Anti-smoking as Cult-like Belief and Behavior

[meta-agnostic]

I noticed a month ago when talking with someone about my health insurance at work (it's mandatory) and if you put down as a "smoker," you pay more for your insurance than being a non-smoker. So, I just put down "non-smoker".

Not sure what the implications are when you state you are a "non-smoker" on your insurance form. You could be accused of false declaration and your insurance might not pay out. Apparently blood test can reveal whether you are a smoker or not?

Totally agree with that.

Ah, missed that post. So, yeah, I agree with that. Personally, I don't think my company do blood tests unless it would be absolutely necessary (like some workers doing drugs, etc.). The only implication that I would see is to pay a fine or they make an "adjustment" to the insurance after some investigation (which is a little over the top, I'd think). I didn't see any "fine line" between the words - just conversations with other people about it due to their experiences with it. There are still some smokers in my company. If there are companies who are against smoking, I wouldn't be surprised if they do blood tests for new hires. fwiw.

I wonder about the implications of lying when asked that question, but then doesn't the NSA allegedly data mine everything anyway? And aren't we all just a few steps away from getting sent to Guantanamo Bay or equivalent for visiting this and other websites?

I've heard longtime smoker friends talk about the implications of getting "tagged" as a smoker: health and life insurance et al. I'm not sure exactly what's involved in this "tagging" process but I'm pretty sure at some point you get asked on a form and you voluntarily answer "yes". As a for-most-of-my-years-until-recently non-smoker I was not about to fall into this trap when I noticed this question popping up a lot more often, in part thanks to Obamacare. I have no problem saying "no" with a straight face, and I've never used anything but cash to buy tobacco so they'd have to do some pretty hardcore data mining to profile me as a smoker, i.e. this post, or following me around with private eyes. I know there are blood and other tests for recent life insurance but for most situations in life it seems pretty extreme, if not fascist.

If I do find myself in one of those extreme, fascist situations where I'm "tagged" I'm just going to say I recently decided to pick it up, which isn't that far from the truth!

 

[Mr. Premise]

Meta agnostic, what a few people pointed out, is that if you are talking about life insurance, if they find that you lied on the form, they can deny the claim. While you're alive they won't do anything to you, so you could lie to them, but if they don't pay the claim after you die, then that kind of defeats the purpose of life insurance. :)

 

[meta-agnostic]

Meta agnostic, what a few people pointed out, is that if you are talking about life insurance, if they find that you lied on the form, they can deny the claim. While you're alive they won't do anything to you, so you could lie to them, but if they don't pay the claim after you die, then that kind of defeats the purpose of life insurance. :)

Yes, I get that in regard to life insurance. Although I have to wonder what kind of blood tests they would do on your corpse if you got hit by a bus but nothing would surprise me. But Zadius Sky's initial question was about health insurance. With the increased rates under Obamacare for smokers and everyone "required" to be covered, are they going to start testing people during routine checkups and jacking up their rates or penalizing them if they find out they've lied about smoking? Again, it wouldn't be particularly surprising, but I say force them to bring that fascism out in the open rather than voluntarily submit to it. Then again, I don't have any dependents to worry about as far as life insurance as of yet and I guess once you are tagged in one part of the system you might as well be tagged in all of it. Eye doctors and dentists didn't used to ask if you smoked [tobacco] but now they do, and I've heard it's thanks to Obamacare.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Meta agnostic, what a few people pointed out, is that if you are talking about life insurance, if they find that you lied on the form, they can deny the claim. While you're alive they won't do anything to you, so you could lie to them, but if they don't pay the claim after you die, then that kind of defeats the purpose of life insurance. :)

Yes, I get that in regard to life insurance. Although I have to wonder what kind of blood tests they would do on your corpse if you got hit by a bus but nothing would surprise me. But Zadius Sky's initial question was about health insurance. With the increased rates under Obamacare for smokers and everyone "required" to be covered, are they going to start testing people during routine checkups and jacking up their rates or penalizing them if they find out they've lied about smoking? Again, it wouldn't be particularly surprising, but I say force them to bring that fascism out in the open rather than voluntarily submit to it. Then again, I don't have any dependents to worry about as far as life insurance as of yet and I guess once you are tagged in one part of the system you might as well be tagged in all of it. Eye doctors and dentists didn't used to ask if you smoked [tobacco] but now they do, and I've heard it's thanks to Obamacare.

Yeah, it's unfair and a nightmare. Lying for health insurance would make sense, but I think you're right if they find out in one area, the rest will know pretty quickly, so better to confess, I think. My dental hygienist asked me and I said I did. She said they could tell. Your gums get harder. After that I looked and it's true! On my last checkup my doctor didn't ask because the last time I saw him 6 years earlier I didn't. But when I applied for life insurance through my job I said I did, so they wouldn't deny any claim. Pissed me off, though. They should penalize the standard diet eaters instead. And the pharmaceutical takers.

 

[loreta]

How interesting is this thread. Thanks to everybody for the stories. This subject is so important.

