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People may age faster if their dad smoked during puberty
- kakacik 1y agoSmoking is one of those harmful activities where state has some incentives to not be too proactive in preventing people from doing it. Eases a lot of social security costs down the line (vs cancer treatments, but many go out quickly via heart attack or stroke, just like my uncle did). Quickest fix would be total ban (with addicts moving en masse to black market). Not practically possible in regular democracies. Its up to people themselves for the most effective care. Easy talk about addiction which is ranked around cca heroin addiction in terms of how difficult it is to shed it. One always pays for one's mistakes, here its actually the offsprings...
- efnx 1y ago> Not practically possible in regular democracies. In what kind of irregular democracy is this practical? Not arguing, just curious.
- kakacik 1y agoBenevolent dictatorship with a veneer of democracy? Or any system that does motivate pushing for long term actual solutions, not just chasing votes for next election cycle.
- potato3732842 1y ago>In what kind of irregular democracy is this practical? Insane levels of homogeneous demographics and group think. Think like HOA or school board chock full o' Karens doing something wild. That's the kind of situation you'd need.
- yard2010 1y agoThis makes me wonder, in democracies there are stuff you simply cannot ban. What is the solution?
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoTax.
- rightbyte 1y agoYou can bann cigarettes for 18yo and under and then increase the age limit once a year by a year. You really have to force it to get hooked on tobacco. Dunno how many would bother without convenient access.
- eru 1y agoJust tax them. Countries are already doing that. Why do we need to ban them? If people want to smoke them, let them. The tax can take care of externalities. (And I say that as someone who hates smoking.)
- Rodeoclash 1y agoAustralia has taxed cigarettes so much that a thriving black market has started that nobody seems interested in policing. Alcohol appears to be going in the same direction.
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoEasy, don't tax so much that it becomes ineffective. There is a sweet spot to find. Honestly, I dislike smoking as much as anyone else but I frankly oppose the way Australia is taxing cigarettes and alcohol. These are sin taxes. They are high to deter people from doing things they want to do. That's overreach. Taxes should aim to cover externalities. That's fair. Your choice forces a burden on the collectivity which it's trying to recoup. Above that, that's just coercion and paternalism. Plus it disproportionally affects the poor but I guess the moral police pushing for this kind of taxes sees that as a benefit.
- philipallstar 1y agoIf your citizens are hooked on an addictive product, you can jack up the taxes.
- lynx97 1y agoI always wonder about the heroin comparison. I just doesn't check out for me. Feels inappropriate. Heroin has pretty pronounced withdrawal symptoms, which are (AIUI) mostly physical withdrawal. At least from personal experience, nicotine withdrawal doesn't do anything to me. I just recently spent a day in an ICU, and had no craving at all. Same for longer smoking breaks, like a week or two. No craving. However, I sometimes miss the socialisation / being occupied thing, which is plain mental addiction. Maybe I am special in this regard, but I doubt it. Most "nervious" smokers I met were, IMO, "protesting" against the fact that they are currently not free to do what they wanted. You can hype yourself up a lot without actual physical reasons.
- esseph 1y agoThere are certain genetic markers that can make it extremely hard to quit - nothing like you experienced.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago> You can hype yourself up a lot It's likely that you're doing this to yourself by underselling your cravings. Presumably you came out of your ICU visit and began smoking again but you've lied to yourself about the reasons why. The physical aspect of nicotine addiction is extremely well documented.
- sfn42 1y agoI agree. I've never done heroin but I understand the withdrawal is absolutely horrible. I stopped using nicotine this month. I've been using snus which is a Nordic product similar to chewing tobacco. You put it under your upper lip, the type I've been using has significantly more nicotine per dose than a cigarette. Like 2-4 times as much, 25mg per dose. It was fine. The first day was pretty hard for me, I was sitting next to a lady who kept her snus box on her desk and I really wanted to bum one but didn't. Day two was a bit easier, day three easier still and after that I felt like I was done. I'm on day 16 now and hardly think about it any more. It's strange because I've been using nicotine for almost two decades and I've been wanting to drop it for most of that time, even did drop it once but blundered and started again a year or so later. I've tried and failed to quit so many times, but the times that it's actually worked have always just felt like a state of mind difference. Like I didn't really want to quit the other times. When I really decide and all doubt is gone it's quite easy to quit. It's just hard to get to that state of mind and keep it.
