[HN Gopher] An unexpected uptick in cigarette smoking in Germany
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An unexpected uptick in cigarette smoking in Germany
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 19 points
Date : 2023-09-01 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| bigfryo wrote:
| Smoking suppresses appetite meaning that Germany is less obese
| than America
| fidotron wrote:
| I have a really controversial view about smoking: it has
| undeniable downsides but as a society we are now feeling what
| happens when a huge proportion of the population no longer
| experiences the cognitive upsides they used to get from nicotine.
|
| It's somewhat similar to what would happen if you banned coffee.
| glimshe wrote:
| There isn't really any societal upside with smoking. It's a
| real net negative for the vast majority of users, financially
| and healthwise. Maybe smokers should switch to coffee for their
| high, a drug with no major downsides for most people.
| lencastre wrote:
| Cognitive upsides? Sounds like Cowboy Man copy... the Surgeon
| General aproves this message.
|
| Or do you mean people worked faster because they couldn't
| during their cig break?
| drpgq wrote:
| I co-own a small bar and help run our trivia night. Between
| rounds the smokers always go out for a smoke and they ended up
| all knowing each other.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know about nicotine, but I am all cognitive upside from
| never smelling a cigarette again.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Drunk driving helps a lot of people to get to work on time.
| CoolestBeans wrote:
| Smoking reduces quality years of life and puts a burden on a
| nation's health system. The drastic decrease in productivity in
| a nation from those two things has got to be far more than any
| increase from any cognitive benefits.
|
| But more importantly, it's morally wrong to suggest we shorten
| and make our lives worse for some short term stimulant spike.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| >Smoking reduces quality years of life
|
| actually it make worse your worst year, but has no effect on
| your best years
|
| > and puts a burden on a nation's health system.
|
| listen, I know smocking is bad as anyone else, but if we
| wanna talk about "burden on a nation's health system" let's
| talk about cars (fumes are just the tip of the iceberg, we
| have more than 20 thousand deaths/year caused by car
| accidents and many more injured and/or left invalid) or
| having children.
|
| You know what also puts a burden on on a nation's health
| system?
|
| an aging population!
|
| in my Country more than 25% of the population is over 65, so
| they not only are retired and do not contribute anymore to
| the expenditures through their work, they also need a lot of
| very expensive and prolonged care.
|
| They most probably smoked in their younger years, but
| survived nonetheless and now they need to be taken care of.
|
| Truth is the nation health system wastes too much money on
| things that do not help people, we've seen it during the
| pandemic, the personnel was crushed by the unsustainable
| shifts and the output was barely sufficient.
|
| said by someone who was born and lives in a Country with a
| public healthcare system, who happily pays for it through a
| lot of taxes (half of my salary) and a big chunk of the
| family employed by the aforementioned public national health
| care system.
|
| Or, for example, what has been the cost (both economical and
| social) of the recent opioid epidemic in the US of A caused
| by the health care system itself?
|
| > But more importantly, it's morally wrong to suggest we
| shorten and make our lives worse for some short term
| stimulant spike.
|
| like, for example, firing up combustion engines to drive kids
| to school? kids that, bear in mind, have perfectly
| functioning legs and can walk!
| nisegami wrote:
| >in my Country more than 25% of the population is over 65,
| so they not only are retired and do not contribute anymore
| to the expenditures through their work, they also need a
| lot of very expensive and prolonged care.
|
| If only there was something out there that could thin out
| this group of people in particular.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > If only there was something out there that could thin
| out this group of people in particular.
|
| it's the same thing that, eventually, will happen to
| everyone of us.
|
| But literally where I am from they have on average 20
| years more to live (second oldest Country in the World)
| so, regarding the burden on the national healthcare
| system, smokers cost less (I must specify I believe the
| economic angle is rather meaningless when talking about
| health care. I don't believe health care should ever be
| profitable, barely sustainable it's enough).
|
| A study concluded that the abuse of medicines causes
| around 40 thousands deaths/year in my Country, which is
| an incredibly high number, so maybe the secret lies in
| moderation and not in abolition and prohibition.
|
| There's also the fact that for many people a long
| meaningless life is much worse than one lived fully, as
| the "owner" intended.
|
| Maybe someone in the future will convince everyone to
| avoid any potentially dangerous habit, but I'm also quite
| sure that such a society will face an epidemic of
| depression and suicides.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| Many studies actually show that smokers are cheaper to care
| for over their lifetimes, likely because they die earlier.
| This study[0] shows a +7% for men/+4% for women increase in
| healthcare costs if all people stopped smoking. I'm too lazy
| to vet the epistemological quality of this study, but it
| seems like there are a bunch of these much along the same
| lines. One thing these studies seem to neglect is total value
| lost associated with smoking, instead focusing costs alone.
| By folding in some QALY-like model, you could come up with
| the overall impact of smoking on society in quantitative
| terms.
|
| [0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9321534/
| glimshe wrote:
| This number doesn't take into consideration the
| contributions of these people to society, which could
| outweigh their additional healthcare cost and make them an
| actual net positive to the economy (putting aside moral
| questions about calculating whether people should live or
| die based on their net value).
