Talk:Tobacco smoking/Archive 2

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Reason why all external links removed?

Is there a reason why absolutely all external links and references where removed at 18:31, 28 March 2006 by 65.167.250.2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tobacco_smoking&action) ? StephanieM 17:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

New Article - Anti-Smoking?

Perhaps such is neccesary? This whole article is one big anti-smoking ad. The anti-smoking movement is pretty big movement in itself, perhaps something ought to be done for itself, and have the anti-


Addiction Vs. Chemical Dependancy

Is an addiction (a compulsion to do something, a repeated pattern of behaviour despite negative consequences) the same as chemical dependancy (where the body requires the substance for proper function)? This is implied in the article. If so should it be altered? reply please. Benjaminstewart05 19:16 GMT 11/3/05

Addiction is much more heavily dependent on social or psychological factors than is biological chemical dependency. As such, it is also more politicized.
For instance, some psychologists are perfectly willing to discuss "sex addiction", where there is no sign of biological dependency, but rather simply the perception that the "addict" is compulsively doing something unhealthy. Naturally, how healthy it is to have lots of sex depends on the individual and the social context, particularly since some sex is medically risky, and some sex is socially stigmatized. So a married couple who have lots of sex are not likely to get called "sex addicts", simply because their sex is taking place in a socially approved context.
(Note, I'm not saying this is fair or reasonable. It sure ain't! I'm describing the way people use the words; I'm not making normative claims about how people should use them.)
In general, people don't want to use the term "addiction" to address compulsive behavior of a sort that doesn't seem connected to something biological -- be it sex, or a drug, or what-have-you. For instance, we say that a person who washes their hands constantly has obsessive-compulsive disorder, not handwashing addiction.
Regarding tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine, and other such drugs (but not, e.g., marijuana or LSD) we can identify specific neurological activity that is impaired in withdrawal, and specific other bodily harm which follows from heavy use. So it seems more reasonable to talk about a neurological dependency on a harmful dose of these drugs. --FOo 20:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Passive smoking

Creating placeholders for discussion. - brenneman(t)(c) 03:06, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

EPA study

Nazis invented passive smoking

  • The phrase "passive smoking" was coined by Fritz Lickint in his book “Tobacco and the Organism,” which he produced for the German AntiTobacco League while working for Adolph Hitler.

some googling renders some credibility to this statement. From the google cache.
Just because some anonymous user enters something portraying the Nazis in a "positive" light, doesn't mean their contributions should be removed. that's not very NPOV. For those speaking German (I will edit the sentence shortly, since it seems a copyvio) -- Zanaq 16:12, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Zanaq,
Good job with that. The current version (Fritz Lickint was the first to use the German term passives rauchen (passive smoking) in 1939. In his monumental 1200 page book Tabak und Organismus (Tobacco and the Organism) he describes numerous deseases. He knew already that tar was more hazardous than nicotine. From 1938 anti-smoking regulations began to be implemented in Germany.) is much better. The edit window clearly says "Please cite your sources so others can check your work." Removal of claims that do not cite sources is hardly POV.
brenneman(t)(c) 23:36, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Glad you like it, thanks.
It was more the edit summary that left me with an impression of POVness. Umm... Passive smoking was invented by Nazis? Is there some agenda here?
On a sidenote: I think the cite-sources directive should not be interpreted like 'remove all non-referenced material'. I think it might mean something more like 'remove all unverifiable material'. (And preferably move the objectionable material to the talk page for discussion.) Citing sources just facilitates easier checking of work. -- Zanaq 19:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I used to copy things to the talk page, but now I'm off the opinion that it's duplication that's not required as everything can be seen in the history. I often put a link to the diff if it's a large change, but sometimes don't. As to "cite sources", my feeling is that the more far-out the claim the more we should require sources to be provided to the casual reader.
brenneman(t)(c) 00:26, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Each his own. However I personally favour taking things to talk, because extracting something meaningful from the history can be time-consuming. links to diffs are a very good idea in that respect.
Regarding the citing I think casual readers couldn't care less about references. Only if things seem prepostrous or erroneous I go out verifying and hence clicking the links to sources. -- Zanaq 15:47, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Cite sources is still Wikipedia policy though. More specifically, if someone challenges you on a factual claim, that's almost always proof that the claim is contentious, and needs to be referenced. --FOo 16:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes. I don't see any of your remarks conflict with any of mine, nor how the policy conflicts with the points I made, so... what is the point you are trying to make? -- Zanaq 17:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Large reduction in article size

This article is pretty long now, and some sections are of questionable utility. 

