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U.S. Adult Cigarette Smoking Rate Rose in 2008

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Posted on Nov 12, 2009
cigarette smoking
Flickr/adi&moni

Blame it on the recession? Cigarette smoking among American adults had been on the decline for about 15 years, but in 2008 the smoking rate rose, bumping up slightly from 19.8 percent the previous year to just under 21 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  —KA

AP via Google News:

The increase was so small, it could be just a blip, so health officials and experts say smoking prevalence is flat, not rising. But they are unhappy.

“Clearly, we’ve hit a wall in reducing adult smoking,” said Vince Willmore, spokesman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington, D.C.- based research and advocacy organization.

There’s a general perception that smoking is a fading public health danger. Feeding that perception are indoor smoking laws, cigarette taxes and Congress’ recent decision to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco.

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By Green Smoke Reviews, January 4 at 11:25 pm Link to this comment

Smoking kills but so does a million other things we come in contact with in our daily lives. So I don’t think smoking actually causes the cancer, because like Johannes I know of relatives who have lived a ripe old age without having to quit smoking.

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By WykydRed, November 13, 2009 at 3:06 pm Link to this comment

Now these anti-smoking assholes are trying to pass the PACT act which will bar all Americans from ordering cigarettes over the Internet or receiving them through the mail!

If telling people “We can’t ban smoking because that would be Prohibition, but we CAN tell them they cannot purchase or get tobacco, that isn’t”, why isn’t it Prohibition?

Because it IS. Congratulations, America. You’re back in the 20’s! And, as usual, you’re all cheering for restrictions on things YOU don’t like. Yeah, there is a war coming. The Black Market is thriving, and it charges less than even buying them online. Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft taught you well when they told you Americans do NOT have the right to speak out or do anything against your Fearless Leaders.

You have made us understand why people go around killing and stand proud of it without fear of going to jail or being executed. Because the ideals of this country are gone. Once and for all. So nothing else matters. Bill Maher is right! No wonder America is #49 on the “freedom list” worldwide.

My asthma makes my lungs suddenly just stop working. Smoking IS the only thing that stops them from doing that for the same reason Blackspear stated. But you don’t give a shit. How can you when so far, the epitome of American stem cell research is growing a rabbit a new dick? Why, males can be cured of erectile dysfunction now! Yippee. Let’s hope that’s what America is hailed for when the bombs drop.

Good thing we stocked up on cigs and e-cigs! Enough e-juice for the next 5 years! Now we’re gonna vape indoors, in public and after the ACLU wins yet again on Free Speech grounds, do NOT expect us to “respect your air”. Or your lives. Or your opinions. You have drunk the Kool-Aid.

Huffington Post has an article on the 10 best places for smokers to go on vacation. Funny, the comments show the world is NOT buckling to this bullshit. Just America. But she folds like a map. No wonder this country’s suicide rate beat Sweden’s by so much! And our military’s suicide rate has beaten everyone’s! One place where America IS #1.

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By Blackspeare, November 13, 2009 at 10:31 am Link to this comment

Ever since I can remember I suffered from asthma.  I was never hospitalized, but I had some really bad attacks.  As I grew up smoking was a right of passage and I started to smoke to be one of the gang.  Almost immediately after I started to smoke my asthma all but disappeared.  When I told the doctor, he said smoking had desensitized me to whatever allergen caused the asthma and I have never had an asthma attack since.  So for me early smoking was a blessing although I have stopped for many years now.

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By johannes, November 13, 2009 at 6:26 am Link to this comment

I smoked about 50 years, I stopped becouse my famelie sayd that they had to smoke with me.

If you live in a big city, the air you breath, comes streath out of the car exhaust, so what, smoking in the country and not smoking in the citys.

Its not only smoking its the whole packet, food, drinking, polution of air, noise, etc.

All my aunts and oncles have become very old all around the 90 years of age, most of them smoked whole their live, in the later generation the cause of dead is mostly cancer, some never smoked and others where light smokers.

