Health Officials Look To Cut Number Of Smokers By About 10M By 2024

[5150sick]

http://www.wpr.org/health-officials-look-cut-number-smokers-about-10m-2024



"Cummings said medicines the FDA has approved, such as the patch or gum, don't cut it. Cummings has seen smokers try alternatives, such as e-cigarettes — something Cummings supports because it closely mimics and is safer than a cigarette, he said.

The report recommends establishing tobacco and nicotine alternatives, such as e-cigarettes. Some health officials see e-cigarettes as a rational and adaptable approach. E-cigarettes have become popular and could help adult smokers who are increasingly looking for alternatives to the nicotine patches, gum or lozenges. Cummings argues taxes on e-cigarettes should be lowered to make them more accessible and that they should not be taxed to the extent of cigarettes.

"Currently the FDA has proposed regulating these electronic-cigarettes just like cigarettes, which essentially is going to wipe out the vaping industry in the next two years," Cummings said. "It's the first alternative nicotine delivery system that appears to have some acceptability to smokers."

 

[Rossum]

We tax cigarettes, and I'm sure smokers feel that they're already overtaxed, but that's actually not true," Cummings said. "If you simply look at the user fee to pay for the health care costs that we all end up paying for, and whether you have insurance or not, one way or the other, we're paying those taxes. Bottom line is that 7 percent of our public insurance that's Medicare or Medicaid is the result of treating tobacco related diseases."

Horse feathers! They completely ignore all the money that smokers save society because they die early. This reduces the amount of Social Security and Medicare needs to spend on them later in their lives, and in the end, most everyone, even lifetime non-smokers get deathly ill with something that expensive to deal with. Account for this properly and you'll find that smokers are already over-taxed.

 

[AndriaD]

Horse feathers! They completely ignore all the money that smokers save society because they die early. This reduces the amount of Social Security and Medicare needs to spend on them later in their lives, and in the end, most everyone, even lifetime non-smokers get deathly ill with something that expensive to deal with. Account for this properly and you'll find that smokers are already over-taxed.

Plus, when smokers get a congested chest and cough, they typically DON'T run to the doctor with it, because they KNOW what the doctor is gonna say. I distinctly recall sounding like an entire pneumonia ward, but insisting, between puffs, that I was just fine. Unless there's severe pain and a fever, most smokers self-treat when they get a cough/congestion -- *just* the pain usually won't send them to the doc, either -- I've had many cases of strained chest-wall muscles because of all the coughing -- I bound up my chest with ace bandages and carried on, smoking all the while.

This is why I find it so fucking HYSTERICAL when all these ex-smokers complain about this or that supposed danger in vaping, and post some insignificant symptom, wondering if vaping caused it. I'm sure there ARe some problems that vaping either causes or makes worse -- like those edema-swollen legs I suffered when I first started vaping -- but running to a doc probably won't help, because they'll say the EXACT same thing they say to a smoker: JUST QUIT. Like, it's so fucking EASY! Idiots.

Andria

 

[5150sick]

Horse feathers! They completely ignore all the money that smokers save society because they die early. This reduces the amount of Social Security and Medicare needs to spend on them later in their lives, and in the end, most everyone, even lifetime non-smokers get deathly ill with something that expensive to deal with. Account for this properly and you'll find that smokers are already over-taxed.

I was thinking the same thing.
Everyone has to die of something, sometime so they say the ones who die a full decade earlier somehow cost MORE.
It doesn't make any sense.
Seems like smokers work, and pay taxes until they are 60 then die a week before their social security benefits kick in so the government doesn't have to pay them any money back..

They are eventually going to get caught in their lies when the smoking rate drops to around 3% and the lung cancer rate quadruples around the same time.