Via Audrey Silk, a new study:
Despite a decline in cigarette smoking over the years, tobacco remains a health risk for many people, with nearly 28 percent of adults regularly using one or more of an assortment of products, according to results of a major national study led by Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is collecting information from 46,000 tobacco and non-tobacco users in 150 randomly selected counties in the United States to better understand how they are using the products.
The statistical analysis provides a baseline for examining trends as individuals are followed over time.
And, one finding so far sticks out as surprising: that so many people — 40 percent overall in the study — use at least two tobacco products. The most common combinations included cigarettes with e-cigarettes, cigarillos or a hookah.
Is it 28% of adults use tobacco in one form or other? And 40% use at least two? I thought that 20% or less of Americans now used tobacco. Audrey Silk had the same questions.
Most likely, the 20% or less is just another one of Tobacco Control’s Big Lies. The figure is always dwindling. And that’s probably meant to show that their efforts are being successful, and that they need to continue to be funded. After all, it wouldn’t look very good if smoking prevalence started rising sharply, would it? It would mean that their efforts were being unsuccessful, and that the money being given to Tobacco Control was being wasted. No, TC needs to generate figures showing that they’re gradually succeeding in stamping out smoking. They can never allow smoking prevalence to actually hit zero, because then the war on smoking would have been won, and they’d lose their funding. It’s probably a topic of intense debate within TC what smoking prevalence numbers need to be in order to maximise the gravy in the gravy train they’re riding.
Keeping the prevalence numbers gradually falling will keep the gravy flowing. But one other effect of having smoking prevalence at 20% and falling is that it also tells the politicians who provide most of the gravy that smokers are a dying breed whose opinions can safely be ignored. After all, what’s the point in looking for the votes of a group of people who simply won’t exist in 10 or 20 years time? If you’re a politician, you’ll be wanting to attract the votes of social groups that are rapidly expanding – like, for example, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Politicians of this sort try to predict the future, usually by extrapolating from current trends. If smoking prevalence is at 15% and falling at the rate of 1% per year, then most likely smokers will be extinct in 15 years. And if the prevalence of unmarried mothers is 20%, and rising by 2% per year, then in 15 years 50% of mothers will be unmarried. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you’ll forget about smokers completely, and start a big drive to attract unmarried mothers (and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists) to your party.
I think that this was the Clinton political strategy known as “triangulation” (although I can’t see any triangles anywhere). Essentially, you identify minorities that are growing or dwindling in numbers, and cultivate the ones that are growing, and ignore the ones that are dwindling. And you devise a set of policies that manages to please all the growing minorities. Which might prove to be difficult if policies that attract votes from one group cost votes in another group. For example, going big on gun control might attract the votes of lots of unmarried mothers, but would alienate a great many Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So one way round this problem might be to go big on gun control, but with exemptions in the small print for Muslims, or anyone called Muhammed. That way you please everybody. Whatever the policy mix you decide, you have to keep it regularly updated to ensure the combined maximum vote. And if you do it right, you always hold the moral high ground, even as the moral high ground shifts from week to week, year to year. Because the only purpose is to win power, and promises are cheap.
And most political parties are doing something along these lines, more or less successfully. And it’s why they almost all ignore smokers. Because everybody knows that smokers are an endangered species. And Tobacco Control comes out with numbers showing smoking prevalence steadily falling, year after year. Why should any politician pledge support for a voting bloc that is vanishing? They have to go wherever the votes are, or where they will be.
But if Tobacco Control has been claiming that smoking prevalence in recent years has been less than 20% and falling, doesn’t this new study strongly suggest that smoking prevalence is now rising, and rising very sharply? Let’s say smoking prevalence was 18% five years ago, and it’s 28% now, then what was falling at the rate of 1% per year is now rising at 2% per year. And smokers have become a growing minority rather than a shrinking minority. And the Clintonian ‘triangulators’ may find that they need to start cultivating smokers (and white working classes), perhaps at the cost of unmarried mothers and Islamic terrorists.