Contents [hide]
1 History 
2 Health effects 
 2.1 Tobacco and spontaneous abortion 
 2.2 Radioactive components of tobacco 
 2.3 Beneficial effects of smoking 
 2.4 Nicotine and addiction 
 2.5 Smoking and cardiovascular disease 
 2.6 Epidemiology of smoking 
 2.7 Effects on smokers 
3 Smoking cessation 
4 Moral aspects 
5 Passive smoking 
 5.1 Effects on pets 
6 Legal issues 
7 Further reading 
 7.1 On the history of tobacco smoking 
8 See also 
9 External links 
 9.1 History 
 9.2 Prevention & Self help 
 9.3 Statistics & Studies 
 9.4 Pro-smoking 
10 Notes

I'd suggest that some of these become sub-articles. (I haven't yet checked if they already are.) Then the section "Health effects" has Main article: Health effects of tobacco smoking at its head and gets summarised. Thoughts?
brenneman(t)(c) 22:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree, there is a lot of information in the article... It seems to me that there are some subject areas that might exist that could help break up the main article in a helpful way... For example, the Tobacco article is very focused on the plant itself... Should there be separate articles for how people use Tobacco (smoking, chewing, don't think there are any others...), and then other articles about the effects of smoking and chewing... and perhaps the effects of smoking article is broken up into two articles - one for what happens to smokers - and one for what happens to non-smokers in the vicinity... just thinking out loud here... I guess I think it would help if each new article created had a very well-defined focus and that duplication between articles would be minimized... How much of this informaiton in this article is already is duplicated in (or from) some other article? Snowcat 23:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

bias

i just thought it would be good to point out that this article sounds slightly anti-smoking


reply: HARDLY "slightly". it's almost purely and entirely and anti-smoking ad...

this article contains little to no information about actually smoking (ie methods, how-to, general info etc), and is almost completely about the adverse health effects.

reply: there is so much more to smoking than the health effects! i have half a mind to go rewrite the article.

I don't think anyone's being fooled when smoking is portrayed as a primarily negative thing. The adverse health effects have been proven in countless studies. In fact, I think that trying to put as many positive things about it as negative is misleading, because there are so many more cons than pros. TheArmadillo 02:50, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
reply - it's EXACTLY this kind of bias that creates stuff like this. Seriously, this is supposed to be an informative articel about smoking, not an anti-smoking campaign. No one is saying smoking is good for you, but alot of the research against isn't exactly 100% either. Recently it has started to boil down to "individual freedoms" movements, taking similar form to the legality of smoking marijuana. The thing is smoking tobacco being portrayed negatively IS fooling people, it makes people think smoking is oh-so-evil. We need informative unbiased info, not "ZOMGZ zmoking is t3h badz fer yer healts QUIT NOW ZOMG", which btw is also true because almost all the link are "quit-smoking" or "smoking is bad for you" type links. try this: http://www.FORCES.org

Due to the massive negativity surrounding smoking, I think more "anti-smoking" stuff will find it's way into the article than neutral stuff. It seems inevitable and I don't think this will change.--Bigplankton 05:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

correction?

I'm just making a change to the front page, I think it's been vandalised - it currently reads "cock smoking is the act of smoking tobacco products, especially cigarettes and cigars."

I think it's probably meant to read 'tobacco smoking' :P - Dylan

Added POV tag

I've added the POV tag due to pro-smoking bias found in the Passive smoking section. For a very small example of views excluded from this section, see [1]. --Viriditas | Talk 00:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Pro-smoking bias? The whole article reeks of a stale, non-smoking environment and a definitely anti-smoking POV. And in the "passive smoking" section even the dangers of occasional exposure to other people smoking are referred to. What else do you want? It should perhaps be pointed out that the section in question is entitled "Passive smoking", not "Passive smoking in the United States" or "Judge Osteen's views on passive smoking and his opponents' rebuttals". <KF> 09:56, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
You make a good point about the heading. It should certainly be changed to reflect the geographical location. However, this section is biased, as it is written from a non-neutral, pro-tobacco perspective. --Viriditas | Talk 10:32, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
reply: are you insane? from a PRO-tobacco perspective? Seriously, this is TOTALLY an anti-smoking article. It is biased, yes, because it is ANTI-smoking.