- keiferski 1y agoTo me the key element is the addiction aspect. It’s one thing to ingest a substance which has good short term results but bad long term ones, but entirely another when the machinery of corporations is used to maximize that usage and make it as addictive as possible. As a side note, the movie The Insider by Michael Mann with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe is the single most effective anti-smoking thing I’ve come across. It shows how evil those corporations are and what they did to a whistleblower.
- andsoitis 1y agoYou say that as if smoking tobacco that does not come from corporations would not be addictive! All forms of tobacco are inherently addictive due to the presence of naturally occurring nicotine, which is the main driver of addiction.
- keiferski 1y agoPart of the scandal covered in The Insider is that tobacco companies deliberately added carcinogenic compounds to cigarettes in order to increase the impact of nicotine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_%26_Williamson#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_%26_Williamson#Controver... So sure, tobacco is still addictive, but as I said in my comment, my main issue is with the hacking/maximization of this by corporations. Especially when that hacking involves adding even more poisonous chemicals.
- lithocarpus 1y agoSee also, processed food!
- jjgreen 1y agoSmartphones are addictive and designed by large corporations to be so. Ready to give yours up?
- keiferski 1y agoNo, because I didn't say anything about forcing people to give up cigarettes. But it seems reasonable to me to have legislation that limits how addictive corporations can make them. Applying the same type of legislation to social media apps (for children, at least) seems reasonable to me.
- thomasfromcdnjs 1y agoI never understand why people don't talk about banning the general usage of sugar, probably has far worse effects on societal systems than smoking does. (attention, fatness, hormonal imbalances)
- lynx97 1y agoBecause it is waaaay easier to bully minorities, esp. in democracies? If you take something away from the majority, you run a huge risk of loosing in the next election...
- andsoitis 1y ago> I never understand why people don't talk about banning the general usage of sugar, probably has far worse effects on societal systems than smoking does. (attention, fatness, hormonal imbalances) Here is the US Health Secretary talking about it: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/22/rfk-jr-sugar-poison-food-dyes https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/22/rfk-jr-sugar...
- gmac 1y agoBecause that would be utterly ludicrous? I enjoy a few small sweet things every day as part of a healthy diet. This harms nobody, me included. Much better to make more effort in schools to teach people how to cook good food (including enough fat and salt that it's actually tasty). Plus maybe change some relative prices so that they eat less sugar on average.
- Pooge 1y agoNatural sweet things are healthy (fruits are an example). Processed food where sugar was added to make it addictive is not. I would argue most pastries are not healthy but you can make them at home and remove 50% of the sugar if you really crave one. For salt, I disagree. Normal humans don't need to add salt to a varied diet. Table salt is completely unneeded but most think food tastes bland without salt because their taste buds have adjusted to it.
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- bamboozled 1y agoThey hiked the taxes so high on cigarettes in Australia, they basically created a cigarette mafia. Look it up. It's out of control.
- jojobas 1y agoIt's to do with complete lack of will to enforce. You can open a dodgy tobacconist shop, get shut down with a ridiculously low non-personal penalty, and open another one two doors down.
- bamboozled 1y agoFunny thing is, in Australia it's been like that for a long time, black market cigarettes have been around for a lonnnggg time.
- lynx97 1y agoN=892
- JohnLocke4 1y agoThe number of individuals whose parents smoked during puberty is probably very small given this n value. More research is needed in my humble opinion
- lynx97 1y ago[dead]
- eru 1y agoMore importantly: as far as I can tell, this is just observational. So they have no clue about correlation vs causation.
- jimbob45 1y agoAnd how could you effectively design a study on this when secondhand smoking was practically inescapable up to 1990?
- eru 1y agoWhere shall I even begin? First, just because it's hard to disentangle correlation and causation, doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and just assume causation into existence. Second, your objection would equally wreck a study that just looks at correlation only. Third, presumably quantity matters, even if everybody is getting at least some secondhand smoke, that doesn't mean everyone is getting the same amount. The study found a way to measure this: they are looking at parental smoking, which presumably is connected with higher total amounts of secondhand smoke on average. The problem with teasing out causation of A leading to B is that you need some mechanism that cuts of the possibilities of B causing A, and some third factor C causing both A and B. It's easiest to do that, if you know that A was caused by the coin flip of the researcher that put subjects into either treatment or control group. But there are other clever approaches, like 'natural designs'.
