Number of Thai smokers up 21% despite 50,000 deaths last year

[berybert]

Everything dies hunny that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

The joy of Buddhism is it doesn't matter.

[Thai at Heart]

I am continually surprised by the number of people who profess to really want to quit smoking but don't know how to. When it comes to reality, do they REALLY want to give up? There is an absolutely certain way to give up smoking seriously, if genuine? That is Zyban which should be taken under medical advice, but is is certain and immediate. Just how serious are people about actually giving up?

Is Alan Carr's The Easy Way To Stop Smoking available in Thai? If not, it should be.

If they can ban 1984, I am sure they would ban this book as some kind of farang voodoo

[pistachios]

They banned electronic cigarettes and now are complaining the number of smokers is rising. Go figure.

Edited June 1, 2015 by pistachios

[metisdead]

An off topic post has been removed.

[DrTuner]

Banning vaping should help to get that figure up. Raise the tax and you'll also get a thriving cottage industry selling tobacco by kilo at your nearest rural hardware shop. Good going, fellas and certainly not too hard on the brain cells.

[rijit]

arnt the addicts out in full idignant force !!! . feel free to smoke ure self.to.death or illness, but dont blow the smelly shit over or within smelling distance of me. And.please w t f is it about smokers and.doorways, why huddle near as.you can? is it a weird,, must.get as.near to those that reject me.!!

[rijit]

Banning vaping should help to get that figure up. Raise the tax and you'll also get a thriving cottage industry selling tobacco by kilo at your nearest rural hardware shop. Good going, fellas and certainly not too hard on the brain cells.

good idea bout selling the tobacco, probably wouldnt be anywhere as near bad or smelly as the guff they call tobacco 2day

[Yunla]

It is clearly harmful to smoke, and I do agree that the dangers of smoking should be taught to children. It is really not a new thing either, in the 1980s children were given merchandise featuring the unhealthy-looking villain Nick O'Teen, in his cig-filter tophat, he was getting beaten to a pulp by Superman or some other superhero.

Cigs do harm the body of course, but as other posters have pointed out, we live in a world that is full of pollutants, even in things like house-paint and carpet-fibers. Non-smokers who pumped diesel-fuel for a living, had extremely high lung and throat cancer rates, in a study many years ago.

Many smokers are in control of their habit, they smoke lightly and do so to relax. Tobacco has also been used historically in sports, it was often chewed to increase visual acuity and focus, in baseball. Smoking used as a maintenance drug to help control depression is also common. I have spoken with many people who are depressed and/or suicidal, and their cigarettes are what they cling to for comfort in their darker moments. My own Aunty who has now smoked heavily for over sixty years, suffers from suicidal depression relating to the murder of her husband in the 1960s, which she witnessed and she was also brutally attacked in the event. I can confirm that my Aunty would have killed herself years ago if she didn't have her cigarettes to calm her down. So in some cases, cigarettes actually save lives! It is a very stabilising daily activity for people on the edge, as well as being a relaxing activity for normal happy people.

I think there are many sides to tobacco-smoking, of which the media slavishly only reports the ghoulish health risk angle. We should certainly educate kids on the dangers and urge them to not smoke. And we should offer health advice and affordable treatment for smokers who want to quit. But at the same time we should be tolerant and well informed when dealing with adult smokers, who do so for many different reasons that go way beyond addiction.

[spidermike007]

While hundreds of thousands have stopped smoking in the UK and USA due to e-cigs which are tenfold times less harmful, Thailand decides to ban them - go figure !!!

The Thai government owns the primary tobacco concession in the country! The govt. has a lot of blood on its hands in this regard. Of course they will ban that which they cannot control.

And my questions are:

1. why does anyone smoke? If seems to me to be a complete lack of discipline, combined with horrific personal hygiene. In addition it is a complete disregard for ones one health, and the quality of life of all around them, that they torture with their heinous second hand smoke.

2. why allow oneself to be a slave to the tobacco industry, which keeps you addicted by adding hundreds of toxic additives to the smoke you are ingesting hourly. The whole habit of smoking is so far beyond my ability to grasp or understand.

Not trying to offend. Just trying to understand.

[LarryBird]

I agree the 50,000 number seems high, but it could still be that 50,000 smokers dies, and there was still a 21% increase..

[nisakiman]

I agree the 50,000 number seems high, but it could still be that 50,000 smokers dies, and there was still a 21% increase..

You do realise that the vast majority of these 'smoking related deaths' occur in people over the age of 70, don't you? 50 years ago, they used to call it 'old age', now they call it 'smoking related deaths'. A neat little bit of legerdemain to make it sound like people are dropping like flies because they smoked.

As Mark Twain was fond of quoting: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

[LarryBird]

I agree the 50,000 number seems high, but it could still be that 50,000 smokers dies, and there was still a 21% increase..

You do realise that the vast majority of these 'smoking related deaths' occur in people over the age of 70, don't you? 50 years ago, they used to call it 'old age', now they call it 'smoking related deaths'. A neat little bit of legerdemain to make it sound like people are dropping like flies because they smoked.

As Mark Twain was fond of quoting: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Of course I realize it, I am a statistician by trade. All you did was reiterate my point, that, there may be an error in translation. If the research was done by a Thai, and then went to English, that important point could have been misread..

And, FWIW, the Mark Twain quote is a bit lame in that it should read "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and the MISINTERPRETATION of statistics."