But I suspect that Tobacco Control will move rapidly to discredit this new study, most likely by showing that at least 1% of the funding for it came from Big Tobacco, or from somebody who once worked in Big Tobacco 30 years ago, or knew somebody who did. The last thing they want is to see headlines like Smoking Prevalence Is Rising Sharply appearing in the mainstream media, or even in the new internet media, like Facebook and Twitter.
…which reminds me that yesterday I reactivated my @cfrankdavis Twitter account. What better headline to restart it with?
…
P.S. It worked:
Frank Davis 
I think I see it totally opposite to you, Frank, but I hope it’s you that’s right! The FDA and the surgeon general decided that vapes are tobacco products, and that people ‘smoke’ them. Nevermind that a lot of vapers are happy to promote anti-smoking laws.
I think the study was to show that ‘smoking’ means normal smoking, vaping, the kid who tried a hookah once, and dippers. Now that it’s gone up so much (and the FDA regulates all of it), anti-smoking should get even more money, and there should be even more anti-tobacco laws – now that everything’s tobacco and all. Not to mention higher taxes.
Maybe ‘smoking’ prevalence has indeed increased, if vaping is now included. Maybe when ex-smokers heard about the new ‘safe’ vaping devices, they thought they’d give them a try. Never having been an ex-smoker, I wouldn’t really know.
I wonder if someone marketed a product that was just a white plastic tube, painted red at one end, light tan at the other end, TC would classify its use as ‘smoking’. It wouldn’t surprise me.
In my experience, people who quit smoking before e-cigs existed tend to be as militantly anti-vaping as any tobacco control lunatic. There’s always that element of “I quit cold turkey and didn’t need a stupid crutch,” as if their masochism confers automatic moral superiority.
Last year the federal government reported a 12-14% rise in cigarette sales yeast over year that came out in October 2016 2 weeks prior CDC comes out with a quick new smoking poll claiming smoking dropped to 17% or so then shortly after that the ACS came out claiming it dropped to 15.8% or so then the news broke that consumption went way up!
Obviously somebody in obamas swamp let it be known early that cig consumption went up so the only propaganda they could pull was claiming lowered rates right before the news broke about increased cig sales in the US.
about 9 percent of youths ages 12 to 17 reported using a tobacco product in the 30 days before being asked;
I suspect this will very quickly become the only result that matters. The headline will only scream “ALMOST 10 % OF LITTLE CHILDREN SMOKE!” and that something must be done NOW!
Do I need to tell anyone here what that ‘something’ will be? Whatever the stick is, it will require even more money being paid to the fASHites.
Reblogged this on Contra la ley "antitabaco".
Most likely, the 20% or less is just another one of Tobacco Control’s Big Lies.
More like a half truth.
They talk about tobacco use; but, only count cig smokers and leave out the cigar, pipe, or other types of users.
Also, they only count current users and ignor the fact that there are millions of adults that have smoked for various amounts of time and then stopped.
Although, they will include deaths to the exsmokers in their mortality counts.
Antis seldom deal in actual numbers.
They claim,for instance, that smoking causes death from lung cancer and never mention the actual chances of such a death.
Contrary to the ‘experts’, getting lung cancer is just a matter of bad luck.
The ‘experts’ never mention the odds, in any given year, of not dying from lung cancer.
In the USA, there are a yearly 160,000 lung cancer deaths out of 320 million people.
That gives odds of 1 per 2,000 for dying and 1,999 per 2,000 for not dying.
So, in any given year, the average person has a 99.95% probability of not dying from lung cancer.
All of the squawking and shouting is about who or what gets the blame for the 5/100ths of 1% that do die.
Were the swamp of risk-mongers (aka. TC epidemiologists) to cite absolute stats, they would likely vanish into obscurity and irrelevance. Funding would dry up as it went elsewhere to far more important issues. As we all know, relative stats are the marketing distortion of choice, and these are usually rejected on an instinctive level by the average punter because the average punter ALWAYS knows a family member or other exception to the rule.
As we all know, social stigmatization, or demonizing smokers always distorts the stats, ever more grossly. Under-reporting in response to the inevitable question and over-reporting by often financially induced health authorities leads to nonsense, exactly the same numerical nonsense that everyone knows exists in stats when it comes to describing one’s ethnicity.
