[HN Gopher] Big Tobacco knew radioactive Po210 in cigarettes pos... ___________________________________________________________________ Big Tobacco knew radioactive Po210 in cigarettes posed cancer risk, kept quiet Author : hammock Score : 127 points Date : 2023-07-29 21:47 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.uclahealth.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.uclahealth.org) | [deleted] | jongjong wrote: | Damn. Makes you wonder what kinds of horrible things big | companies are doing now which will only be uncovered in the next | 20 years or so. What makes tobacco companies less ethical than | say big pharma or big tech companies? | | It's a systemic issue. At the core of this issue is the concept | of a corporation. The real cancer are the legal constructs of | limited liability and the concept of corporate person-hood. | Companies are simply not meant to become so large; they are | physically incapable of handling the kind of liability which they | will inevitably be exposed to on a global scale. The scale of | such companies gives them inertia which allows them to transcend | ethical boundaries; with global exposure, they can always find | enough people who are unethical enough to undertake the necessary | cover-ups to keep things going in a way which maximizes short- | term profits. | | Had the tobacco industry been made up of many smaller businesses, | the information would have gotten out sooner as many small | tobacco businesses would have voluntarily shuttered their doors | in response to the research... But with a handful of gigantic | companies headed up by some of the most ethically challenged | individuals that all of planet earth could provide, it's not | surprising that it didn't happen that way. | | Capitalism is meant to be composed of small, mostly short-lived | businesses that are almost ephemeral in nature. It should be easy | to start a new business just as closing an existing business | should not be a big deal. Long term inter-generational wealth | should be difficult but not impossible to preserve; though it | could be preserved using a deflationary currency as a market- | neutral store of value; its value would be derived either from | trust in the institution or in the automatic mechanism which | administers the currency (e.g. the government or public ledger). | | Imagine what we could achieve with today's technology if only we | had kept the efficient capitalist system which our ancestors had | designed; a system which proved itself to be efficient during | hard times of technological and resource scarcity. | | Our current system evolved in a post-scarcity environment and | therefore it is not optimized for resource efficiency. It's | optimized for centralization of power. | mentos wrote: | Kind of like how social media companies know their products are | detrimental to the youth that consume them? | veec_cas_tant wrote: | Maybe I'm way off, but in my mind social media is more like ice | cream or fast food companies knowing their product is | unhealthy. | gtvwill wrote: | Your way off. Haven't seen ice cream and fast food be | responsible for anywhere near as much suicide and detrimental | mental health as social media. Folks generally use ice cream | to bring you out of that mood not drive it home. | version_five wrote: | I think social media is worse for society than tobacco. | Tobacco shortens peoples lives, social media is destroying | society. We'd ultimately be better living harmoniously but | only until seventy than in civil war and mass upheaval. | casey2 wrote: | Number of civil wars and mass upheaval in the US post | social media: 0 | | Number of civil wars and mass upheaval in the US pre- | social media: 1 | | I'll take social media and quit cigarettes. | gtvwill wrote: | Lol if you take the number of annual gun deaths in the US | each year, you arguably are still in a civil war. 40000+ | of your own killed each year just from guns alone. You | kill more of yourselves each year than was lost in the | entire gulf War of 1990 to 91. | tap-snap-or-nap wrote: | Should have landmark consequences but cashed up lobbies run the | show. | User23 wrote: | For what it's worth this information was publicly available on | the Internet in the mid '90s if not earlier. | gtvwill wrote: | What's that you say? We need retrospective criminal charges for | this. Hell yes we do! Drag those company boards out of retirement | and slap em in jail and size their assets. | | Unlikely to happen but I can dream. | iTradeWarez wrote: | Unsurprising and there will be no significant consequences. | stormcode wrote: | It's a little surprising to me that no company has come out with | a 'healthier cigarette'. They could claim to do the acid washing | and all the things mentioned in the article in their advertising. | Probably without actually saying their cigarettes are healthier | but instead focusing on what other companies don't do (the acid | wash) and the cancer causing carcinogens their competition's | cigarettes contain that their own do not. | | That would hook people who enjoy smoking but also enjoy not | dying. Even if they are just deluding themselves. It would at | least get me (former smoker) curious. | | I've also always wondered if Big Tobbaco was working to cure | cancer. It would make business sense. If we cured the types of | cancer that smoking causes... A lot more people would probably | smoke. (Obviously