The majority of the scientific community (and most other people) seems to agree that smoking is bad for your health. When taking this skewed ratio in account the bias is negligible. Views (pro AND con) could be attributed more clearly to better indicate to the reader where this bias comes from. Zanaq 12:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC) (a smoker)

Duplication of smoking ban data

The smoking ban article has extensive lists of what restrictions are in place (it's badly organized, but I plan to change that). This article duplicates most that data. Should we just have it in once place, such as having this article reference that one rather than enumerate different laws in different areas? Ocicat 01:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Effects on smokers

On line 6, the article states, "Tobacco smoke contains the stimulant nicotine,..."

Then later, in the Effects on smokers section, the article states, "Nicotine is an unusual chemical because when absorbed slowly, it can act as a sedative and when absorbed quickly it can act as a stimulant. Pipe and cigar smokers usually experience more of the sedative/relaxation effect while cigarette smokers usually experience more of the stimulant effect.

Is nicotine a stimulant or a sedative?

And if both (depending on how fast it's absorbed), then why label nicotine a stimulant near the beginning of the article?

Just wondering... Snowcat 05:12, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Nicotine is classified as a stimulant, but can also act as a mild sedative. I don't see a problem, here. Perhaps this could be made clear in the lead section. --Viriditas 05:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Then perhaps in Effects on smokers it could instead state: "Cigarette smokers usually experience stimulant effect of Nicotine. Pipe and cigar smokers usually experience more of the sedative/relaxation effect, even though Nicotine is classified as a stimulant." Or some variation of the above that simply notices the sedative effect while also noting nicotine's classification as a stimulant. Snowcat 18:11, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


Also, I don't know where to add this, but smoking tobacco increases the risk of frostbite - since nicotine is a vasoconstrictor. In a nutshell, blood flow is reduced, and extremities (like fingers and toes) are more susceptible to frostbite. I don't think core body temperature is lowered (like with alcohol), but like coffee (caffeine is also a vasoconstrictor) the chance of frostbite is increased. Which reminds me that alcohol and any sugary drink (like soda or fruit juice) are both dehydrators... Where do all these effect go? Nicotine? Tobacco smoking? Frostbite? Hypothermia? I'm babbling... um, my main point here is that smoking tobacco increases the risk of frostbite. The rest of the information bubbled up as I remembered some of what I learned when I trained in Cold Weather Survival over 10 years ago. (don't drink alcohol or sugary drinks [both dehydrate the body]; do drink water; don't smoke tobacco; don't drink coffee [tobacco and coffee are both vasoconstrictors])... I wish I could find something online I could cite, but no luck thus far... Snowcat 18:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Question: Radioactive components of tobacco

"In addition to chemical, nonradioactive carcinogens, tobacco and tobacco smoke contain small amounts of lead-210 (210Pb) and polonium-210 (210Po) both of which are radioactive carcinogens. Lead 210 is a product of the decay of radium-226 and, in turn, its decay product, radon-222; lead 210 then decays to bismuth-210 and then to polonium 210..."

In the above text pointers are made to lead-210 or radium-226. Should these get a REDIRECT to the correct page, or should it be changed in the page here? I'm not a Chemist so I'm not sure how bad it would be to point these to the lead or radium page respectively. Webhat 11:57, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Misleading Data

12-19-2005 - Aoco - The entire section on Second hand smoke should be reviewed. While Judge Osteen's decision was overturned, it was for reasons of jurisdiction and not that the ruling was "wrong" or "incorrect" - just that the courts did not have the jurisdiction to rule on the matter.