| tmn wrote:
| Is it morally wrong to eat a cupcake? I'm not a smoker nor
| would I want anyone I care about to smoke, but have you
| thought through the extrapolation of your assertion?
|
| Similarly, old people are a drag on society. It's not at all
| clear that reducing lifespan is a decrease on net
| productivity.
|
| I would not want those I care about to die early, nor would I
| deny anyone else the same hope for the sake of productivity.
| But I can be objective enough to acknowledge the tradeoffs.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| >it has undeniable downsides but as a society we are now
| feeling what happens when a huge proportion of the population
| no longer experiences the cognitive upsides they used to get
| from nicotine.
|
| You don't need to inhale burnt tobacco to get nicotine, and
| there are plenty of other ways to get stimulants into your
| body; patches, teas, etc. and society is still consuming a
| shit-ton of stims; ain't been to an empty coffeeshop since
| COVID.
|
| vaping, while shown to be not great for you, is also still not
| as awful as inhaling tons of smoke, and can deliver the nico
| just as well.
|
| and it is the smoke that is the problem -- firefighters who
| handle a lot of cases often have lung cancer rates far higher
| than the rest of the population.
| jayski wrote:
| What are the cognitive upsides? The only one that I can think
| of as an ex-smoker is that helps to control anxiety.
|
| At the same time knowing I was harming myself by smoking added
| a lot of anxiety.
| nradov wrote:
| Studies have shown that nicotine has some mild cognitive
| benefits on attention and short-term memory.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/ama23/
|
| I'm not necessarily recommending nicotine to anyone, but
| there are ways to get it without smoking.
| im3w1l wrote:
| When I was in high school we had a few smokers. They seemed
| to make a lot of friends while smoking and have better social
| skills than others.
| fidotron wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Performance
|
| > Nicotine-containing products are sometimes used for the
| performance-enhancing effects of nicotine on cognition.[57] A
| 2010 meta-analysis of 41 double-blind, placebo-controlled
| studies concluded that nicotine or smoking had significant
| positive effects on aspects of fine motor abilities, alerting
| and orienting attention, and episodic and working memory.[58]
| A 2015 review noted that stimulation of the a4b2 nicotinic
| receptor is responsible for certain improvements in
| attentional performance;[59] among the nicotinic receptor
| subtypes, nicotine has the highest binding affinity at the
| a4b2 receptor (ki=1 nM), which is also the biological target
| that mediates nicotine's addictive properties.[60] Nicotine
| has potential beneficial effects, but it also has paradoxical
| effects, which may be due to the inverted U-shape of the
| dose-response curve or pharmacokinetic features.
| pluijzer wrote:
| How susceptible to tolerance would the positive effect be?
| Would a long term smoker still have any benefit? Or is it
| like coffee, very quickly giving no benefit at all.
| fidotron wrote:
| This is a good question, along with what happens if that
| long term smoker then quits altogether.
|
| If you had ways to moderate the withdrawal of things like
| caffeine and nicotine you could possibly try alternating
| regimes. Would probably do dreadful things to your heart
| though.
| miguel_rdp wrote:
| During a recent visit to Hamburg I entered a smallish pub/bar and
| it was so smoky that it seemed like a portal to the 90's!
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I remember sometime in the 90's or so taking a trip to
| California (I'm on the East Coast) when they'd just banned
| smoking in bars. That was such a revelation. Doubly so because
| I went to some jazz/blues place and the it was all just so
| weird but also so nice.
|
| It makes me a totally hypocrite (my poltics are generally
| against those kind of bans) but it made everything so much
| nicer that I couldn't help but like it.
|
| They came for the smokers and I did nothing. Niemoller was
| totally right.
| melling wrote:
| Guess we missed this story yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37345565
| NoraCodes wrote:
| What a weirdly incoherent headline. Why not, "Smoking is Dying
| Out, Except in Germany", which is an actual sentence that conveys
| the same information in fewer words?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/4OTBi
| temporallobe wrote:
| I know firsthand that smoking is still a huge part of the social
| culture in all Balkan countries and even Italy to a lesser
| extent. OTOH, many studies show that it's better than vaping.
| I've had some conversations with my pulmonologist and a friend of
| mine who's a board certified (nearly retired) cardiologist who
| both confirm this and tell me that they see increasingly younger
| patients develop serious disease very quickly after starting
| vaping, including a 16-yo patient who developed emphysema.
| suchire wrote:
| It's still a habit OF dying, just not a habit that IS dying
| </pun>
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I lived in Dresden in 1998-1999 and was kinda shocked that they
| had cigarette vending machines outside like
|
| https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/cigarette-vending-machine-...
|
| I don't see it in any of those photos but they often used to have
| candy vending machines for kids mounted underneath them.
|
| I went to Poland (where my grandfather came from) and boy did the
| people there really seem to smoke a lot.
| dionys wrote:
| cigarette vending machines are still super common here in
| Vienna as well. There's always teens hanging around them asking
| people to swipe their cards to buy the cigarettes in exchange
| of cash
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| A bit of history to this - previously there were just
| machines, you put in cash and get cigarettes - but then it
| was decided this made it too easy for underage people to buy
| cigarettes so now you have to use a bank card (I think?) for
| identification, so young people just hang around the machines
| and ask a passerby to lend them their card.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Here in Italy you need to use your Codice Fiscale or Carta
| d'Identita cards (both official documents) as (debit) cards
| (pre-paid or connected to some bank account) can be
| obtained as early as 13 or so (of course authorized by
| parents).