My aunt, many many years ago, died of bone cancer. She was a very beautiful woman, very intelligent, and her death was evidently due because she was a heavy smoker, a chain one. ;) Everyone pointed to the cigarette as the murderer. And not only that: she was responsible of her illness. Since her death this idea of smoking killing is a mantra in our family and brought in us guilty and remorse. (not anymore, for me evidently but my father, who was a chain smoker tried always to stop to smoke and finally when he stopped he died.) But let me tell you something: I am almost sure that my aunt died of a bone cancer for others reasons and one of them was because she was a very maniac of cleaning and always was cleaning around her, all day. So now we know how dangerous are cleaning products, but nobody feel guilty nor pointed their finger to them.

Smokers we are scapegoats. :)

I found Manitou organic here, in Las Palmas.

 

[Alana]

My paternal grandfather died of lung cancer in his 90s. The doctors were saying his cancer was from smoking, ignoring the fact that he spent most of his life working in copper mines. Imagine the toxins he had to inhale all his life. I think if he was not smoking, he would have died sooner, tobacco protected his lungs to some extent. And think about it, the air we breathe everyday nowadays is more saturated with toxins than a copper mine alone!

Contrast with my maternal grandfather, who during his 50s bought the "smoking is bad for you" propaganda and quit, trying to make all his children quit too (thankfully, unsuccessfully). So anyway, he thought he was so much better than anyone and would often make snide comments to smokers, but though he died in his 80s, during the last decade of his life he suffered (and as a consequence, everyone around him) from Alzheimer's, and I remember the doctors telling us how his brain had shrunk significantly. And it has been proven that smoking is helpful against brain degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's:

http://www.sott.net/article/224866-Study-supports-new-theory-for-nicotines-protective-effect-against-neurodegenerative-disorders
http://www.sott.net/article/138559-Nicotine-helps-Alzheimers-and-Parkinsons-Patients

So he quit the one think that could have prevented his deterioration, and enabled him to live his old age with self respect and clarity of mind, a helpful contributing member to his family and community instead of being almost non-existent as a human being. It was horrifying to me not only to see my grandfather but a lot of other elderly (and not so elderly!) people slowly (and sometimes not so slowly!) losing themselves like that. Literally, they just stop being the people they used to be, it's like there's nobody in there anymore. Or take Parkinson's for example. Just visit any elderly home or the elderly ward in a hospital in your area and have a look.

And we have all these anti-smoking fanatics out there, who believe all these lies about smoking doing this, smoking doing that to you I am mad at those in power who make up and spread all these lies, but I am more mad at those who believe them and are by proxy, continuing the PTB agenda. Because the psychos don't/can't care. But the rest of the anti-smoking fanatics? Why are they not so fanatic about banning aspartame or nuclear weapon tests or environmental pollution? Why, if they feel they have the right to tell me that my smoking is harming them (supposedly), don't they apply the same right to telling their government people that their actions are harming them? It's such a waste of energy to complain for the wrong things.

 

[Keit]

And we have all these anti-smoking fanatics out there, who believe all these lies about smoking doing this, smoking doing that to you I am mad at those in power who make up and spread all these lies, but I am more mad at those who believe them and are by proxy, continuing the PTB agenda. Because the psychos don't/can't care. But the rest of the anti-smoking fanatics? Why are they not so fanatic about banning aspartame or nuclear weapon tests or environmental pollution? Why, if they feel they have the right to tell me that my smoking is harming them (supposedly), don't they apply the same right to telling their government people that their actions are harming them? It's such a waste of energy to complain for the wrong things.

Yep, it looks like the anti-smoking campaign has the same insidious signature of gradually getting people to accept torture. Perhaps it may sound as too corny, but do you remember all these movies where the devil makes his monologue and says that he doesn't have to do much beside nudging someone in the needed direction, and beside seeding a seed of corruption, and the victim does all the rest? Well, this is how it looks. That people's worst parts of self are being encouraged to flourish, further integrating the belief in lies, and we all know what it does to the brain, not to mention the reaction from the Universe. Who knows, if on a metaphysical and spiritual level it isn't contributing to the whole "smashing of the souls" scenario as well.

 

[psychegram]

My paternal grandfather died of lung cancer in his 90s. The doctors were saying his cancer was from smoking, ignoring the fact that he spent most of his life working in copper mines. Imagine the toxins he had to inhale all his life. I think if he was not smoking, he would have died sooner, tobacco protected his lungs to some extent. And think about it, the air we breathe everyday nowadays is more saturated with toxins than a copper mine alone!

Contrast with my maternal grandfather, who during his 50s bought the "smoking is bad for you" propaganda and quit, trying to make all his children quit too (thankfully, unsuccessfully). So anyway, he thought he was so much better than anyone and would often make snide comments to smokers, but though he died in his 80s, during the last decade of his life he suffered (and as a consequence, everyone around him) from Alzheimer's, and I remember the doctors telling us how his brain had shrunk significantly. And it has been proven that smoking is helpful against brain degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's:

http://www.sott.net/article/224866-Study-supports-new-theory-for-nicotines-protective-effect-against-neurodegenerative-disorders
http://www.sott.net/article/138559-Nicotine-helps-Alzheimers-and-Parkinsons-Patients

So he quit the one think that could have prevented his deterioration, and enabled him to live his old age with self respect and clarity of mind, a helpful contributing member to his family and community instead of being almost non-existent as a human being. It was horrifying to me not only to see my grandfather but a lot of other elderly (and not so elderly!) people slowly (and sometimes not so slowly!) losing themselves like that. Literally, they just stop being the people they used to be, it's like there's nobody in there anymore. Or take Parkinson's for example. Just visit any elderly home or the elderly ward in a hospital in your area and have a look.