I know I’ve said this before. Apologies.
“You die your way and I’ll die my way.”
Frank Sinatra.
So sad!!!!
As ecigarettes are now tobacco product only because they contain nicotine… So the next will be The Eggplants, Green Tomatoes and potatoes. Soon, everyone who eat them will be tobacco user. And the loveley statistics of mortality… and funds from goverment and tax payers. Some fighting antismoking groups will be very very rich.
Crazy
And don’t even think about eating any burnt bits on your roast potatoes… CANCER!!!
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/acrylamide-cancer-food-study
Some of the controlling buggers have realised they may have ‘jumped the shark’ with the latest blitzkrieg on diet:
‘Scare stories such as these are dangerous because they cause unnecessary worry for people. “It over-suggests what the risk might be and because of that it actually takes away from other more important public health messages about risks that really matter,” continued Professor Pharoah. “Like smoking.”‘
I think restaurants are going to have to abide by the no browned bits rule by law soon. http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.ca/2017/01/if-you-believe-theyre-just-guidelines.html
It’s for our own good, of course.
If it was actually about nicotine and “health,” then yes, we should see this in the near future, but we won’t, because it’s not. The Anti’s only classify you as a “tobacco user” if you do something that resembles smoking. That’s what they want to denormalize and eradicate — the act of smoking. Their true puritan intentions became completely transparent once e-cigarettes came into existence. TC must be destroyed.
As is their wont, tobacco controllers will simply move the goalposts until the numbers fit the political narrative they need to promulgate on any given day.
If they’re trying to stir up a moral panic about teh childrinz, they will portray ever-use as current use.
If they’re trying to wax self-congratulatory about the fabulous success of their own efforts in driving down the smoking rate, they’ll count only daily smokers and ignore casual/occasional ones (which they prefer to do anyway, since the existence of casual/occasional smokers gives lie to the “addiction” model).
Yes, my daughter and her other half are ‘casual’ smokers. They use e-cigs as well, but they both can either smoke or not smoke. It doesn’t really bother then too much either way, but they like smoking or vaping, which is why they do. They are among the many who will be counted as ‘smokers’ or ‘non-smokers’, depending on the figures desired by TC.
As for me, I an very much in the dedicated ‘smoker’ camp. Unfortunately for TC, despite 50+ years of smoking, I have singularly failed to either die, or succumb to any ‘smoking related’ disease. I am, in fact, in rude health.
Maybe I’m a secret non-smoker…
*wonders if is he the only one here who now waits for the evening news with baited breath to hear what The Trumpinator has proclaimed today? Hoping , nay praying, him having dealt with minor issues like The Wall and Refugees faster than i would ever have imagined, that he will turn his gun on the Tobacco Control Lobby*
I still can’t really warm to the guy, despite his upsetting all those pink bobble haters, but DAMN, he doesn’t waste time does he?
And watching May (and , when i catch the German news tonight, Merkel) squirm is almost worth the caterwauling, gnashing of teeth of our liberal MSM.
Question for the Americans among us: how legally solid is a Pres.Ex.Order? Can a court tip it? I mean , if Donny was to declare there were to be no more warnings on packs for example?
Tobacco Control Lobby* sorry that should, of course, have read “Tobacco Control Industry”
Non-Yank, but according to this, all Obama’s Executive Orders can be wiped out, never to return:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-27/cra-regulatory-game-changer-could-wipe-out-8-years-obama-regs-hour
A court can overturn an exec order if they say it’s unconstitutional per se, or that it violates a constitutional process.. That’s already happened to several of Obama’s exec orders and –apparently–might have happened to more of them had anyone brought them to court.
Thanks Guys, was just wondering as it said on the news that Trump’s decrees were already facing court challenges. I’m supposing Trump can claim/plead ‘national security’ regarding his refugee ban?
Just saw that on the news after a relaxing news-free day. A judge put a temporary injunction on the executive ban on accepting people from the (whatever number of) countries Trump blackballed.. Apparently people with visas who’d arrived today at US Airports were being detained and held for deportation. Among them was a guy said to have aided American combat troops. As of now, “the white house has not commented.” By Sunday (US time) there’ll undoubtedly be later bulletins. Or 3 AM tweets.
