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Smoking cuts your life expectancy by something like ~10 years. Most of those smoking deaths are people who've already smoked 30+ years; there's not a lot we can
by patmcc 3y ago
Smoking cuts your life expectancy by something like ~10 years. Most of those smoking deaths are people who've already smoked 30+ years; there's not a lot we can do to prevent those deaths now, even if they all stopped smoking tomorrow. They'd still get cancer and everything else at higher rates. We've also done a pretty good job at lower smoking rates, especially among young people. Sure, we can ban or restrict tobacco more (maybe we should) but the "public health crisis" is mostly done.
Opiate addiction cuts life expectancy by ~35 years. And getting them onto safer drugs would save lives very immediately. There's stuff that could be done, and everyone knows it, and it's not happening. That's the public health crisis.
edit: and, yes, also, opiates are also more socially destructive, due largely to the criminality.
- martinald 3y agoThis isn't really true. Most of the death from smoking comes from other lung & heart problems, not cancer. As such even if you smoke for many decades and quit your risk decreases dramatically pretty quickly, even within days.
- patmcc 3y agoQuite an interesting chart near the bottom of this page - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/quit_smoking/how_to_quit/benefits/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/quit_smoking/how_to_quit/benefit... - doesn't quantify everything, unfortunately, but yeah even after a year the "risk of heart attack drops sharply". Interesting.
- pfdietz 3y agoAnd even cancer is getting more treatable these days. Lung cancer is no longer an automatic death sentence (although it often does still kill.)