LogFAQs > #946545791

Lokarin posted...

I mean, if we get down to just the numbers... covid in the US has taken out about half as many as smoking has (so far), so one line of reasoning might be that smoking must be tackled twice as hard........ but life ain't work like that

The thing with smoking, though, is that that is primarily personal risk. You can limit second-hand smoke exposure to cut down on public health risk, and provide education and age restrictions to help ensure that people are making informed, competent choices, but at the end of the day, you can't stop people from making stupid decisions like that if they're really so brain-dead as to think that smoking is a good idea. Basically everything that can be done to reduce smoking rates is already being done (although second-hand smoke could still be cut down further, such as requiring smokers to tie plastic bags around their heads before lighting up, and that would likely indirectly reduce smoking rates), and all that's left is a cultural shift that will have to happen naturally instead of being forced by anything top-down.

It's also worth noting that you're comparing both stats after measures have been taken to reduce them, so the whole "work twice as hard" thing isn't quite accurate.

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