Waltc, assuming Trump isn’t a congenital idiot and that he has some top flight legal advisers then I’d guess he could rescind the order tomorrow for all the difference it will now make. He’s won this hand. He’s the man. He’s the one trying to protect America and the pinko-liberal-commi-elite are the ones who are supporting the enemies of the US. No matter what the courts rule , it can go all the way to the Supreme..
That’s the message his supporter base will take. All over the States, glasses will have been raised to the TV screen as the Order was announced. In every “compound” of whatever flavour of whack job , gun nuts of all ages will have nodded sagely to the news that finally they had a President who wants to protect them from ‘all enemies , domestic and foreign’.
More importantly , whatever one thinks of Trump, everyone in the US now knows he is prepared to ACT. To DO. Right or wrong, no hand wringing, no weaselling. Obama was always a bit of a lame duck. Trump has shot that duck, stuffed and mounted it (perhaps in both senses of the word).
TC seldom tells the complete facts.
The antis claim that “cigarettes kill”; but,never-smokers die at a higher rate from the 19 diseases ’caused’ by smoking.
Never-smokers have a 33% higher death rate from those diseases.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5745a3.htm
The chart lists the 19 diseases ’caused’ by smoking, the total deaths, and the deaths ’caused’ by smoking(SAM) for those diseases.
Note:
1.There are a total of 1,215,836 deaths and only 393,094 SAM’s.
1.a SAM’s include deaths to both current and ex smokers
2. That is 822,742 deaths to 146 million never-smokers for a rate of 56 per 10,000.
3. That is 393,094 deaths to the about 94 million ever-smokers for a rate of 42 per 10,000.
4. The rate of 56/10,000 is 33% greater than the rate of 42/10,000.
Never- smokers are 33% more likely to die from the diseases ’caused’ by smoking,
Since the difference of 14 is only 25% of the 56 rate, we can not say that smoking has a protective effect.
That takes a decrease of at least 50%.
However, it does seem unlikely that an ever- smoker’s death was totally due to their having smoked.
Another example of tobacco control propaganda… More evidence that tobacco control must be destroyed!
Two points here.How does anybody know how many people are smoking?So many cigarettes are bought on the black market therefore the revenues raised from the legitimate sales of cigarettes are completely irrelevant.Secondly the main reason why people switch from cigarettes to vaping is predominantly the cost.
The truth is that they can only guess. As you point out, nobody really knows the size of the black market, and polls / questionnaires are a waste of time because people lie. So they make up the numbers that will suit them, and publish them as fact.
CDC Report
Deaths from CVD,, 852,360, are 70% of the 1,215,836 deaths from the 19 diseases claimed to be caused by smoking.
1. Never-smokers had 723,863 CVD deaths for a rate of 50/10,000.
2. Ever-smokers had 126,497 such deaths for a rate of 14/10,000.
3. If the smokers had died at the same rate as the never- smokers, they would have had an additional a 338,400 CVD deaths.
4. Smoking ‘prevented’ 338,400 deaths.
5. The 70% decrease from the 50/10,000 to 14/10,000 is large enough to indicate a preventative effect.
6. The claimed about 400,000 deaths ’caused’ by smoking is only, at most, about 55,000.
7. That 55,000 is about one half of the deaths caused by hospital acquired infections.
Asking teenagers, especially boys, if they have taken drugs, been drunk, been joy riding, taken apart in a gang bang recently or even vaped/smoked tends to get you answers that would make Walter Mitty or Billy Liar blush.
They claim to need to protect the cheeeeldren.
For The Children?
I would like to see just what harm they can prove comes to ‘children’ from smoking.
As we see here:
Click to access lies.pdf
The CDC data shows that there are damn few smoking ’caused’ deaths below the age of 35.
95% of those deaths occur over the age of 50 and the average age of those deaths is 72.
50% of those deaths occur over the age of 72.
A 15 yr old could smoke for 20 years with no chance of dying from a smoking ’caused’ death.
