Every cigarette smoked cuts 20 minutes off a person’s life, a study has claimed.
An analysis by scientists at University College London (UCL), commissioned by the Government, found that the harm caused by smoking shaved an average of 22 minutes per cigarette off the lifespan of a woman, with a loss of 17 minutes for a man.
The findings are up to twice as much as previous estimates which claimed that an individual cigarette costs 11 minutes of a person’s life.
Researchers said that the harm caused by smoking was cumulative and that the sooner a person stopped smoking, and the more cigarettes they avoided smoking, the longer they lived.
No, not whether this is true, but if they believed it was?
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill would also
It wouldn’t regulate vapes, would it?
It does regulate vapes therefore they don’t believe it.
For every cigarette you smoke, God takes 20 minutes off your life and gives it to Keith Richards.
It’s the only logical explanation surely?
Smoking will most likely shorten your life, but misleadingly precise calculations like this are annoying. Reminds me of the green propaganda about the usually minimal radiation exposure in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Yet another example of inequality between men and women – the government need to urgently address this to ensure that a cigarette takes 22mins off both male and female lives.
What they ignore is that all the extra life you might get if you didn’t smoke wouldn’t necessarily be years of healthy living, living the life those adverts for retirement ‘villages’ portray, everyone fit and healthy playing golf or sitting around having brunch all the time. What you might get is an extra 10 years dribbling into your shirt, while sitting in your own excrement in a hospital bed 23 hours a day. Or 10 years of having lost your marbles and not know who or what you are.
Living longer may not necessarily end up being a ‘good thing’.
Jim @ 10.54, Kingsley Amis said “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare”
“… found that the harm caused by smoking shaved an average of 22 minutes per cigarette off the lifespan of a woman, with a loss of 17 minutes for a man. “
And: “Researchers said that the harm caused by smoking was cumulative and that the sooner a person stopped smoking, and the more cigarettes they avoided smoking, the longer they lived.”
If life has already been shortened by 22min/17min per cigarette, it cannot then be extended by giving up smoking.
Kingsley Amis said “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare.”
But we dud destroy the economy and society, blight the lives of the young, inflict experimental pharmaceuticals on the population so that granny could have just that, those extra two years of incontinence, dementia, pain and misery… if that long.
There’s a reason for the old saw “don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good”. “Vaping is naughty, might be harmful, so we must fight against it” – even if it’s far less harmful than the alternative?
It’s more fundamental. People, somewhere, might be – shock horror! – *enjoying* vaping. They Must Be Stopped!
The point about failing health in old age is only partly true. Smoking and heavy drinking tend to bring on the geriatric stage rather sooner. I’m sixtysix years old, don’t smoke, drink in moderation and stay active, mainly by swimming. My brother, four years younger, smokes and his drinking habits are rather less moderate. His health is starting to fall apart. He already looks way older than me, it wouldn’t surprise me if a stranger thought he was my dad.
Live your life the way you want to and accept the consequences. Smoke, drink and get fat, die in your 60s, save the Treasury 20 year’s worth of pension payments, at current levels £200,000 or thereabouts.
Were I a government actuary I’d be wanting to slap the Public Health gnomes around a bit.
How lucky we are that there exists a “UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group” which is doubtless dedicated to taking a scrupulously sceptical attitude to all purported research findings on booze and baccy.
It brings, no doubt, a skill at critical analysis which is the envy of the world.
Personally I find cigarettes vile fucking things and wish some sensible body would advocate a return to pipe-smoking. Snuff and seegars could also reap praise.
My organic chemistry prof told the class in 1961 that Linus Pauling had determined the loss of life per cigarette as 15 minutes (with no distinction between men and women). I ignored this and continued smoking up a storm for the next 40+ years. From time to time I calculate my current negative age.
I calculated my life reduction quota at 19½ years. And at 74 I’m thinking, is that all!?. Maybe I should have tried harder. Although since moving to Spain I did switch to the 100mm extra long. Which raises a question. Is there a discount if you started on Cadets or Player’s Number 6?
What Dr K.A. Rodgers says… I must have been slated for bicentennarian life when I was born. That, or I’m living on Negative Time.
But hey… New Years’ , so the Teetotallers come crawling out of the woodwork for their seasonal fingerwaving and scaremongering.