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The prices of lifestyles.
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Post by
322702
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Post by
Magician22773
What are the prices of a lifestyle and when are they too high?
Some of the easiest to look at are sports players. They are very hard on the body. Gymnastics is super easy, they have to work long and hard for year and hope for a very small chance to become one of a very few to be invited to join the Olympics or other high level showing. Another easy one is professional gaming, one of my favorite SC2 players, TLO, has severe carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists, and he is only 21.
So what are your thoughts?
Some more of my thoughts are on the life style of recreational drug users, I don't believe any amount of pleasure is worth giving up parts of yourself that some drugs take from you. Their are drugs like cigarettes and alcohol that take a little and many people use them that I think they should be aloud. But other drugs like meth take a lot and can leave little besides an empty shell.
I have to disagree with a few things in this point.
Both my father and grandfather died as a result of alcohol. My grandfather had both a serious gambling addiction and was an alcoholic. He ended his own life when my Father was 13 after building up so much debt from gambling that he felt there was no other way out. My father was killed in an accident in 1999 at 43 yrs old.
I have also lost my other Grandfather and a grandmother from smoking. One died from pulmonary fibrosis, the other from congestive heart failure.
I lost an uncle to another DWI accident in 1977. I lost an aunt to lung cancer in 1995. I have another uncle that is a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran that we expect to lose anytime now due to years of drug and alcohol abuse. And I just lost an aunt in March of this year to complications from severe alcohol abuse.
I have to respectfully disagree that they "take a little and many people use them that I think they should be aloud." Even though I have personally lost much more to drinking, I actually have more of an issue with smoking. Drinking can be much easier to control, and enjoy in moderation. However, there are very few "recreational" smokers out there. Most people smoke or they don't. And most people that do, will die or suffer from their choice. I smoked for 20 years, and I honestly don't know why....other than the addiction of it. It smells bad, and it tastes worse, yet I smoked 20 or 30 cigs a day, every day. I spent an estimated $35,000 on a habit that I can only pray doesn't come back to haunt me when I get a little older.
Post by
322702
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Post by
134377
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Post by
Magician22773
Do you think they should be made illegal? Or do you think thous people just got the short end of the stick or made bad choice? I was saying that people that smoke are still people that think for themselves, but when people do some drugs it leave behind nothing but the need for the drug. As long as people are in charge of their use the other way around I can't say that it needs to stop everywhere.
Personally, I don't think drinking should be regulated. Most people that drink do it socially, and do not develop a problem with it. Most of those that do develop a problem, do it for other reasons, usually depression. I also feel that there are more than enough organizations out there to help people with alcoholism, that anyone who goes as far down the tube with it as my family did, did it on their own.
Smoking, on the other hand, has very, very few "social" users. And the process of quitting is...well....horrible. Smoking causes 3 very different types of addictions, and to quit, you have to be able to overcome all 3. You have the physical addiction to the drug, nicotine. You have a mental addiction to the You have the physical addiction to "process" of smoking. (Needing to have something in your hands and mouth....the process of lighting up, and the process of carrying your smokes and lighter with you at all times), and you have the psycologcical adiction, which is really a combination of the previous 2. (You feel you "need" to smoke after eating, after sex, before you go to sleep, and while driving)
Even heavy drinkers...all but the worst alcoholics, will still have periods of sobriety. Very few people wake up and drink, continue to drink all day, every day, and have a drink just before bed. Most smokers follow that exact pattern.
Smoking is also nearly guaranteed to cause severe health issues. The only way a smoker does not die from smoking, is to die from something else first.
So, with all that...I would support the banning of tobacco products. It has presedence in our government, as many other harmful substances have been banned....DDT and asbestos for examples. Both were "useful" products, that when the dangers of their use were discovered, they were eliminated. I do believe that some serious measures would have to be taken in consideration before it could be banned. Treatment facilities would be needed for smokers to deal with the addictions, and some type of financial considerations would have to be made for the farmers that rely on growing tobacco for a living.
