an appearance here

[in_cog_ni_to]

24. Of course. Why is that?

It's no different. If they take away the rights of everyone but yourself or anti-smokers...there's no one left to speak out to defend YOU when they come for you (general "you") and your rights or something you partake in that others don't like. Niemoller fits this thread perfectly.

Once they finish extinguishing the smokers, watch out alcohol drinkers...you're next. After the alcohol drinkers, watch out obese people. After that, watch out ..... It will go on and on and on and on.

[jpgray]

26. I think in almost all cases holocaust comparisons cloud debate

However valid they may be. (And no, I'm not commenting on the validity of this one :))

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Life. It leads to death every time.

"There is no safety in the Cosmos" - Alan Watts

[jpgray]

9. Yep. We're lucky if we live through it

:dunce:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. Yep. And the grim reaper doesn't give a rip if your "innocent" or not.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

10. Neither

Second hand smoke kills nobody and drunk driving is not nearly the killer it is made out to be. That "40% of highway deaths are alcohol related" stat you always hear is based on highly dubious methodology. All it means is that someone involved in a fatal wreck had alcohol in their system. That someone could be a passenger, pedestrian, or a driver that had one beer prior to getting in the car. Yet they all get lumped into the number so that the cash cow that is drunk driving enforcement can continue.

Flame away if you want but I had an ex who was a cop. He said he worked the DUI team for several years and came to the conclusion that it was mostly a big old revenue generating scam.

[EdwardM]

14. Smoking by far.

Drunk driving is far more minor than people think. I believe that smoking has some responsibility for a double digit percent of all deaths, and drunk driving is responsible for far less than 1 in 1000.

[jpgray]

18. But are those who die smokers or non-smokers?

By that rationale, obesity is more dangerous--should similar legislation be enacted against trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup? This poll was about innocents, as in how many non-smokers die from smoking compared to how many sober folks are harmed by the inebriated.

[EdwardM]

22. There are ton of people who die for second hand smoke.

Working in a bar that allows smoking, or living with a smoker for 40 years can mess up your lungs. I believe that percentage of people would probably be much higher than the percent of people who are killed by drunk drivers.

[seabeyond]

25. i am not seeing the people dropping like flies, nor the childen of the

smoker. there is no factual information of people dying from second hand smoke, only studies that are highly subjective and of agenda that say people are dying of it because of results they find when studying mice,... not because there is any evidence people are dropping dead cause the took a whiff of second hand smoke. further common sense would suggest the complete opposite,.... looking at the many raised with smoking parents and still around kicking. it is all a guess, like your guess that is to be taken as fact. silliness.

but hey.... dont let me get in the way of criminalizing the smoker and giving them every one of the woes this planet holds.

[John Gauger]

60. Second hand smoke

causes cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In humans, that is, not lab mice. These are fatal diseases; you mean to tell me that those cases causes by second-hand smoke are never fatal?

The evidence you give is flawed: plenty of people survived fighting in World War II, but that doesn't mean that nobody died fighting it. Just because some kids raised by smokers are healthy doesn't mean all kids raised by smokers are healthy.

[T Town Jake]

34. Excellent post. Non-smoker myself, but my parents smoked like chimneys...

all during the sixties and early seventies when my sister and I were growing up. It never seemed to affect either one of us a bit. My parents both quit long ago, but I've never seen these long term health impediments in my own life that those exposed to "second hand smoke" are supposed to be crippled with.

I also agree that the DUI "problem" is vastly overrated in this country, and just an excuse to impose prohibition by other means (And for the flamethrowers, since this implication is inevitably made by the neo-Carry Nation's, ad hominen style, in every one of these threads I participate in, let's just get it out of the way now: I have never had a DUI or anything even remotely close; so I'm not a "bitter drunk driver who got caught" or any of that ridiculous bilge).

