Endoh’s Dungeon

Here’s the challenge from a friend, cut down on smoking over the next 30 days. Guess what, I gladly took up the challenge. My God! What did I just get myself into? LOL!

I think it’s not uncommon these days to hear the “motivations” behind each quit-smoking campaigns. Am I being frighten into it? Absolutely… not! Ironically, the Fear-Factor-alike campaign set most of us laughing. I will come to this hilarious realisation later on. So what is about this fantastic fairytale myth of “Smoking causes Cancer”? Now, these are stuffs that these health promotion board will never tell you…

1. Smoking DOES NOT cause cancer.
It is commonly believed that smoking is the main cause of cancer, and why not when this teaching has been sent out all along. All of us know the law of causes vs effects I am sure. For an effect to occur, there must be a cause but is that enough to result in the proclaimed effect? Through our chemistry lessons in secondary schools, obviously this myth has busted itself. This is because rules of chemistry tells us that, in order for a chemical reaction to take place, not only the chemical compounds have to be present. We need a catalyst to activate the reaction. In this case, tobacco!

Cancer is discovered to occur due to genetical mutations in our body system. There are also studies conducted on unknown cancer origins. It is not hard to read for the fact that, genetical mutations are present in each and everyone of us, smoker or not. In fact, not a single study (even now) can factually and directly point out which specific part of tobacco implants cancer cells. Isn’t it funny why nothing has been proven beyond any doubts despite a fortune of billions being spent on medical tests?

Thanks to the intelligent marketing professionals behind the entire campaign, whom can single-handedly mis-use the term “cause” which results in a false pursuit of the wrong truth.

Read: Journal of Theoretics (According to WHO/CDC Data - Oct/Nov 1999 Editorials)

2. Does cancer means certain death?
Look… smoker or not, you still die. Get over it! Blaming death on tobacco is not going to prolong your life any much longer. We will come to that later.

My grandfather had been a smoker for 50 years, he didn’t died of cancer. In fact, his autospy showed no signs of cancer development in any part of his body. If you’re think my grandfather is one of the rare few, read the next one. My ex-neighbour’s father had been a smoker for 60 years without any medical conditions. He was adviced by his family doctor to quit smoking due to his old age. Not only he took up the advice to quit smoking, he seemingly quitted life too. He died in his sleep 6 months after quitting smoking for no apparent reasons.

My family doctor is a smoker himself, even though not as a heavy smoker that I am. He checks himself regularly. Having been a smoker for 30 odd years, he is still showing no signs of any tumour growth or cancerous activities within his body.

3. Smoking pollutes the air.
This is one part of the argument that I love most, because half the time people tell me this, I leave them banging their own head in the wall.

Do you know a single diesel-engined taxi left running for one hour produce more toxic fumes than 20 sticks of cigarettes combined in an entire day? Here, we have more than 20,000 taxi in operation daily. So significantly, we are speaking of 400,000 sticks of cigarettes burning on the streets every one hour. We are not even taking into account on other forms of diesel engines on our streets… yet! Which is more deadly? Do we need to be a professor or genius to figure this out?

In a self-proclaimed propoganda of how much “certain people” care for your health, I would also love to remind you that newer and better diesel engines (with emission far lesser than our healthy petrol engines) are being rejected on our streets. It is not difficult to see why, when we have invested heavily in attracting petroleum industries and the petrol tax involved. Switching to diesel, will eventually lead the fuel tax to be applied to diesel. Taxi companies and other commercial companies will be the one to complain… which leads to another rise in transportation charges. Making a turn on the petrol policy, it hurts the pockets more than our health.

So tell me again, that they DO care about your health!?

3. There are many others who thinks like me… but where’s the proof!?
Thanks to mices whom are genetically closest to us, several tests have been conducted with no apparent direct evidence of “smoking causes cancer”. Take some time and search through the entire internet directory, you would realise that there are a handful of laboratory tests that have failed to prove this belief, even though tests which did supercede the figures of the initial. Interestingly, alot of such sites copied their resources from one another, which contributes in a way to the sheer figures of anti-smoking resources.

So much so that WHO had to withhold their publication which is not conclusive enough.

Read: Passive smoking doesn’t cause cancer - Official (Victoria MacDonald, Health Correspondent - 1998)
Read: Smoking helps protect against lung cancer - (Joe Vialls - 2003)

4. Are those scary pictures real?
I would have thought so, but you know what? To have somebody truthfully end up with that “fictional outlooks”, you are probably a dead person. Ask ourselves realistically, have we ever come across anybody who has such rotting skin from smoking walking on the street? I think the majority of us have not even seen ONE!

Living in an intimidated society like ours, every little thing scares the shit out of us, even mere pictures. In a society that anyone can get sued anytime for defamation or libel (thanks to our self-sacrificing and caring world-class management), we have all grown to live in fear. Read F-E-A-R! One thing that all of us should do, is balance propoganda with reality before we take such beliefs into our life.

True, I do not deny smoking contributes to cancer development. However, to attribute cancer entirely to smoking is an outright lie and fake belief, which the mass are being mis-led into it.

It’s just another horror flick, remember?

Having said so, why did I still accept this cut-down-on-smoking challenge when I clearly outline smoking isn’t as bad as it was made out to be? Like I say, it’s a balance of reasonings. In fact, I do not forsee myself quitting smoking totally. The best that I can make do with, is cutting down.

I will share the reasonings of my decision to accept this challenge in my next post, when I have the time that is! Haha!