A 15 yr old could smoke for 35 years with very,very little chance of such a death.
If a 15 yr old smoker was planning on such a death, they would have to smoke for 57 years before they had a 50% chance of such a death.
By that time, they have long ceased to be ‘children’.
I thank you for the recognition, Frank.
On one point though you might need to reevaluate how to assess the study. You write: “But I suspect that Tobacco Control will move rapidly to discredit this new study, most likely by showing that at least 1% of the funding for it came from Big Tobacco, or from somebody who once worked in Big Tobacco 30 years ago, or knew somebody who did.”
Au contraire, it was conducted by one of the many top commanders in the anti-smoker army — Andrew Hyland, chairman of the Roswell Park Department of Health Behavior. His credentials as a student of the likes of Stanton Glantz are impeccable.
This is from your bubbles model post.
===================================
What would drive such a “series of events”…as it were?
As I explained in the text, the bubbles always overlap when they collide, and this serves to continually accelerate them. The bubbles can’t ‘underlap’ and slow down. But there are other ways of handling collisions, for example by ensuring the momentum is always conserved. I might consider simple reflections of bubbles off each other, if that conserves momentum.
A “more correct” model/modeling? Sure. Why not?
I’m sure the models can be improved. But they’ll always have limited accuracy.
===================================
Think about speed and speeds as a base, instead of a “controlling factor”…when trying to “conserve energy.” Maybe even think of it as energy and energies.
EX: Let’s use the galactic precept of relative speed of 88 mph.
+88 to -88
Build your model to where any time that an object is “projected to” exceed this speed/these speeds, a notation is made as to the predictive process that is estimating these projections. Do not include anything that will prevent an object from exceeding this/these speed(s).
Also build your model to where any time that an object actually exceeds this/these speed(s), that a notation is made when and where and relative to what. And ALSO, was this an object that was projected to exceed this speed or not, and if not, why not. This should help determine any objects in proximity anywhere along it’s timeline to where you can project that some other object or force SHOULD have been “drawn to” this object in order to “slow it’s trajectory(ies) and or speed(s).”
Regarding the +88 mph, -88 mph…
Do NOT enforce a speed limit exceeding either of these speeds.
And here’s how you do that…
When an object reaches a speed of slower than 1 mph …do NOT divide into decimals down to zero speed. There is no “zero speed” in The Universe where we are. So…if an object’s particular axis reaches a speed of 1 mph and needs to continue deceleration…skip zero and go straight to -1 mph.
Yep.
Anything -1 mph = 1 mph and beyond.
Keep relativity and membranes and strings and stings in mind within quantum mechanics in mind, and it should work. :-)
You will require 8 dimensions.
4 base dimensions of X, Y, Z , T (T will be your “master time”
4 additional dimensions of time.
X + T = XT
Y + T = YT
Z + T = ZT
XT + YT + ZT = XYZT
T + XYZT = 8 base dimensions for all matter.
Any time that an axis changes direction and/or velocity, time changes for that axis along a new pathway that will eventually affect the other axises. This will give us pointers in time AND space as to what caused that change.
EX: XT + T = XT(1) = XYZT(1)(XT(1))T(1)
This will mark the time and times within the event along each axis in each set.
Yes…we are talking huge amounts of data here. But look at the amount of matter(s), motion(s) and energy/energies that we are proposing to model. This is an ambitious undertaking.
All time is simultaneous. But NOT all times. All times are relative only to time over times over time. Thinking observers should help. If you think of each axis in it’s own dimension of time and space simultaneously AS AN OBSERVER/PARTICIPANT….that should help out. This will help explain not only particles and waves and the hows and whys of that, but also…yep…dark matter. We’re just bouncing all around it and through it. ;-)
Lastly…if the +/-mph possibility is upsetting, you have to keep spin and spins in mind. Especially relative to The Earth/Terra and other matter, energies and bodies. If you think in terms of aviation with respect to airspeeds, this should help. (Meaning: Airspeed, indicated airspeed, calculated airspeed, groundspeed, true airspeed, etc.)
