I do wonder why you care tho, if you are not the target audience anyway?

(Nice sig, btw)

... thank you. and i care because i was severely offended by the grisly image i saw on the package ...

It's one of those things where if it's a socially sanctioned cause you're allowed to colour outside the lines. Like middle age moms wearing "Fuck Cancer" t-shirts. You know, it's OK, because cancer is evil. Or the drunk driving commercials that show teenagers getting torn apart. Same with the smoking pics. It's a socially healthy outlet for morbidness, I guess. The secular equivalent of the old "fire and brimstone" sermons.

other warnings issued by the government don't use images that look like they were created in some hollywood horror movie special effects factory!

... you've said the images on cigarette packages are insufficient for smokers to feel what it was like for you to lose your beloved mother and father. my response to that would be, why would you want to subject the general public to your personal emotional pain. it's not like smokers are a bunch of morons. the adverse health effects of smoking are well known and are common knowledge. hammering the point home isn't necessary. and neither are obscene images on cigarette packages ...

... the picture of the diseased tongue on the cigarette pack i saw lying on the road was so graphic i wouldn't even post it in this thread. i could, it is available online, but i wouldn't want to gross everyone out ...

Appreciated.

My thoughts being that if you could get a little hint of what is to come, you might find another reason to quit. Being the child of two smokers, I had a pack-a-day habit before I was even in school. When I moved out of my parents house, I took up the habit myself and only managed to quit after having a small stroke myself.

The images on the packages and the warnings didn't convince me. All the literature in school didn't stop me from starting. The slow death of my parents didn't convince me to quit. It was only when the possibility of life changing (not life ending!) injury ocurred that I quit.

I know smokers aren't morons, because for decades I was one, even knowing the concequences. Now I am not a smoker. And I know a person can only quit if they have sufficient reason to quit.



It's obvious the literature and graphic photos aren't going to convince everyone to quit.

So, why not try something different? No one ever died from quitting smoking.

Part of the problem is people going on about how hard it is to quit. In fact, millions upon millions of people have quit, without any professonal help whatsoever, every year. The whole addiction thing--the entire scientific field of "addiction" is an illusion.

The addiction to cigarettes lasts about three days. After that, it's habit.

Entirely true. And the habit never leaves, you just have to overcome it. Forever. And most people need a good reason to suffer for those 3 days.

Not correct. Quite a few addictions are due to actual changes in brain chemistry. Going 'cold turkey'* can actually be dangerous, depending on the addiction.

That said, cigarettes are a depressant so the dependency is the addict needs them to get back to 'normal'. It's much easier to overcome.

* I got addicted to cold turkey once. It's really confusing to tell people you are quitting cold turkey 'cold turkey'. It's worse being addicted to placebos.

All of these new addiction sightings are based on vague understandings of how lived experience is reflected in neural and brain activity. Yes, it is—and so what? To say that intense involvements affect the brain is to say—in a word—nothing. What makes such a thing an addiction? And it is no more the existence and consumption of junk food, repetitive games or other video stimulation, or placing a bet that makes it so; it is the way the individual interprets and reacts to the experience of the thing in the context of his or her life that creates an addiction (think of heroin addiction in Vietnam, soon left behind by most vets on their return home). When a powerful experience is welcomed for its reassurance and as a life solution, when it become preoccupying and detrimental to the consumer, and—finally—when the individual him or herself comes to see and to believe that the experience is addictive—voila!

Do you have any facts to back this up? For cigarettes, I mean.

I don't believe for a moment that quitting smoking is dangerous. I don't doubt that the body reacts negatively in physical ways. But that only lasts a few days, and there are plenty of smokers who make it through those first few days, with no ill effects. I can't recall ever having heard of someone being hospitalized for quitting smoking.

After that, you have what is called the "psychological addiction." This is a very suspect term in clinical psychology. The problem is that "psychological addiction" can be used to explain any "non-healthy" behaviour from obsessive-compulsive disorder, to gambling, to sex, to stealing, to internet, to porn, to eating, to not eating. Even the feeling of "being in love" can be described as a "psychological addiction ("addcited to Love", "Can't Get Enough of Your Love", "Love is the Drug I'm Thinking Of"). So when examined clinically, the term quickly expands to the point of meaninglessness.

The other problem with addiction is that it deals with the matter of choice. Addicts are addicts because they have no choice--they're addicted, brain chemcials are taking away thier free will. But in psychology, neuroscience adn philosophy, the concept of free will is under attack. It's been demonstrated that our "subconscious," if you will, makes decisions a long time beforeour conscious mind does, and that we interpret that realization of a direction from our subconscious as "choice."

So since we likely have no choice to start with, according to a convincing body of evidence, the framing addiction within the context of "choice" loses its meaning.

I think that nicotine is a stimulant. It elevates your mood and boosts your IQ a few points to boot. That's probably why people like it.

That's pretty funny. But illustrative of the above point. You can get "addcited" to placebos which shows what a questionable concept addiction is to start with.

To my mind addiction comprises two and two only things: 1) you do or take something that you deem emotionally satusfying regularly and to an extent that it interferes with your normal life and 2) you feel bad about it after.

I like this guys explanation:

Psychology today: What is Addiction

No. You said "The whole addiction thing--the entire scientific field of "addiction" is an illusion. " So I was not speaking of cigarettes, but things like alcohol or barbituates that can have fatal concequences if the person isn't weaned off them gradually. It's not an illusion.

Poor grammar trap?

You get a 'high' from it that decreases from use, but you in turn get a lower depression about 15 minutes later. After a while, you smoke not to feel good, but to not feel bad.

As above though, some things can be a physical addition, where others are simply a mental one.

ANY reason that will put your brain in the right place is a good reason. People say you can only successfully quit for yourself, but that proved to be untrue for me. I didn't quit for me at all, I quit for someone else. And it worked.

Well that makes sense intuitively. But then you could make the same argument for, say, eating or video games, where there is no drug-induced stimululant/depressant effect.

No I don't think there is such a thing as a mental addiction. It's an illusion.

I think if we dealt with smoking as a bad habit, rather than convincing people it's harder to quit than heroin, we'd be better off. Making allowance--as you say--for the fact that there is a chemical tolerance component to the issue. And focus on the fact that cutting down is effective too. By telling people they have to quit, we reinforce failure, I think.

Just my opinion.

Smoking is a bad habit, but it's also an addiction. It's a physical need for something that is not good for you. I think that we tell people they need to quit, but don't tell them how and that sets them up for failure. Just my opinion.

Well, we both agree on the same ends, but we'll have to agree to disagree on the psychology adn physiology of addiction.