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/04/02/court_second_hand_smoke_agenda_driven_case_for_independent_science.htm

Furthermore - I cannot find any data on the supposed WHO - 2002 study that is quoted in the portion on SHS. Furthermore, unless this is a lesson in epidemiology, the animal testing portions provide bias when not understood in the full context of the situation. While dogs and cats may have shown increased risks in cancer rates, I can not find ANY statistical data that would draw a conclusive link to between the cancers found in animals and cancers in humans (relative to SHS). If the SHS/Cancer links in Dogs translates to a possible increased risk in humans, wouldn't you see an increase in nasal cancers among humans - long nose/short nose? I'm not a health related person but there is a bit or conjecture being used to convey the point. What wasn't presented was how the EPA manipulated the data to arrive at the result before the study was even concluded. (The EPA report is the foundation for the bulk of today's arguments against SHS). The article also makes no mention of the WHO burying their own report which showed a negative correlation in children of parents who smoke (http://www.davehitt.com/facts/who.html)

Furthermore - Judge Osteen has voted against tobacco companies on several occasions despite being a former tobacco lobby - see:

http://www.davehitt.com/facts/epid.html for an excellent counter argument to the bulk of the anti-smoking propaganda. (I am biased which is why I'm not editing the article). Unfortunately, in the context of how the article is written, only one side is presented with very few tangible facts provided in the SHS section of the article to support the bulk of the section. If the article is factual, then all sides should be considered and equally represented.

Other Data

Can't source it (...), but I've heard teenage smokers are 5:1 more likely to develop fear of public places. Trekphiler 07:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Link Removal

I've removed many links from the Prevention & Self help section of external links for a variety of reasons. The motivating factor was that it was so long. Here is an itemised list with my reasons for doing so:

Removed, as some of its points are ludicrously biased.

Example: Adolescents smoke for many of the same reasons that they use alcohol and other drugs. Urban community disorganization, crime, violence, poverty, and inadequate schools can lead to a variety of problems for youth, smoking included.

What? So smoker's are poor, criminal hooligans? Right...

Removed as site seems to be not working, so currently unusable.

Removed, as again it uses dubious facts for its cause.

Example: It’s the most addictive drug known;

What? Is that excluding heroine and other narcotics?

Removed, seeming promotion for the business. Wikipedia is not bill-board!

Removed, the forum seems to be dead and most posts are utter tosh.

Removed, adds absolutely nothing to the discussion on quitting and prevention. Repeats many well-known facts about smoking. Seemingly pointless addition to external links.

I'll be interested to hear your feedback, thanks - Welshy 16:40, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

looks good. as far as I'm concerned this lengthy justification is unneccesary, a simple editsummary like "rm linkspam" would have sufficed, but again: well done! Zanaq 17:53, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
I thought it was. It's a bit of a hot topic, so I think the removal of things need justification. Maybe I went over the top a bit, but I just wanted to show some zeal for the matter at hand :) - Welshy 18:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Shifting around of content

I have carried on my effort to streamline this page. Here are the changes I've made:

Removal of Health effects of tobacco smoking to its own page

The page, originally, was 54kb, which is above recommended size of a page. By removing this section to its own page (and placing a holding link in the section on the tobacco smoking page), it was reduced to 34kb. That in itself justifies it.

Removal of passive smoking to its own page

This lengthy section seemed a bit out of place after the removal of the above.

Removal of the anti-smoking links section

Seeing as there was no "links to pro-smoking sites" along with it, the bias seemed a bit dubious. Removed and placed on the above two pages.

I also removed the notes that were for the above two sections, and placed them on the relavent pages.

I look forward to your feedback - Welshy 09:40, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you ought to have waited before doing such a major move. Comments may take a little while. JFW | T@lk 09:53, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I can understand that, we'll just have to discuss them when people wake up to the New Year. I would just like to note that no content has been deleted, they have just been shifted around - Welshy 10:07, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Self-help links

I've removed a few self-help links: Wikipedia is NOT a link source featuring how to give up smoking, so stop posting unverified links please. I will remove any further links to self-help pages, unless they show and provide statistics to prove they are different to the others. Please post your reasons here for adding them. Wikipedia is opinion neutral, so please don't force your anti-smoking agenda on users. Thank you - Welshy 03:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I added (restored, really) a link to WhyQuit.com. This site is non-profit (non-commercial), extremely popular, and probably the most comprehensive site I know of concerning smoking and nicotine addiction. It is, IMO, one of the very best sites of its kind on the internet. Since there is a section for "selp help and prevention" already, and this site is a particularly excellent example of that type of site, I included it. Vis-vis the above comment, I can't see how it possibly adds bias to this entry, and is a useful resource in its category. StrangeAttractor 22:18, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Some questions that I would like to ask before removing this: (1) is the site authoratitive (i.e. has it been reviewed by experts in the field)? (2) can you provide proof of its popularity? (3) are there any other reasons why we should link to this site rather than any other non-profit smoking cessation site? (4) is there any reason why the link needs to be here rather than on smoking cessation? JFW | T@lk 04:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