[mrreowwr_kittty]

57. Nor have I

I have known people who were in accidents caused by drunk drivers too. Mostly back in the Seventies. There really was a need at one time for stricter laws because there was carnage on the roads and repeat offenders were getting slapped on the wrist. When MADD was formed back in 1980 or so it was a good organization addressing a real need. Today it has morphed into a neo-prohibition jihad. It also helps enable the continuation of local governments soaking people out of thousands of dollars and ruining their lives.

Right now I know far more people, along with their families, who have been harmed by drunk driving punishments than by actual drunk drivers. A friend of mine who was a nurse got nabbed one night a couple years ago. Now I don't have a problem with her losing her driving privilege for a while and doing some jail time. It was a good wakeup call to her and she has changed her behavior. But the thing is, she is still terrified to this day of her employer finding out about and yanking her nursing license. This woman is a single mom with 2 kids and no support from her ex-husband. Now I'm sure some of the flamers who have already turned up on this subthread will launch into some moralizing bullshit screed about how she should lose her nursing license and her job. But I'd like to know why they think her kids should suffer for her mistake? Does taking her livelihood, and their support, away bring back a SINGLE drunk driving victim? I think not.

[earth mom]

40. What TOTAL bullshit!

:puke:

Tell that to someone who lost their family member to a drunk driver-like me! Your ex sounds like a sicko that needs to find a new line of work. :puke:

[mrreowwr_kittty]

51. If they really wanted to stop drunk driving they would

Simply by installing breathalizer devices in every vehicle. Standard equipment like airbags and seatbelts. Problem solved. But it'll never happen because states and cities make MILLIONS prosecuting impaired drivers. My boyfriend wasn't lying. He said all they cared about on the task force was numbers. They had quotas of arrests they needed to make and it had little to nothing to do with actually keeping the road safe.

Sorry about your family member but I lost a friend in a car accident years ago because the inattentive other driver was reaching for a french fry. How about those cell phones? I mean, you NEVER dial while driving, do you?

[John Gauger]

55. Wait, second hand smoking

doesn't kill anybody? I don't think that's right. I did a research paper on smoking for writing class and a number of the studies I used talked about the harm of second-hand smoking. I can tell you for certain that tobacco kills nonsmokers. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is very often linked to prenatal maternal smoking.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

59. Okay, maybe you're right about that

I shouldn't have said nobody. But let's face it, there are far more likely culprits in premature death (whatever that means - you die when you die ya know?) than secondhand smoke. Point taken, though.

[John Gauger]

62. If I recall,

only 11% of SIDS cases in the US were attributed to maternal smoking. Among those exposed, 60% were attributed to smoking. Mind you, SIDS is only when a coroner cannot determine a cause of death. Plenty of newborns die for other reasons which are not called SIDS because we are able to clearly tell what the cause was. So smoking-SIDS links really aren't very illustrative anyway.

[ieoeja]

67. An insurance company lobby employee told me the same thing.

He worked in the office where they cooked the numbers and told me their analysis done properly could only definitively blame alcohol for 5% of traffic fatalities. The real number would have been higher, but nobody believed it would be 10x higher.

Concerning the money, he informed me that the insurance companies fund the lobbying -- MADD is actually a bit player -- and the enforcement -- 50% of the police overtime for those holiday weekend crackdowns typically come from donations by these companies -- not because it cuts down on their costs (see first paragraph above), but because it increases their income.

First, prior to the 1980s demonization of drunk drivers, insurance companies were not allowed to charge drunk drivers the high premiums they do now. Today those high premiums are seen by the bulk of the public as part of the drunk drivers' punishment. The drunk drivers are essentially paying a public fine to a private company.

Heck, we might as well require speeders to pay their fines to GM and Ford while we're at it. Makes as much sense.

Second, increased law enforcement and looser definitions for what constitutes DUI increases the number of people who pay those high premiums. So the insurance companies win twice.

I refuse to put a tin-hat on for this one. As already stated I heard this straight up from an employee of a lobbiest organization, the National Association of Independant Insurancers in Des Plaines, IL.

[bryant69]

15. Bigotry?

Those are strong words.

Or word, I guess.

