MYTHS OF THE ANTI-SMOKER CRUSADES

80% OF SMOKERS WANT TO QUIT AND CAN'T -- FALSE

The Gallup poll (of 292 smokers, when a minimum of 1000 subjects are normally required for the proper extrapolation of data) which reported this figure also states that 77% of smokers feel they can quit when they're ready. The second part of this myth is that smokers are addicts who cannot give up their drug of choice, that Big Tobacco has somehow caused one-quarter of the citizenry to lose its self-determination. This debate has nothing to do with Big Tobacco and nothing to do with the alleged "addiction" suffered by smokers--it has to do ONLY with one segment of the population who believe their opinion has absolute intellectual authority over others. Smokers in the year 2001 know the risks inherent in smoking and choose to smoke anyway. They CHOOSE. From the first wave of anti-smokerism until now, half the smokers in the population quit: Those are the ones who wanted to quit. The fifty-one million smokers who continue to smoke do not want to quit and if they do, they will.  

SMOKING IS THE #1 CAUSE OF PREMATURE DEATH IN THE US -- FALSE

The SAMMEC computer program which CDC uses to estimate the number of smoking-attributed deaths is dependent on input from the anti-smoking operators of the system and naturally the figures will be frightening. They're intended to be. That doesn't make them accurate--and until actual deaths of actual people by actual caregivers are counted, allowing for the confounding factors that are also to blame for those deaths, the cannot be more than "guesstimates." Most smokers do NOT die young, as many believe, and "premature death" is a guess at best. Seventeen percent, or some 70,000 smokers every year live past their 85th birthdays. Far fewer "young" people die from smoking than from automobile accidents or underage drinking, but anti-smokers don't want you to know that.

SMOKING DURING PREGNANCY CAUSES DANGEROUSLY LOW BIRTHWEIGHT BABIES--FALSE

Tobacco use during pregnancy has declined steadily (from 18% to 11%) since 1989 when collection of statistics was begun by the federal government, yet the percentage of pre-term and low birthweight babies has increased 17%, even with advanced medical prodedures and techniques common today.  Also since 1981, Sweden, Japan and Finland, with the highest smoking rates among pregnant women, have shared the lowest reported infant mortality rate. The US has the highest number of infant deaths and the second lowest percentage of births over 2500 grams yet our smoking rate is far below the other countries listed on the CDC's website.