there are other issues like emphasima). | [deleted] | jiggawatts wrote: | That's essentially vaping: a safer form of consuming nicotine | without the smoke or other coincidental pollutants. | FollowingTheDao wrote: | Vaping is in no way quantitively safer than smoking tobacco. | The amount of heavy metals you get in a cigarettes is just | incredible. Plus you get more nicotine, which makes you more | addicted. | version_five wrote: | I think there's lots of regulatory and liability reasons why | it's not feasible. Like they're grandfathered in to selling | what they do, and nobody wants to entertain ideas of a safer | thing, only prohibition. | | Look at what happened with Juul. Maybe it's changed now, but | they had a safer alternative and got shut down. | | Also as a bit of trivia, iirc from the book "Barbarians at the | gate", RJ Reynolds in the 80s was working on a safer cigarette | under Ross Johnson that heated the tobacco instead of burning | it. Once they got LBO'd and saddled up with debt, that got | canned. | amelius wrote: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123402/ | | > In recent years, tobacco companies have been investing in or | acquiring pharmaceutical companies, which produce medications | for a myriad of diseases, including tobacco-induced conditions | and diseases, and emergency medicine. | stormcode wrote: | Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this. | LeoPanthera wrote: | > It's a little surprising to me that no company has come out | with a 'healthier cigarette' | | Isn't that a vape? | stormcode wrote: | In a way, yes. I vape instead of smoking. But it isn't the | same. It's a different way to get nicotine, like dipping. And | vaping was, AFAIK, more of a grass roots thing than a Big | Tobbaco thing, at least at first. It felt like Big Tobbaco | was caught kinda unawares when vaping became very popular and | ended up buying a bunch of vape companies. | hammock wrote: | >no company has come out with a 'healthier cigarette' | | It's a tough sell, especially since smoke is now banned pretty | much everywhere indoors and outdoors. | | There is no shortage of "healthier nicotine devices" though: | gum, vapes, Zyn, etc. | joker_minmax wrote: | American Spirit advertises themselves as tobacco without extra | nicotine or other additives added. Not the same thing, but | they're...trying. | | And no, they're probably not trying to cure cancer in the | slightest. My grandpa was studying in the 1960s and 1970s, and | big tobacco tried to fight the laboratory he worked for. The | important thing he taught me before he died, from his research, | was that nicotine itself interferes with your blood platelets. | It's unhealthy beyond the particulates and fumes that we think | of as cancerous, because nicotine is fundamentally bad for the | blood. That means vaping, dip, everything affects your | cardiovascular system. | cbracketdash wrote: | Given the nature of the tobacco business (to get people addicted | on a pleasure-inducing drug), it's not surprising to see them | ignore health risks ! | anon7331 wrote: | Honestly, who cares? It's not like people had no idea smoking | caused cancer to begin with. They certainly don't care, so why | should we? | [deleted] | vondur wrote: | There are big warnings on cigarette packaging that explicitly | warns you that they cause cancer, reproductive harm and | emphysema. Adding a warning about radioactivity probably won't | make a difference. | kingstoned wrote: | "I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a | penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's | fantastic brand loyalty." | | - Warren Buffett | ajkjk wrote: | Yeah as a business anyone can see it's good. Yet a net negative | for society. The perfect argument for regulation. | sebmellen wrote: | The deification of Buffet is strange to see. A lot of the | businesses he invests in are just not net positives for society | - cigarettes, Dairy Queen, Coca-Cola, etc. | SeanAnderson wrote: | ice cream isn't a net positive for society? :( | objektif wrote: | Not really. Coke has a lot of caffeine which makes it a lot | more addictive. | myshpa wrote: | And salt to make you consume more, and acids to destroy | your teeth, and sugar for health problems or artificial | sweeteners to damage your dna, and microplastics ... | varjag wrote: | Coke has caffeine content matching that of tea. | [deleted] | myshpa wrote: | Not when it's made from dairy, and while animal agriculture | is one of the most environmentaly damaging industries on | Earth, worsening 5 of 7 symptoms of an ecological | overshoot. | | Make it from plants and it's another story, but until then | ... | booleandilemma wrote: | I wouldn't let randos on the internet moralize your diet | though. | | There are lots of sad people out there that will criticize | people for all sorts of things. | | If ice cream brings you happiness, eat ice cream :) | npteljes wrote: | People worship all kinds of characters, not just the morally | good ones. Morality itself is debatable, and then many just | like powerful people who seem to be winning at life, no | matter the cost. | FollowingTheDao wrote: | Morality is not debatable. Only immoral people say that | morality is debatable. | slashdev wrote: | Morality is not universal. Different people have | different values and this different morals. There are | some things most would agree on (murder=bad) but