That's a strong word.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Avalux]

21. Neither. Communicable infectious diseases do.

I'm speaking worldwide of course. Remember, tomorrow is World Aids Day. :hi:

[Kelly Rupert]

31. That would work if the question was "most," not "more."

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. Poverty.

The World Health Organization claims the biggest killer in the world today is not cancer or any other disease but “deep poverty”

[Jed Dilligan]

30. We won't ever know, because the subject matter is so politicized.

Apparently, it's easy to buy a social scientist these days. I know that the drunk driving mortality stats have been trumped up to promote a quasi-public industry. I haven't looked into tobacco, but I would tend to suspect that the would-be banners are at least as corrupt as MADD. Of course, there are also tobacco companies with their own trumped-up figures.

We could get a clearer picture but for one thing: punishment sells. Americans have a particular fetish for feeling wounded by the enjoyment of others. I would say the War on Drugs kills more innocents than all the cigarettes and drunk drivers in the world, but hey, at least we're beating up on someone.

[Kelly Rupert]

32. Drunk driving is already illegal. Public smoking should be as well.

And I'd like to see your case for secondhand smoke being "farcical" and "illogical."

[jpgray]

33. Well, I don't see it as more costly or harmful than alcohol or obesity

But even acknowledging it as worse than those two behaviors, I see it disproportionately demonized and legislated against. I'm just curious why that is.

[Kelly Rupert]

37. Do you want to know why smoking is demonized?

Because most non-smokers hate cigarette smoke. It stinks, it makes it hard to breathe, it kills the taste of whatever you were eating, and it's overall downright unpleasant.

The fact that any public health organization will tell you it's harmful is the legal foundation for banning public smoking, and it's a good one. But the real reason? Breathing smoke sucks for people who don't smoke.

[jpgray]

41. It's never bothered me. Maybe that's why I don't understand this

That still doesn't explain the need to fire people based on their private smoking, or banning smoking in cars, etc. But it helps me understand some of the demonization.

[Kelly Rupert]

45. Now I do agree with you that smoking

should not be banned in homes or cars. I think most anything should be legal on your property--it is, after all, your property.

[slackmaster]

35. I haven't read any of the other replies, but here are figures for 2003

Smoking wins by orders of magnitude.

1   Heart Disease               684,615  <- Much of this
                                            is smoking-
                                            related
 
2   Malignant Neoplasms         556,815  <- Ditto
 
3   Cerebro-vascular            157,586  <- Ditto 
                                            (strokes)
 
4   Chronic Respiratory Disease 126,349  <- Ditto
 
5   Unintentional Injury        108,256  <- Drunk-driving
                                            deaths form a
                                           small fraction
                                           of these 
6   Diabetes Mellitus           74,213  
 
7   Influenza & Pneumonia       64,839  
 
8   Alzheimer's Disease         63,457  
 
9   Nephritis                   42,270  
 
10  Septicemia                  33,788  

Source:  http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/ - YMMV.  Roll your
own query and see!  Link is cold so the numbers would look
right.

[jpgray]

39. Right--now how to separate innocent deaths from that

As in how many drunks/smokers caused their own death compared to how many deaths of others they caused? I realize that's difficult to quantify, but I guess my main question is why is the desire to demonize and legislate so particular with smoking and not other comparably harmful behaviors?

[slackmaster]

47. Depends on whether or not you consider smokers to be innocent victims

The tobacco industry has spent billions of dollars trying to hide the known dangers of their addictive products.

I don't have a problem with people choosing to engage in behaviors that endanger themselves, but the choice has to be made with all information on the table. Historically that has not been the case with smoking.

Millions of smokers started when they were young and naive, are now aware of the danger, and are unable to quit.

[earth mom]

36. I asked this question before and got no replies.

If the pilot of the plane you were flying on was to have "one or two drinks for the road" or sky as it were, would that be okay with you?

Here's my answer: I highly doubt that that scenario would be okay for most people.