- faangguyindia 1y agoHow does it account for stress. My hunch is many people smoke because of stress, same stress from socioeconomic situation may age someone outta stress? Now if you adopt a kid from such family into low stress enviornment and they still age, now that's better link.
- keiferski 1y agoI think this needs to factor in cultural attitudes toward smoking. It varies based on the location, but in my experience generally smoking is more widespread among lower income people, especially if their kids are smoking. And so I question whether the shorter lifespan is more reflective of less access to healthcare, good food, etc. more broadly.
- DarkmSparks 1y agoThey say I can live to be 100 years old if I give up all the things that make me want to live to be 100 years old.
- jjgreen 1y agoIt doesn't mean you live longer, it just seems like it.
- bamboozled 1y agoYou can eat salad everyday, never enjoy a drink and then die from some random shit in your 50s anyway. Sadly, I hear stories like that quite often. I get it, this proves nothing, but I have plenty of people in my family who drank daily, chain smoked and lived until they were into their late 80s / 90s.
- d3vnull 1y agoIt's all probability, not guarantees. Leading a healthy lifestyle increases your chances, eating like a pig decreases them. Looking at the outliers and saying "See?! It's all a lie!" is like looking at a lottery winner and concluding that lottery tickets are a sound investment.
- bamboozled 1y agoWhat's interesting is the people who are "unfit" and especially obese seem to fair the worst. Most of the people I spoke of, drank and smoked a lot, but also active to very active, and exercised regularly even in their 80s. Swimming, walking, playing tennis, yard work, gardening. They all seemed to share these things in common. Being Obese and sedentary seems to be a dangerous undertaking.
- IAmBroom 1y agoI think you may have hit on something there. Grandpa gave up cigarettes at age 75 or so. Only made it another ten years. Could outwork teenage me at age 75.
- sampaul058 1y agoWow, that’s really eye-opening. It’s one thing to know smoking harms your own health, but realizing it could affect your future children at a biological level adds a whole new layer. The idea that habits formed as a teenager can leave such a lasting legacy is honestly a bit scary. Just more reason we need to keep pushing awareness and prevention, especially for young people.
- julienlafond 1y agoThe difficulty will be getting this message across to teenagers who can only think six months ahead. Even talking to them about the impact when they are older will be pointless, so about their potential future progeny...
- Jolter 1y agoDo what many countries do and price them out. Since age limits are only as effective as ID verification, we know some kids are able to buy cigarettes and vapes. With a high enough tobacco tax, they can’t afford the habit and will be less inclined to even start. As a side effect it really does a number on the addiction of adults, too!
- blueflow 1y agoI'm sure "smoking" here is a proxy for something else that provokes substance abuse. Cigarettes are surely easier to see than psychological conditions.
- elric 1y agoWhat are you basing this statement on?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- IAmBroom 1y agoI'd say 'reasonable conjecture', but elevating it to "I'm sure" is a bit much.
- thenaturalist 1y ago[dead]
- anshumankmr 1y agoGood to know. I never touched a cig till I was 26 and got addicted a bit post a breakup but quit it earlier this year. My dad however probably has been smoking since he was 18 so I don't know what good that does me besides the second hand smoke I had to endure.
- thenaturalist 1y ago[dead]
- w0w0w0 1y ago[dead]
- burnt-resistor 1y agoOr were involuntarily conscripted in a war of empire and exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam leading to spina bifida and ADHD.
- IAmBroom 1y agoUm, what does that have to do with the topic? Yes, people die of environmental exposure to things. This is about a specific exposure, at a specific age period.
- grandinj 1y agoOr.... smoking may be indicative of people from poorer backgrounds, where health is generally lower. (cant say for sure, but thats the case where I am from) Statistics 101: Correlation is not causation.
- grigio 1y agoPeople may age faster if their mam read fake news during puberty
- sublimefire 1y agoI can confirm I was too smart for my age in my teens. And to make growing up even faster I smoked as well. Good times, kids these days have to vape as cigarettes are too expensive, not to mention cheap synth drugs. The times were simpler, it’ll be much harder to do a similar study in the future due to the proliferation of new carcinogenic substances in food, drugs, drinks, etc. All in all we are healthier anyway.
- tsoukase 1y agoSmoking in puberty is an obvious signal of many other malign traits: low socio- educational-economic level, violence, mental disease, besides of possible harm to their sperm. Many confounders that are difficult to include.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y agoWhat if their dad left home though, so limited exposure?