100 Year Old Celebrates Birthday by Smoking a Cigarette

[the iron horse]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=478075&in_page_id=1770


One comment (on the site)
Quote: It goes to show you, smoking doesn't kill you: Bad genetics do. That and the fact that she doesn't smoke 5 packs a day, only 5 cigarettes... moderation is key to everything, though. Good for her--I hope I live that long.

- Steven W., Charlotte, NC; USA




We are all going to die.

*i think that is a true statement.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Stupidity is not understanding the concept of risk.

 

[DrTeeth]

Only smokers die about, what, ten years earlier on average? Bless those 100 year old smokers though, what would smokers do without those straws to grasp.

 

[U2democrat]

I'm allergic to tobacco, and around some cigarettes I get sick to my stomach

 

[Angela Harlem]

Dammit, toothy! She is proof that smoking doesn't cause cancer! Can't you read???

 

[BVS]

One comment (on the site)
Quote: It goes to show you, smoking doesn't kill you: Bad genetics do.

You have to be completely blind to see that the case is exactly the opposite.

Smoking will shorten your life, look at the average lifetime smoker.

But yes good genetics will sometimes beat the odds.

But I will agree we all die, it's just a matter of how. I may get hit by a bus in the next hour or I may die slowly in agony due to lung cancer... we don't know. But our life dictates the odds.

 

[Irvine511]

iron horse: what can we do to help you quit smoking?

 

[financeguy]

I don't mind non-smokers - after all, they have rights just like anyone else - but I do object if they get in the way of my cigar smoke.

Great essay from A.N. Wilson here:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/08/20/do2005.xml

"What do the following have in common: Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Evelyn Waugh, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis?

The answer is, of course, that if they were to come back to life in Gordon Brown's Britain and wanted to go out to their club, or a restaurant or café, they would not be allowed to indulge in a habit which sustained them during the most creative phases of their lives.
...............
This great nicotine cloud of witnesses made me have two thoughts. One was the simple question - why did the people of England accept this draconian ban on their private pleasures?

As far as I am aware, David Hockney, among public figures, was alone in giving vociferous condemnation of the bossy and un-English law.

The so-called Opposition parties, of course, were all so anxious to appease the health-fanatics who make up a proportion of the electorate that they did not dare to say: "Halt! Let the men and women of England, and the publicans of England, be the ones who decide who should smoke, and where, not some risible Government minister".

But another, sadder thought occurs to me. This attack on basic liberty, which was allowed through without any significant protest, might mark the end not merely of smoking, but of literature."



"

 

[financeguy]

iron horse: what can we do to help you quit smoking?

Bit patronising, frankly.

 

[phillyfan26]

Have you ever heard the expression, "The exception proves the rule." ?

 

[BVS]

"What do the following have in common: Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Evelyn Waugh, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis?

But did any of these guys have the scientific evidence of first hand and second hand smoke that we have now?

 

[BVS]

Bit patronising, frankly.

Well Iron's thread's are usually very patronising to science, so I think there was a point trying to be made.

 

[financeguy]

But did any of these guys have the scientific evidence of first hand and second hand smoke that we have now?

They probably lived in a far healthier environment, as their world was not abjectly subject to the tyranny of the motor car.

You know, I'd take the non-smoking lobby seriously if they complained as vociferously about health problems caused by the internal combustion engine which they never, ever do.

 

[phillyfan26]

They probably lived in a far healthier environment, as their world was not abjectly subject to the tyranny of the motor car.

You know, I'd take the non-smoking lobby seriously if they complained as vociferously about health problems caused by the internal combustion engine which they never, ever do.

But cars serve a purpose, whereas smoking only benefits tobacco farmers, as opposed to a much larger group of people.

 

[BVS]

You know, I'd take the non-smoking lobby seriously if they complained as vociferously about health problems caused by the internal combustion engine which they never, ever do.

Well it's true that pumping your own gas is close to smoking a half a pack(why I always put the lock on and walk away), but come on sometimes we have to fight our battles one at a time. We all know that changing the reliabilaty on oil is much different than asking smokers to smoke in certain places, come on the two aren't even comparable.

 

[Irvine511]

Bit patronising, frankly.

i've never known a smoker who didn't want to quit.

 

[Irvine511]

Well it's true that pumping your own gas is close to smoking a half a pack(why I always put the lock on and walk away),

for real?

fuck. glad i dont drive, but the whole world now looks like a minefield when you've got lung damage.

 

[A_Wanderer]

i've never known a smoker who didn't want to quit.

Right, because they are brow beaten into needing to quit by other people. I have no issue with smokers, I don't smoke, I think that they have the right to be stupid; but the anti-smoking lobby has proven itself capable of using government force to make people stop doing an activity that they know is harming them.

As for the initial poster pieces of anecdotal evidence are worthless, holding a contrarian point of view that is at odds with the evidence as a means to defend against the facts is stupid. Smoking kills, people have a right to kill themselves; make an argument for freedom, not against reality.

 

[BrownEyedBoy]

I don't get how people pick up smoking because it's such a difficult vice to pick up.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Because it makes you look

 

[BVS]

Smoking kills, people have a right to kill themselves; make an argument for freedom, not against reality.

I have no problem with killing yourself. We all eat unhealthy food, or have unhealthy habits...

But if your habit is killing others then I do have a problem, and if it's something we can limit like second hand smoke then I see no problem with it...

 

[BVS]

I don't get how people pick up smoking because it's such a difficult vice to pick up.

How is it difficult to pick up?

 

[anitram]

How is it difficult to pick up?

I don't get it either in the sense that it's extemely expensive. I know in the US you don't have very high taxes on cigarettes, but here our taxes per pack exceed 70% so we're talking in the neighbourhood of $10/pack.

Given that smoking has really become a pasttime of lower and lower middle classes (those are the socio-economic groups experiencing the lowest reduction rates), how many people do you know who can afford $140-$280/week on cigarettes alone? That's insanity.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Your right, they should be slashing those sin taxes, I mean smokers shuffle off their mortal coil quicker and earlier without collecting much return for a lifetime of taxes yet they get punished for it.

 

[anitram]

Your right, they should be slashing those sin taxes, I mean smokers shuffle off their mortal coil quicker and earlier without collecting much return for a lifetime of taxes yet they get punished for it.

Yeah, right. And what do they cost the healthcare system before they "shuffle off"? I think you'd be surprised by the numbers.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Hmmm, good point, probably should start putting more harmful materials in there.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

For every 100 year old who celebrates by lighting up, how many never make it to half that age because of smoking (or second hand smoke)? When the answer is zero then you might have a case.

 

[The Sad Punk]

She doesn't inhale. That's the key part.

 

[Carek1230]

What a sad thing to do on any birthday let alone on a 100th birthday.

 

[the iron horse]

i've never known a smoker who didn't want to quit.

Can you count me as a friend?

A tobacco smoking friend?

*only in moderaration, of course



Julia Child (passed on at 92)

>More butter....