And we have all these anti-smoking fanatics out there, who believe all these lies about smoking doing this, smoking doing that to you I am mad at those in power who make up and spread all these lies, but I am more mad at those who believe them and are by proxy, continuing the PTB agenda. Because the psychos don't/can't care. But the rest of the anti-smoking fanatics? Why are they not so fanatic about banning aspartame or nuclear weapon tests or environmental pollution? Why, if they feel they have the right to tell me that my smoking is harming them (supposedly), don't they apply the same right to telling their government people that their actions are harming them? It's such a waste of energy to complain for the wrong things.

Yes, I've had a similar experience in my family. My paternal grandfather died in his 70s, having been diagnosed with lung cancer (although it was his heart that gave out first). Of course this was put down to smoking, and his example pointed out to me by concerned/angry family members after I started, especially my father. But then there was my paternal grandmother, a nonsmoker, who died of Alzheimers, being more or less vegetative for the last ten years or so of her life. My father, who smoked a pipe when he was younger but quit long ago, died of of leukemia in his early 60s (well, as per usual in these cases, it was the treatment that killed him). So now when people get on my case about smoking I tell them about this experience, and it usually shuts them up ;) If it doesn't, I just say, "Listen, even if smoking does cause all the bad things you say, I'd rather die from lung cancer than from Alzheimers."

Like others on this thread, I've also had conversations with guilt-stricken fellow smokers, who are of course all convinced that their "addiction" is a form of slow suicide, makes them stink, hurts others around them, and that they really should give it up but lack the willpower to do so (which makes them feel awful about themselves). So I discuss the neurochemistry of nicotine and acetylcholine, which generally they have not heard about; the evidence that smoking actually makes them more intelligent, better able to concentrate, and is a protective agent against neurodegenerative disease later in life. More rarely do I discuss the flaws in the research demonstrating the lethality of smoking: my experience has been that people are much more open to information they've never encountered before (the beneficial effects of smoking) than they are to refutations of information that "everyone knows is true". I suspect that the notion that smoking is dangerous has been so deeply inculcated, with such a strong degree of emotional blackmail, that it is very difficult for most people to think rationally about it ... while on the other hand, the positive aspects of smoking are basically just ignored in the mainstream propaganda, so people haven't been taught to think one way or another about this information.

It's hard to judge the effectiveness of this tactic. In some cases I think it has worked ... I find especially with younger smokers, in their early 20s, who tend to be more open to new information, as well as more suspicious of authority (after all, they have clearly resisted to some degree a lifetime of propaganda).

Similar conversations with non-smokers tend to meet with blank incomprehension. Very often, they're baffled as to why I smoke: as a Canadian Ph.D. student in the hard sciences, smoking is simply not part of the image ... after all, smart people don't smoke! And I must know better! So therefore I must simply be very weak-willed. When I explain the conclusions I've come to based on the research I've done, it generally falls on deaf ears, or gets immediately written off as self-justifying beliefs arising from my refusal to confront my addiction.

Interestingly, I've noticed that from a purely political perspective, hard science students tend to be, shall we say, rather naive and uncritical ... even retrograde in their attitudes, typically more or less accepting the reigning dogmas of the day. This of course applies to their own fields as well (and likely ties in to the rather stunning lack of real progress over the past couple of decades). In the social sciences and humanities, people are a lot more critical ... and the most critical of all are almost invariably the smokers. Go figure

 

[SeekinTruth]

Very often, they're baffled as to why I smoke: as a Canadian Ph.D. student in the hard sciences, smoking is simply not part of the image ... after all, smart people don't smoke!
...
and the most critical of all are almost invariably the smokers. Go figure

Like Ark said, I think it was in the Barcelona Conference video: just about every scientist that made great contributions to science smoked (pipe, cigarettes, cigars, whatever).

 

[psychegram]

Very often, they're baffled as to why I smoke: as a Canadian Ph.D. student in the hard sciences, smoking is simply not part of the image ... after all, smart people don't smoke!
...
and the most critical of all are almost invariably the smokers. Go figure

Like Ark said, I think it was in the Barcelona Conference video: just about every scientist that made great contributions to science smoked (pipe, cigarettes, cigars, whatever).

Try explaining that to contemporary scientists ;)

 

[Glenn]

Canada to become first country in the world to require health warnings on individual cigarettes​

Canada to become first country in the world to require health warnings on individual cigarettes

Today, on World No Tobacco Day, the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister for Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, announced that Canada will soon require that health warnings be printed directly on individual cigarettes ─ becoming the first country in the world to take...

www.canada.ca