others | that are up for debate. | | If aliens exist, their values and morals would likely be | very alien to us. | FollowingTheDao wrote: | If you find the universal truth, you'll find the | universal morality. Just because people don't share a | superficial morality does not mean that there is not a | deeper universal one. | paulryanrogers wrote: | By some narrow definitions of winning. | | At least scouting taught me to leave a place better than I | found it. (Not that I always succeed, but it's worth trying | to keep doing better.) | sccfsfrfggfw wrote: | He doesn't invest in cigarettes. | | He did say something stupid about them years ago, | particularly when taken out of context. If you think DQ and | Coca Cola are bad for society I can see that, but you should | also be able to see that plenty of people disagree with your | view. | objektif wrote: | What is there to disagree about Coke being bad for people. | You may like the taste or not that is debatable. | myshpa wrote: | Coca Cola is one of the main plastic polluters of our | oceans. | | Thanks to them our oceans look like this: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1449 | d... | | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/07/coca- | col... | | Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for | third year in a row | | Companies accused of "zero progress" on reducing plastic | waste, with Coca-Cola ranked No 1 for most littered | products | | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/11/coca- | cola-m... | | Coca-Cola most common littered brand on UK beaches, says | study | varjag wrote: | Coca Cola is the best when it comes to drinks, so | naturally it's pollution footprint among the biggest. | Eliminating Coca Cola tomorrow would just mean shittier | soda for humanity, not less pollution. | cinntaile wrote: | * * * | [deleted] | CelticBard wrote: | Since people worship money, they deify Buffet. Does that make | sense to you? | MattGaiser wrote: | I mostly see claims that he is a smart investor, rarely that | he is any kind of moral paragon. | consumer451 wrote: | Crazy and awesome that this is on top of HN right now.[0] I did a | double take. | | This is a sensitive issue. If you were in charge of public | health, would you focus on making cigarettes "safer" or on | smoking cessation? | | I would argue both, but I can see the conflict from a health | standpoint. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36895991 | ddingus wrote: | Go for safer, put vaping at the top of the harm reduction list. | I smoked for a long time. A good vape got me off the real | tobacco. Nothing else even came close. | | The difference is dramatic! Healing happened and I am in great | shape today. Hard to tell anything now. | | Regulate it so people can find safe vapes. | | And no blame and shame. Everyone knows we sell death sticks to | people for profit. Vapes are tame by comparison and offer many | possibilities beyond nicotine too. | SavageBeast wrote: | Here in Austin TX, Im told a pack of smokes at the local | downtown corner mart (Royal Blue - well known for higher than | necessary pricing) is nearing $20! Thats $1 per cigarette. | Seems to me simple economics is coming around to address this | problem. "Go ahead and keep smoking - smoke as much as you can | afford!" | | For the non-familiar its not uncommon to go through a pack per | day between the ones you personally smoke and the ubiquitous | people around too cheap to buy their own pack but happy to bum | one or more of yours. So lets just say $20 x 6 days a week for | $120/week. Thats about $480/month to continue being an active | smoker. Take a years worth of that spending and you got | yourself a pretty nice vacation. | hammock wrote: | >If you were in charge of public health, would you focus on | making cigarettes "safer" or on smoking cessation? | | That question was answered years ago when smoke was banned in | pretty much every indoor and outdoor space across America. | | Would take a pretty big effort to reverse that now. Not saying | it couldn't be done, though | consumer451 wrote: | We humans are such binary thinkers, myself included. | | If we could somehow silently reduce Polonium-210 in tobacco | while also lowering smoking in general, that would be ideal. | | Japan did it. [0] Why can't the rest of the world? | | Smoking is huge in Central and Eastern Europe still. Sadly, I | smoke sometimes out here. Wish I could find a brand with | lower radioactivity for those times. | | People have the gear to test for this. A brand comparison | would make for a great citizen science Patreon funded video. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36905717 | amluto wrote: | > insoluble alpha particles bind with resins in the cigarette | smoke and get stuck and accumulate at the bronchial bifurcations | of the lungs | | Maybe, when pigs fly, journalists will be able to understand the | difference between radiation and radioactivity. | sneak wrote: | Reminder: cigarettes kill 7x as many people in the US every hour, | day, week, and month as the "opiate epidemic" in the USA. | | One is an "epidemic" and "public health crisis" and access is | locked behind a prescription. One is available to anyone 18 or | older on each streetcorner. | mcmoor wrote: | I knew that my country really won't be prepared with anymore | relaxation on narcotics because we smoke cigarettes much more | than almost every other country in the world despite long long | campaign on health issues. Heck, Big Tobacco manages to capture | religious sector! That's how powerful legalized capitalized | drugs are. | yadaeno wrote: | Why do people on this forum always say "my country". Why not | just say the name of the country? | | This information is not useful to anyone without that | context. | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: | Smokers are functional. Junkies... well, they're junkies. One | is a useful member of society, the other is a liability at the | best of times. | | And smokers die old. Quickly too... don't linger on with | chronic disease like other old people. Helps keep Medicare | solvent. | simmerup wrote: | So we should give all the cigarette smokers opiates right? | Reduce the mortality rate drastically that way. | angelgonzales wrote: | That may be true but the people who broke into my car twice | didn't do it because they were addicted to nicotine - they did | it because they were addicted to opiates. | krisoft wrote: | Hmm. But is that the difference between opiate and nicotine | addiction? Or the difference between the restrictions we | placed on them? | | In other words if we would treat tobaco the way we treat the | hard drugs, would people addicted to it perform crimes to get | their fix on the surely much more expensive black market? | | I truly don't know the answer. | rcme wrote: | What's the average age of death though? | serf wrote: | i'm not interested in defending tobacco/cigarettes, but | comparisons like this beg the question : do you see a | difference between an addiction that leads to eventual chronic | health issues/injury/death sometimes many many decades after | first-onset versus an addiction that will many times kill even | first-time users, and rarely allows for habits that last many | decades? | | if you want to compare the health crises, then divide the | results by time to create an 'impact' score. | | _That 's_ why we're focusing on opiates collectively. | version_five wrote: | This is a pretty poor equivalence, I don't think I need to | detail all the reasons, suffice to say a life shortened by | smoking is not the same as one destroyed by opiates, either in | years lost or in quality of life. Smoking is a poor long term | health choice and should be discouraged, it's nothing like | what's happening with opiates. | gerdesj wrote: | Ex-tabber here, 5.5 years clean, with some remaining ... | issues. | | It is bloody hard to give up, really hard but not impossible. | If you want to give up then I do recommend that you prepare | yourself mentally. I ended up coming up with a couple of | "downside mantras" that I would repeat to myself, whenever | thoughts of smoking happened. | | I initially thought I would use a vape but realized very | quickly that would not work for me. If nicotine is the (only) | addictive substance then patches, gum, vapes etc would just | work. The habit thing is relatively easy to crack but there | must be other addictive components to smoking, including | sensation (you need to be a smoker to understand that one). | Also I didn't want to substitute one thing for another, so | abstention was the way to go for me. Some may find help with | gum and patches - gum is probably the best substitute, being | "active" (and might even improve mouth hygiene). | | I stopped mid afternoon on a Friday and had a lie in on | Saturday. That got me to around 18 hours. I made it to 24 | hours. Then I managed two days, then four, then a week (a | landmark one day less than the next double - every little | helps). Then two weeks. Visited the kids and bummed a drag on a | fag and hated it. | | At around a week my sense of taste and smell re-arrived with a | major jolt! I can remember smelling people entering the room | and other mad things. It calmed down to normal about week three | and I now have a sense of smell that accords with other non | smokers. | | In the end, if you want to give up, then get cracking sooner | rather than later and develop strategies but do not try to rely | on things like vapes and gum to do it for you. You have to | quite literally give yourself a massive mental kicking too. | | For me I focused on two aspects I hated about smoking and I | would mentally repeat this to myself whenever I thought of it: | | "I don't want to smell and I don't want to die" | | Even with my denuded sense of smell I could tell I reeked and | the second one is pretty obvious. When I did that the craving | or thought would be quashed for a while. I did have dreams | where I smoked and sometimes woke up convinced I had been | smoking. You do have to wrestle with yourself somewhat and | decide to win! | | I continued: ... then a month. Now I have saved PS10.50 x 30 = | PS309 (I thought I smoked 20 a day but I smoked more - self | delusion, probably more like 25-30). Cool. | | ... two months, four months (quarter of a year). Six months. | Now I have realistically saved around PS2000, have a functional | sense of taste and smell and I no longer cough all the time. | | ... one year. Fuck me, how the hell did I manage that? | | ... pandemic etc | | ... 