It is fine to relate your personal horrors in relation to smoking and your thoughts to people about why you want them to quit in a general thread about smoking.Originally posted by namzuf9@25 October 2003 - 01:52
Fuck me Lamsey. Do you drive? Do you take public transport? Do you realise how many people a year die in road accidents? Don't ever drive. Don't cross the road. Don't take a shit cos a hernia could split and kill you.
And don't smoke cos at least we may enjoy a cigarette.
Living is the biggest fucking risk you will ever take and whatever gets you through it, enjoy it.
Fell free to edit the obscenity out of this, I don't often do it.
However, to tell someone in a nicotine fit to be thankful he has no harmful cigarettes and to stop killing himself and expect a considered response, is a losing proposition. It puts people on the defensive and it comes off as preaching, especially in this case, given the age differences.
Sometimes we let our emotions drive our comments and forget that even constructive criticism or well intentioned comments needs to be meted out at the right time, in the right way, or it will achieve the opposite.
Viola, Lamsey has now elicited the smokers bravado.
Namzuf,
We all accept that our preferred lifestyle of easy and convenient commutes, the ability to drive to the country or travel abroad at will, comes at a price. These are risk/reward tradeoffs. The number of people engaged in these activities is everyone and the overall mortality rate is almost nil if you remove drug related fatalities.
Cigarettes on the other hand, may cause temporary enjoyment to the user, but the payback is that 100% suffer from it (Cancer gets all the hype, but is just the tip of the iceberg). Just ask Jonno, who posted that people should not start. So, rather than seeing smoking as a casual thing, it is really a trap people fall into and it is difficult to escape. Most people NEED to smoke, not want too. Even as they take a drag, they mutter, "gotta quit this filthy habit". Cigarettes will kill you or hurt you, even if used properly, but a car never will. 70% of all car related deaths are drug related (drinking, marijuana, etc.).
So my point is that the comparison is not valid as it fails to take into account the vast disparity in the denominators and the fact that cars never kill actively, only passively if misused by the operator.
Summary:
Shit does happen, but no need looking for a pile to jump into!
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