Comments on: Tobacco Controversy: How are we measuring up…

By: JarkTheSaint

JarkTheSaint — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:43:42 +0000

Interesting point: “benefits of smoking” is a strange neologism. It’s crazy how we bring it on ourselves with the dragon. I had a smoke last nite, reading a bunch and it was food… even the critics are absurd, even the smart kids contradict themselves. I should be judged for my dragon ways. I should be judged by my younger self who was so much more idealistic and pure. Should I revert? Should I step back to my former self that had these things in check? What went wrong?

By: Haneen Abu-Remaileh

Haneen Abu-Remaileh — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:42:08 +0000

Thanks for the comment Jark. Yeah, I don’t understand our society’s previous fascination with smoking either… It seems smoking does have some benefits (e.g. decrease risk of Parkinson’s disease). BUT, compare this to the exhaustive list of harmful things smoking does to you and it is like placing an elephant on one end of a see-saw, and trying to counterbalance his weight with an ant. I kid you not- almost every disease I learn about in med school has smoking listed as a risk factor (from obvious ones like lung cancer and heart disease to less obvious ones, like rheumatoid arthritis). Anyways, this is turning into more of a post than a comment so I’ll stop here.

By: JarkTheSaint

JarkTheSaint — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:03:01 +0000

It’s sad that this initiative is considered a “special project” for the olympic events and not something that is systemically instituted all the time or, better yet, a few decades ago. I’ve never understood why smoking was such a fashionable thing in society — I suspect that through some logical leap disease and smoke are fetishized because smoke it such an alien thing to our bodies. Perhaps we fetishize it because it is so ‘other’.