Meanwhile, Switzerland is still a shithole when it comes to being molested by smoking. 1 of many areas where Europe is the laggard.

Belmont is the first city in the nation to ban smoking on its streets and almost everywhere else.

2007-07-22: What’s not to love about an artist (Adriana Salazar) who creates machines that smoke or try to tie shoes?

2007-10-18: Oxygen Smoker

A 90-year-old Ypsilanti woman was critically injured when the oxygen system she was using to breathe caught on fire while she was smoking.

2008-02-01: The scale of the epidemic

Vile indeed, but habit-forming and therefore lethally dangerous: it cuts short the lives of 33-50% of its practitioners. Perhaps 100m people died prematurely during the 20th century as a result of tobacco, making it the leading preventable cause of death and one of the top killers overall. Another 1b more may die from it in this century if current trends continue unchecked.

2008-03-13: Lung ashtray for the fatalistic smoker in your life.

2008-07-24: Fighting the smoking epidemic

Bill Gates and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on that they would spend $500m to stop people around the world from smoking.

2008-05-08: Second-hand smoke is terrible.

a 30-minute exposure to the level of secondhand smoke that one might normally inhale in an average bar setting was enough to result in blood vessel injury in young and otherwise healthy lifelong nonsmokers. Compounding the injury to the blood vessels themselves, the exposure to smoke impedes the function of the body’s natural repair mechanisms that are activated in the face of the blood vessels’ injury. Many of these effects persisted 24 hours later.

2014-12-11: China is far behind developed nations when it comes to smoking. Turns out, the government makes 7% of its revenue from tobacco, so little incentive to make the population healthier.
2017-06-25: The $10K life

Cigarette companies make about $10K for every 1M cigarettes purchased. Since there is 1 death for every 1M cigarettes sold (or smoked), a tobacco manufacturer will make about $10K for every death caused by their products. The value of a human life to a cigarette manufacturer is therefore about $10K

2018-04-20: Smoking decline

From the 1920s to the 1980s, the United States was the most smoking country in the developed world. In the 1960s, consumption peaked over 10 a day, per capita. But now it’s near the bottom of the chart—only Britain smokes less, among rich western countries.

2019-06-19: Corporate absolution

Philip Morris is pivoting to smoke-free cigarettes, because “society expects us to act responsibly, and we are doing just that by designing a smoke-free future”. Also, KFC “promises not to let vegans down” with their new meatless chicken-like nuggets. They’ll have to compete with factory-farming mega-conglomerate Tyson Foods, who are coming out with their own vegetarian chicken option. If evil companies want to do good, you should let them. If they have a line of retreat, they won’t fight so hard against change. If Tyson Foods wants to use its lobbyists to support meat substitutes instead of sabotaging them, that’s good for everybody. If they want to use their research budget to push plant-based meats forward, so much the better. After companies have started doing evil, we might want to break our previous precommitment and switch to “let evil companies avoid punishment if they stop doing evil”. And after companies have stopped doing evil, we might want (if only for the sake of our own sense of justice) to break both of our previous precommitments and go with “punish them after all”. What is the right action? I’m not sure, but I lean toward “buy the meatless chicken from KFC”, for a few reasons.

2023-08-31: An update on smoking in Europe. Switzerland is still at 25.5%.

The overall smoking rate in Germany was 34% in July 2023. In March 2020, the rate was 26.5%. The smoking rate for US adults in 2021 dropped to 11.5%.