Smoking

So, I am at work. It's December 29th. No one else at any other company is at work either. Therefore, I have nothing to do. I have been talking with the other employees here and we got on the topic of smoking, and how some people use it for weight loss.

This only reminded me of an argument I had with someone recently on how Ontario is suing tobacco companies $50 billion dollars for all of the health care dollars that have been spent on smoking related illnesses. If you want to read the full article, here is the link:

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2046649


So, side note: stupid people drive me nuts.
What is worse is that Ontario will probably win. Their argument is that tax payers money has been going into funding all this health care for people with these smoking illnesses. One thing people automatically said was, well what about the Billions of dollars that the government gets from the tax they put on the cigarettes?

But lets put all of those money issues aside. Here are my arguments on this, because I have an opinion on everything.

First, what happens when Ontario does get this 50 billion dollars, does that mean that all the other people with smoking related illnesses will just go away? oh well now that we have been paid for the past health care costs, we are OK! no other money will be spent on smoking related illnesses.....well that is just silly to think that. I would like to see that graph that shows the correlation that as the money gained from suing the tobacco company increases, the number of deaths due to smoke and second hand come decreases.

<----this does not exists.

So lets think again about this, If the above graph does not exist, that must mean that smokers do not care about the money when it comes to smoking. Huh, so there will be no decrease in smoking if this money is made, which should be the governments main focus. Don't dwell on the past, look to the future! The people before are already sick or dying, so lets look to trying to get our future potential smokers to not smoke! WHICH is a great lead to my next point. I also think that suing the tobacco companies is silly because I do not see them as responsible. Tobacco companies are not going around to high schools or workplaces, sneak attacking people and shoving lit cigarettes in their mouths. People CHOOSE to smoke. It is unfortunate that cigarettes are addictive, but most smokers know the risks; these risks are clearly on the box. So what Ontario is doing is suing the tobacco companies for all the billions spent in health care money that is spent on smoking, since it was the tax payers money. However, if it is the taxpayers choice to smoke, aren't they then paying for their own health care? So it is a personal choice to start smoking. It is also a personal choice to eat a unhealthy amount of fast food. There are more of obese people these days than ever before, and it is also unhealthy for you to be obese. And on top of that, there are ads everywhere for fast food, but no one is suing burger king for the medical bills that ensues.

Next point: Smoking is a choice: it is not a naturally born urge to start smoking. So why do people start smoking? maybe the parents were smokers, and maybe their parents were smokers, and maybe they started cause they were in the war and it was a way to calm themselves. We were talking at work that some people use smoking as a weight loss tool. huh, that is funny; so if we go on that, it is society's views on what someone should look like that is a part of the problem. So now we are including media that is not even directly related to smoking. OK some people also smoke when they are depressed, as a stress reliever. Why are they stressed? are they stressed cause they know they are going to be in the hospital wasting the hard earned tax payers money when this smoking is catching up to them? hardly. People can be depressed and anxious for more reasons than this blog post can handle.

So what is suing the cigarette company going to prove? is it going to stop the cigarette company from manufacturing cigarettes? No.
Is it going to stop the addicted smokers from stop smoking. No.
Is it going to reduce the debt that Canada is in? Maybe.

So my problem with suing the tobacco company for medical bills from 1955 - now is it proves NOTHING. if they are that concerned with smoking, ban smoking. Sure it will piss people off, but it will me more effective than suing the tobacco company and will actually affect the real problem: PEOPLE.

I guess you can use the same scenario as the National Gun association but for smoking:
Smoking doesn't kill people, People do.