The whole smoke hysteria has to coverup, the rest of the poisen in our food and air, feed them lies than they can write about it on the internet, ha ha buts it is tru.

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By Bob, November 13, 2009 at 3:45 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

The educational efforts that were being used for years have been very successful. When they started using law enforcement and snitchlines, they riled a lot of people. I see a major rebellion to anti smoking efforts and the groups pushing them approaching.

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By WykydRed, November 12, 2009 at 7:29 pm Link to this comment

Sorry, once again, the “numbers” are skewed. Usually by big payollas. The rise in taxing tobacco has not slowed the rate of anything. We’ve simply moved to using the e-cig, which cuts our rates of smoking actual tobacco. Over 100 million have been sold in America. I mean to actual people, not re-sellers. We are vaping indoors (don’t worry, the ACLU is on the First Amendment thing as we speak). It’s a great alternative to smoking actual tobacco, but we in America, like the rest of the world, are still smoking and using tobacco.

How about we just demand the CDC, WHO and every anti-smoking group STOP getting any money whatsoever from governments? You have a pogrom, fund it yourselves! And when the rest of us start demanding that taxation on everything else be raised to the exact level that cigarettes are taxed? (Go ahead, laugh.) What’s your car and house and motorcycle really worth?...

All the above mentioned groups swore that cancer would go down if they got their way. Since 2000, cancer rates (all) have gone up 1,700%. They lied.
All the above mentioned groups SWORE that a dropped smoking rate would drop health care costs and health insurance costs. Since 2000, they have all gone up and up and up. Amounts vary per state, but the “norm” is 800%.
All the above mentioned groups promised heart attack rates would drop if they got their way. Heart attacks are the #1 killer in the U.S.

Are Americans that stupid that, when presented with actual facts, they will still mouth the “politically correct” and disasterously inaccurate propaganda paid for by the above mentioned groups? You bet!

Your kids are smoking. Real cigarettes. The Black Market runs deep and wide! And, like all kids, they do what their parents don’t, because let’s face it, when we were kids, our parents were screwed up, Fascist idiots who wanted to change the world by taking away everyone’s rights. So let’s do everything the opposite of what those big, fat know-it-alls do! Yeah! That’ll show them they can’t control us!

And you wonder why tobacco companies were THRILLED all to hell when this idiotic New Prohibition started! Sheesh.

Let me quote a gentleman I was standing outside smoking with: “Oh, I’m not really a smoker, I just smoke a pack or two a week.”

The numbers are correct? Written in stone, are they?

Everyone makes it sound as though the anti-smokers ARE winning. Except every country outside America tells you they aren’t. And, the ACLU just won a major Free Speech victory in Lakewood (it’s on their website, look it up. Very cool!) A smoke shop put up an Alice In Wonderland mural to cut down on graffiti. The rabbit had a pill on it’s tongue, but there was a heinous caterpillar blowing smoke rings from his hookah! They used an illegal sign law to tell the owner to remove it, as it “sent the wrong message”. In other words, “something is SMOKING! Kids can’t see that!” It was shot down hard and the law has to be changed now. Ha. Ha.

E-cigs ARE allowable in ANY enclosed area because the only output is water vapor! They do NOT break any anti-smoking laws. And we will STILL smoke regular cigarettes. Hollywood servitude be damned! And if you keep making “the children” scapegoats, I will have no problem demanding children be removed from society so ADULTS can have their Constitutional rights. That’s why I’m no longer an organ donor. Die. I don’t care!

Because the propaganda seems to have worked so well on idiots, now they’re using it against the “overweight”. See? You subjugate and de-humanize one group, why the second is easier, isn’t it? Being over-weight causes cancers of all kinds! Being over-weight causes heart attacks!

Americans will save the WORLD from itself! We’re just so superior and god-like! No wonder I became an atheist! Land of the Free, home of the Brave my ass!

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