Meanwhile, most of those people who would object to their pilot having "a couple" think it's okay for drivers of cars to do that very thing and have "one or two for the road". :puke:

[John Gauger]

38. I wrote a research paper on smoking

for my writing class. One of the studies I read said that smoking is more harmful than obesity. It didn't mention DUI.

[ComerPerro]

42. smokers: please get over yourselves

[jpgray]

44. Maybe someone will compare smoking a cigarette to rape later

:dunce:

[Kelly Rupert]

50. And then she saw it--

long, hard, white and smooth--jutting forcefully out at her. With a sick grin, he lit the match. "Mind if I smoke?" he sneered.

[ComerPerro]

52. would be the opposite

"not letting someone smoke is worse than rape"

[jpgray]

54. I see the anti-smoking side as much more hysterical and over-the-top

Well, Niemoller poem postings aside. :dunce:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

56. Oh, I don't.

The "anti-smokers" certainly seem more on the ball then some of the smokers. In a thread a while back there was a person comparing no smoking in restaurants to Jews having to wear yellow stars on their clothes. Totally irrational. Maybe it's got something to do with being utterly addicted to nicotine. I kid, I kid.

[jpgray]

58. Well in any crowd maybe the nutcases stand out, being more memorable

But I find that DUers supporting firing someone based on nicotine use or advocating the outright banning of smoking to be a little extreme and over-the-top.

[MADem]

46. What a totally bullshit construct, frankly.

Smokers are all stuck in one pile, but DRINKERS are not. Just drinkers who drive.

Horseshit. If you wanted a fair poll, you should ask, which causes more innocent death, smoking or drinking?


Then, you'd have to add up all the drunks who throw babies out windows, set fire to their houses while nodding off (with a cigarette!!! or with the can of soup on the stove!!!!) along with those who get into cars and kill their entire families or busloads of kiddies.

Alternatively, if you wanted this to be fair, you could ask, which causes more innocent death, smoking drivers, or drinking drivers?

Otherwise, it's just a jerkoff exercise....

[slackmaster]

48. How about cell-phone-talking drivers?

They cause about as many innocent peoples' deaths as drunk drivers.

[MADem]

53. Or cellphoning drunk drivers with a cigarette in their hand!!!!! NT

[jpgray]

49. Almost all human behavior comparisons are a jerk off exercise

Because they are too complex and different in almost all cases to be compared. I'm just trying to get a handle on how people think, and in that sense this thread is working well. :D

[Lone_Star_Dem]

63. That was my first impression when I read the poll

But hey. I don't plan on voting, so no skin off my nose.


In 2005 deaths related to alcohol in the US per year run under 4% (this includes drunk driving and other deaths caused by consumption) and tobacco deaths are around 18%. This is according to JAMA. Really there was no reason for the poll to be worded this way unless the poster was just having some fun with those, er, passionate in their beliefs here on DU? :shrug:

[jpgray]

64. I don't mean to tease anyone with passionate beliefs

But I am interested to see where they're coming from.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

66. Sorry, I can't help you more there

If you've kept up with those threads you'll notice I'm conspicuously absent. I don't get all the hate directed at those who do smoke anymore than I get smokers who are inconsiderate of others.

Perhaps it's an example of two extremes meeting head on?

Anyway, carry on and I wish you the best of luck.

[MADem]

68. Yep, it's like tag team wrestling!!! I can't fathom the rudeness, either

The hissing, spitting, the whining, the crying, the hatred, the invective, the aggressive and rapacious rudeness!!!

It's such a fucking waste of psychic energy!!! A little common courtesy and understanding go a long way towards avoiding these knock-down, drag outs, but some folks are just overly invested in the concept of a good fight, I reckon.

And I don't smoke, and I don't drive drunk....so I've no dog in this fight atall!

[porphyrian]

61. Punishment doesn't prevent the damage anyway.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have any punishments in our society, but we need to acknowledge that there is a distinct difference between punishment, which is always after the fact, and prevention. I guess no one wants to bother with the difficult questions of why people behave certain ways and what can be done to prevent them from hurting others in the process. Harsher sentences are proven ineffective in doing so.