Post by
204878
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Post by
Magician22773
You know what has a 100% chance of causing death? Life. I think government should be in the business of saving people from each other, not removing freedoms under the guise of saving people from themselves. You can legally kill yourself with a knife, or jumping off a building, so why should it be illegal to kill yourself with tobacco or alcohol?
So asbestos and DDt should be legal products to use? I mean, they both were good products before they were proven to be deadly.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Magician22773
So keep growing tobacco legal, but make smoking it, or chewing it illegal to prevent it from causing harm to others, as it should be?
I cannot go out and buy asbestos insulation for the pipes in MY home, and I canot go buy DTT to spray only in MY garden, so why should I be able to go buy tobacco to smoke, even its only MY lungs that are affected?
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Magician22773
So keep growing tobacco legal, but make smoking it, or chewing it illegal to prevent it from causing harm to others, as it should be?
Do you not get what I mean by
causing harm to others
? I mean the people other than the person who is performing the action. Smoking primarily causes harm to the person doing it, passive smoking arguably does which is why it's illegal in public buildings.
I cannot go out and buy asbestos insulation for the pipes in MY home, and I canot go buy DTT to spray only in MY garden
Yes you can, you just need a license and a death wish.
The only person that tobacco does not harm is the grower, or you could argue, the cigarette or chew manufacturer. But everyone after that point that uses the product puts themselves in a situation that is know to be harmful.
The exact same arguement can be applied to tobacco as asbestos and DTT. So make smokers get a Haz-Mat license to purchase cigarettes.
Also, if you believe Wikipedia, the only current WORLDWIDE legal use of DTT is in the effort to control mosquito's in Africa.
However, you are correct about asbestos. It has been outright banned in 60 countries worldwide, but the US is not one of them. However, it is heavily controlled in its use under the Toxic Substances Control Act. So, for purposes of this arguement, I would concede if tobacco and its use fell under the same rules.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Magician22773
You can legally kill yourself with a knife, or jumping off a building, so why should it be illegal to kill yourself with tobacco or alcohol?
You post this, and then want to say something I post is silly?
Exactly, it's their choice. They choose to smoke, but back in the day, people didn't chose to have their crops sprayed with DDT, they didn't even know. They had no choice. Do you see where the analogy falls over?
We ain't "back in the day", brah.
Here, and now, DDT is outlawed in nearly every single country in the world. Why? Because we now know what it does...it causes cancer. Just like tobacco. Now that we know, why can we not choose to use DDT, if not only for personal use?
People still want it.
.
How does my analogy fall over now? Two substances. Both known to cause cancer. One is outlawed, for all uses, including personal, worldwide. One is avaliable in every gas station in the country. If DDT had been outlawed for use only on commercial crops, but was avaliable at Home Depot for you to buy, then you would have a point. But since the only way you are going to get some, is on some black market website, or in India, than I think you should concede this one, because your stance makes no sense.
Tobacco is legal because it is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it has massive political power through lobbyists. Plain and simple, the government
will
put a price on human life, if the price is high enough.
As far as I know, there is no other product directly responsible for more illness and death that is still legal to sale for human consumption in the US. Just a hundred years or so ago, heroin, cocaine, and most other illegal drugs were avaliable at any drugstore. Once their real effects were discovered, they were outlawed. So why else would they let one pass? $$$ Money...and a whole lot of it.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
craftyard
And I would love to hear your thoughts on people having jobs that will with out a doubt damage or destroy their body.
A teacher in my college actually has two of these; he's an engineering teacher who used to be an engineer. When he was a teenager he did some work which involved some very loud noises, and he was told he didn't need to wear ear protection. Because of that one incident, he's now almost deaf in both ears and has to use a hearing aid.
After that he was working on a boat and there was a pipe that was leaking water everywhere, so he and the other engineers panicked and plugged the hole with asbestos. Now he's got asbestos poisoning, which is going to come back to haunt him later on.
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