Because…yes…it IS possible to fly backwards in an airplane. I’ve done it. And I’m talking normal attitude, straight and level flight, on a windy day, in a small plane, 5/10 mph above stall speed, the plane should be going forward, but it’s moving backwards over the ground. When going forwards, we call this “a favorable tailwind”, because I have also flown in a small airplane where my tailwinds were so strong, that my groundspeed over the ground was 165 knots…or over 10 knots ABOVE my Vne speed of 155 knots…which is the “V – Never Exceed” speed design limit of the aircraft, but my indicated airspeed was only 120 miles per hour. Speeds that normally I would had to point the aircraft at the ground to achieve.
Some of my post got parsed there… the section above at “Yep” should have been…
Yep.
Anything less than 1 mph = -1 mph and beyond.
Anything greater than -1 mph = 1 mph and beyond.
Keep relativity and membranes and strings and stings in mind within quantum mechanics in mind, and it should work. :-)
I’ve been too distracted by Trump’s inauguration to get my head around the mathematics of my orbital model. My default state of mind is non-mathematical, and it takes an effort for me to do any mathematics. And there is a lot of mathematics in this simulation model.
I’m a simple Newtonian thinker, and I don’t understand relativity or quantum mechanics. I liked my bubble model of the atmosphere because it’s very simple. And also it’s not the way the climate scientists do it. It just has balls of air bouncing around on the surface of the Earth, and bumping into each other. What could be simpler than that? I liked it even more because the (inaccurate) way I handled these collisions resulted in the bubbles speeding up: Global Warming! How wonderful!!
I do have an observer in the simulation model. 3D needs an observer. But in my model light has infinite speed, and arrives instantaneously on the surface of all the planets (not 10 minutes later like on Earth). Maybe one day I’ll try to introduce slow light. But at the moment I can’t get my head around that.
I’m terrible at math. Any math that is not zero-based, makes my head hurt. And I’m terrible at spelling. But I’m one hell of a dreamer.
Good luck with the model. :-)
<3
-cFa
I should imagine that the 28% refers to 28% of the 46,000 participants who use some form of tobacco, if we include nicotine extracted from tobacco plants (NB. It is not necessary to cure the leaves [tobacco] to extract the nicotine). That 28% roughly equates to EU figures for smokers in the UK.
28% of 46,000 is 12880. The researchers found that 40% of that 12880 (5152) used more than one nicotine product.
What is interesting is that the 40% number is pretty high, I would not have thought that nicotine users would jump about from product to product so much.
Having said that, I do jump from one ‘product’ to another myself. When I get up and set about my daily chores, I find using ready-made cigs more convenient, but, when I sit down, I start using my home-made ones Also, when I go to the pub, I use ready-made cigs because they only last about 7 minutes, whereas my home-made ones last about 14 minutes. I don’t want to be standing in the cold for very long.
Another interesting point is that the 40% MUST be using a least one form of tobacco, if they also use ecigs. That is, ALL the 40% must be ‘dual users’. But what of the 60%?
“The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is collecting information from 46,000 tobacco and non-tobacco users”
That sentence is unclear. Does it mean smokers and non-smokers? Do they include snuff, snus, chewing tobacco users?
And there is another thing…. I wonder how many ecig users have TRULY given up smoking all together? There is a guy who goes into my pub who generally uses his ecig, but he occasionally appears with a packet of cigs. Is he generally using his ecig to save money, but occasionally feels flush enough to buy some cigs? Do many people use ecigs during their working day, but get out their cigs when they get home? Who really knows?
In my own case, I haven’t had a cigarette in over three years, but since I now smoke two or three cigars in an average month, in addition to vaping and snussing, according to fundamentalist tobacco control doctrine that means 1) I haven’t quit smoking; and 2) I’m now in the dreaded “dual user” category (or, worse yet, “polytobacco user”).
The average tobacco control true believer would waste no time in informing me that I haven’t done anything to reduce my health risk (since part of their orthodoxy is that all tobacco use is 100% as deadly as cigarette smoking), or even that my risk is greater than before (because another of their orthodoxies is that using multiple tobacco products is always, always worse than using only one, irrespective of which products or how often they’re being used).
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