JFW, I agree. The questions you raise are very valid, and untill they are answered in full, I will keep on removing unwarrented links. I have removed all links not to official government-sactioned web sites (the end url is my judgement criteria). Cheers - Welshy 05:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Removal of bias

I removed many statements that I thought to biased, this included suspect choice of phrases and words. If you want to reinsert some of the removed clauses, then please post here why they should be re-instated and if an unbiased consensus is reached, then they will be reinserted.

Note, I may have made some grammatical/spelling errors. If I did, I apologise, I'm only human after-all and it was a large edit. Please correct it as you see fit.

Thanks - Welshy 04:54, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Addendum (by Welshy)

Much of the red on the diff page is due to a rearrangemnt of content, so I haven't removed as much as can be perceived by that page. Please review the restructured article before posting comments, thanks.

Moved NRT content

I noticed that a huge amount of info on this page was about NRT, while the Nicotine replacement therapy page was nearly empty. So I moved it all over there...

Factual/False

Tobacco smoke contains the stimulant nicotine, which, many claim, forms a strong physical and psychological chemical dependence (addiction). I was under the impression that the nicotine addiction was proven either in the eighties or nineties. And I have no doubt that the psychological addiction is fact. I think it would be best to remove the which, many claim, phrase. -- Damien Vryce

Complete whitewash of this article

Various parts of this article have been removed and split into seperate articles with the (i believe) intended effect of creating a page that seems more biased towards positive effects of smoking. Most effects on health have been removed. This is actually a clear breach of policy in Wikipedia and I will be looking at the article closely and considering a re-merge of some of the data. I have experience with editors doing this in other articles and I am fully aware of how to counter it. I will be contacting administrators and Sysops regarding this. I should also note this topic is clearly not a POV-less article and I will seek to have it A) removed from the good article list, B) this talk page will point out its controversial nature.--Manboobies 04:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Image licensing

The Hepburn film screenshot can hardly count as "PD since first published in USA before 1923". Neither the Hepburn screenshot nor the Swedish king screenshot (both presumably are fair use claims) are being used to critically commentate on the films themselves; I therefore suggest they be removed. This article should only be replaced on the good article list if this criticism is dealt with as well as Manboobies'. TheGrappler 17:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Need citation

This quote seems dodgy to me, and POV (pro-smoking):

However, successful ex-smokers are often quite happy and relieved, as well as proud of their success. One case was Edward R. Murrow as mentioned above who, after leaving CBS and joining the United States Information Agency under President Kennedy was diagnosed with lung cancer. Despite the death sentence this implied, Murrow was able to quit in the time remaining to him and was very open about the benefits he experienced.

It needs a source. Also, "benefits he experienced"? Huh? You mean, there are benefits to cancer?

At any rate, without a source, I think this should be deleted. Fieari 07:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The POV is anti-smoking - even after being diagnosed w/ cancer, quitting smoking yielded some benefit to Murrow. However, I think a POV problem exists for the whole "Reasons for smoking" section, in part for the reasons you give. Citations are missing, and some of the reasons given are highly speculative and condescending (for example, writers being susceptible to the "fictions" of smoking - even if the Klein source makes some sort of argument to that effect, it hardly seems encyclopedic). Finally, no mention is made of "positive" reasons for smoking that smokers might give - temporary boost to short term memory and concentration, stress relief, social interaction, or intentional / rebellious disregard for more conservative social mores, for example. Although there is something of vaalue to the discussion of the use of tobacco as an "image" tool, this section needs to be more or less gutted and re-done from scratch, neutrally and with sources. I'll do it myself if others see the same problem.--Evilbatman 17:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Mechanism of smoking

Could more be written on the actual process of smoking? That is, how nicotine and other smoked substances are absorbed into the bloodstream, etc. This would be great. -nsh

dependency/addiction research, non-anti-smoking activists

I'm not being biased here, but a statement like that (or the opposite) needs to have some supporting evidence. Note for instance: [2]; if every one of these works is the product of antismoking activists, that's a heck of a lot of stuff to prove. Gzuckier 18:07, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

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