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Everyone I see is smoking in Spain, Portugal, Greece, lot of
| places in the U.K, Germany, China (all parts they think belong to
| them), etc. It's dying in some places I guess and definitely not
| smoking inside is better for all of us.
| r9295 wrote:
| I'll have a cigarette and a "Feierabend" beer, please.
| https://thespectator.com/book-and-art/ode-smoking-cigarettes...
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| No surprise since, just like beer, they are so damn cheap.
|
| When I lived in Germany they were even cheaper in Czechia, which
| wasn't too far from where I was.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Health experts think low tobacco prices, a general tolerance
| of smoking_
|
| Yes, people not coerced "for their own benefit" will generally
| keep their habbits
| Loughla wrote:
| Why the quotes? Are you saying that people being guided to quit
| smoking isn't good for them? I'm confused.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Would you submit to be guided (by force) away from any
| suboptimal for your health behavior you might currently
| engage in?
| hu3 wrote:
| Why wouldn't I?
| program_whiz wrote:
| The government has determined that engaging in online
| discussions where users disagree increase blood pressure
| and decreases happiness. Your comment will be deleted and
| account suspended. You have exceeded your 15 minutes per
| day of phone and computer use, deemed as the permissible
| limit by the council for citizen health, your internet
| account is suspended until next week. This should help
| you to walk outside. Your tax bill has increased by $16
| for processing fees. Thank you citizen, have a nice day.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You enjoy having fun on occasion.
| coldtea wrote:
| You absolutely should.
|
| Freedom loving adults on the other hand like to decide
| for themselves the amount of fun but harmful behaviors
| they like to have...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Because experts of the day are often wrong. 100 years ago
| Hitler had some expert opinions that later we reject.
|
| Don't be the next agent orange victim. Question things.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Paging Godwin.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Paging: Bueller? Bueller?
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, an idiot said something on usenet for fun and now
| it's considered a "counter-argument"
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| > Question things
|
| But why should I?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Because you are being lied to and used
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Losing weight? Absolutely.
| program_whiz wrote:
| Citizen 440023423, you are being informed by your
| friendly government monitoring bot that health studies
| have shown a link between cancer, obesity, and heart
| disease by frequent computer and phone users. Your
| account has been deactivated for 2 weeks. Please engage
| in the recommended 1 hour of daily outdoor activity
| instead. In addition, we noticed you exceeded the 15
| minutes of allowable phone and computer use, as
| recommended by experts at the ministry of citizen health.
| Your internet has been disabled for 1 week. A $25 charge
| for services has been added to your tax bill. Have a nice
| healthy day citizen 440023423.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Oh thank god, I'll have so much more free time.
| coldtea wrote:
| I'm saying that third parties like states deciding what is or
| isn't "for the benefit" of the people (as opposed to being
| told what the people want) is not good for them. It's
| crossing boundaries and it's infantilizing.
|
| For two cases where it's gone horribly wrong consider the
| prohibition and the "war on drugs". Not to mention the "don't
| eat fat" campaigns...
| kdmccormick wrote:
| > as opposed to being told what the people want
|
| If a majority of people in a country want smoking to be
| disincentivized, and the government acts on that, is it
| still crossing boundaries and infantilizing?
|
| > Not to mention the "don't eat fat" campaigns...
|
| Bad example, as it turns out that eating a regular amout of
| fat is fine. The gov't was wrong.
|
| Here's a better example: food corporations actively market
| sugar-filled cereals, "juices", "fruit snacks", etc to both
| parents and kids, actively misleading them on what a
| healthy human diet is. This had contributed to a surge in
| obesity and all the related health problems. This puts
| strain on the medical system, raises insurance premiums,
| and generally makes society worse.
|
| So do I support making it harder for corporations to market
| their HFC garbage to kids and parents? Hell yes. Do I
| support making it illegal for tobacco corps to market to
| kids? Yes again. And I say this as someone who enjoys sugar
| and smoking, to a reasonable degree.
| pluijzer wrote:
| If not the state, the free market will fill the gap and
| tell us what is for our own benefit, bet a lot more
| boundaries get crossed when the tobacco industry,
| pharmaceutical industry etc. get free reign.
| hakunin wrote:
| To be frank, alcohol, most drugs, and fat are not the same.
| Every time I go to a place where smoking is not culturally
| frowned upon, I can't make a few steps without inhaling
| vomit-inducing smoke. If it wasn't for this, then I would
| agree with you.
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