29 July 2023 - rarely think about smoking until an article | on HD hoves into view. | nvllsvm wrote: | What are the age ranges of people dying from cigarettes vs. | opiate abuse? | patmcc wrote: | Smoking cuts your life expectancy by something like ~10 years. | Most of those smoking deaths are people who've already smoked | 30+ years; there's not a lot we can do to prevent those deaths | now, even if they all stopped smoking tomorrow. They'd still | get cancer and everything else at higher rates. We've also done | a pretty good job at lower smoking rates, especially among | young people. Sure, we can ban or restrict tobacco more (maybe | we should) but the "public health crisis" is mostly done. | | Opiate addiction cuts life expectancy by ~35 years. And getting | them onto safer drugs would save lives very immediately. | There's stuff that could be done, and everyone knows it, and | it's not happening. That's the public health crisis. | | edit: and, yes, also, opiates are also more socially | destructive, due largely to the criminality. | martinald wrote: | This isn't really true. Most of the death from smoking comes | from other lung & heart problems, not cancer. | | As such even if you smoke for many decades and quit your risk | decreases dramatically pretty quickly, even within days. | hammock wrote: | 21* | [deleted] | martinald wrote: | While I'm not suggesting tobacco is fine or anything; they | really aren't comparable. Opiate addiction is going to | completely take any quality of life away from you (tbh | regardless of legality, people that were on prescription | opiates still had horrendous disability and mental illness | caused by the constant abuse of them, though obviously having | to spend hundreds of dollars a day on an illegal supply adds a | whole new dimension of horror). | | Most people who smoke tobacco don't experience any significant | quality of life issues until many decades in when the COPD and | serious illness starts. Obviously horrible - but I would say | you'd lose more than 7x more quality of life (disability | adjusted years?) being an opiate addict over being a smoker. | csours wrote: | If you're wondering why this isn't a big deal in food - tobacco | leaves have a huge surface area and generally are NOT washed | before being dried. Nearly all food IS washed; but this is a good | reminder that we live on a real planet, not a model ecosystem, | you're eating trace amounts of all kinds of stuff. | hammock wrote: | The sticky stuff on the tobacco leaves (where most of the Po210 | is) is important to the product. | | Also worth clarifying that the tobacco plant is radiophilic, | meaning it proactively takes up radioactive elements into the | body of the plant and tends to grow better in the presence of | radioactivity. | | It's for this reason that Big Tobacco also quietly seeks out | radioactive fertilizers | EA-3167 wrote: | They're also grown with high phosphate fertilizers which | produce a lot of decay products ending up in Po-210. THEN they | aren't washed, and THEN they're dried under gas heaters which | promote the formation of Tobacco-Specific Nitrosamines, which | are incredibly carcinogenic. | | One of the many reasons why, even though smoking anything is | not great for your health, smoking tobacco is particularly | harmful. | sarchertech wrote: | I don't know if many other leaves that will give you mouth | cancer from chewing them either. | h2odragon wrote: | depends on what you mean by "washed". rinsed by rain sometime | before harvest; at the very least. | | I rinsed my tobacco leaves after cutting / before drying, but I | dunno how common that is in industrial farming. I've just grown | a few plants as a hobbyist interest, advised by someone who | helped grow tobacco 50yr ago, specifically for "plug" chewing | tobacco. That's a bit different than the bulk of production | even then. | | Anyways my leaves were covered with a fuzz of (dead) gnats that | _needed_ washing off. My advisor says thats normal in moisture | like mine. | | "Washed" = soaped and waxed and repainted like commercial | vegetables; then no. It all goes in a big grinder anyway. | User23 wrote: | Gotta any resources for garden tobacco you'd be willing to | share please? It's something I'm thinking about trying next | spring. | eftychis wrote: | Maybe, say maybe let us get forward some legislation, adding | criminal liability to the executives ignoring such things, | explicitly. | | Because if Purdue taught anything to the U.S. is that their | voters do not care. We should prove them wrong I suggest. | (Related to the events.) | | If you think your vote doesn't count: congratulations, the | entities you complain about convinced you wrong, and are doing | their job. Demonstrate, create groups and demand things from your | representative, pick someone from the group you have to run | against your representative. There is no democracy otherwise. | Time we start caring. | | These might be called rights on each constitution, but that is a | misnomer: they are jobs each citizen needs to do. Sorry, but that | is the truth in the end. | | Disclaimer: Above message is for the residents of every | democratic country. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | Prison for the execs, fines for the shareholders. | slashdev wrote: | People care to such a small extent that most don't even bother | to vote. Good luck running a healthy democracy like that. | | The reality is, most people are very focused on their own | problems. Complaining is free, but doing something about it is | not. | myshpa wrote: | Let's not pretend that in the end money doesn't dictate rules | regardless of who's momentarily in the office. | | The laws and regulations already in place are there for a | reason. Not something that could be easily changed with a new | administration. | | The system is made by generations to persist, whatever | happens. | nwiswell wrote: | > People care to such a small extent that most don't even | bother to vote. | | That isn't supported by the facts: | | > Approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote in | the 2020 presidential election and roughly 66.1% of them | submitted ballots, totaling about 158 million. | | In any case, it's true that the US has lower levels of voter | turnout than other Western democracies, but it's unclear how | to partition the reasons (less engagement/less caring? less | notion of civil duty? less ability to get to the polls, | including unfriendly work laws and voter suppression?) | | The bottom line is that "most" eligible voters in the US DO | care about _something_... but I 'd suggest that the problem | is that people care way too much about specific things that | don't matter very much. If all the calories go into the hot | button issues, then everything else is starved of oxygen. Our | problem is perhaps one of too much _emotional_ engagement. | WarOnPrivacy wrote: | > Because if Purdue taught anything to the U.S. is that their | voters do not care. | | Voters don't care because news orgs don't care (in a meaningful | way). Lobbyists writing law isn't as sexy to editors as | sportsball, celebs or missing pretty white girls. | myshpa wrote: | News don't care because news are owned by businessmen. We | don't have (almost any) independent news anymore. | arsome wrote: | Who the hell has time or mental capacity to do any of that when | you're just trying to scrape by or make it to the end of the | day though? | eftychis wrote: | The rich: that is why (one of the whys) their votes matter. | FollowingTheDao wrote: | The answer actually quite simple. | | Stop using things made mega corporations. It's probably | include many of the companies you're currently working for. | | Note I said that it was simple, not easy. | eftychis wrote: | Agreed. Of course it is not easy. It is a job. But it is | worth it. | CelticBard wrote: | Do you have any tips for us plebs? | FollowingTheDao wrote: | I would look into Buddhism in Daoism since they talk a | lot about attachment and desire, where it comes from, and | how to overcome it. | | But the reversal of consunerism has to be important | enough to you to overcome the pleasurable sensation you | get from using these products. | tru3_power wrote: | Or where to even start? What are you going to do? Write a | letter? Protest? What does that even get you. Seems big $ is | all that works. | ajkjk wrote: | 1a. Plenty of people, especially on this website, are not | just scraping by. | | 1b. Some are of course. But lots of people are scraping by | because they're in a lifestyle prison of their own making, | and could easily have complete financial security by | consuming less. For them it's an excuse, not an explanation. | | 2. A lifestyle that has you "making it to the end of the day" | is an unhealthy lifestyle, and, yes, you've got to do work on | yourself --- take charge of your free time, leave the bad | job, leave the bad relationship, strike out alone, etc --- | before you can work on making the world better. So there are | some dependencies before you're gonna do anything important, | but that doesn't mean you can't be on the path. | wfhBrian wrote: | Re 1a. This is why I'm constantly discouraged by the lack | of useful political discourse here on HN. If a well-payed | anf well-educated group can't manage it, then who will? | tester756 wrote: | Smoking is sad thing | | It generates so many negative things for barely 1 or two positive | | and yet people argue for it in the name of some "freedom" | | How does destroying your and people's around health, getting an | addiction, paying bonus $$ to the govt as a additional tax and | stinking sound like a "freedom" | r3trohack3r wrote: | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freedom | | Freedom doesn't mean making good decisions. It means having the | liberty to make a decision, even if it's not in your own best | interest. | | Do you have a right to destroy your own health? Do you have a | right to get yourself addicted to a substance? Do you have a | right to smell bad? Does the government have a right to exact a | tax to disincentivize bad decisions? Do you have a right to | contaminate the air in personal spaces like your own home? Do | you have the right to contaminate the air in public spaces? | | Do you have a right to tell someone else they aren't allowed to | make any number of those decisions? | | There's the other side of the transaction as well. Do you have | a right to grow something that's bad for your health? Do you | have the right to smoke it? Do you have the right to share it? | Do you have the right to sell it? | | In this case, do you have the right to lie to the person you're | selling it to about whether it's good/bad for their health? How | does that change if you didn't know it was a lie? How does it | change if you did? How does it change if you didn't know, but | you could have known if you'd sought out the information? | CelticBard wrote: | Look I agree with everything you said, but freedom means being | free to make "bad" decisions. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-29 23:00 UTC)