This is so patently ridiculous. It has become less about individual health and more about putting the tobacco companies out of business. To Pareene's point, were so many people not so obsessed with hamstringing the industry's ability to turn a profit, we'd have had sweet, delicious, cancer-free, Vitamin-C-filled cigarettes years ago.

This makes me insanely mad.

@TheHonJudgeSmails: I think you need a cigarette, Smails. Here, borrow my lighter. But I want it back, you fuck.

The cig manufacturers encourage "harm reduction," aka minimizing the damage. Anti-smoking activists want smoking gone entirely. I suppose that the position of the harm-reduction people is: okay, let Hitler keep the goddam Sudetanland if it avoids the war.

Moreover, the "science" cabal continues its collusions and machinations in order to suppress the incontrovertible evidence of my study, that smoking greatly increases your chances of looking totally boss.

Did you guys read about pregnant women smoking in their 3rd trimester? This was in Staten Island of course.

@Mike_Jahn: that is possibly the most retarded thing invocation of the nazis i've read on the internet in years, bravo young gentleman.

@flossy: Yeah, I used to encourage that by holding the cig Bogart-style, so it and my hand would look like a satellite antenna.

@allyzay: Thanks for the age reassignment!

We all have a death sentence. But, if you live healthy and get the right tests and recommended procedures, you can indeed get a stay of execution.

@flossy: Yes! And contrary to all those health propaganda posters in your high school, smoking does in fact make you look mature!

And yet journals are just fine publishing clinical trials results WHOLLY funded by the drug makers themselves. I'm not sure why this is that different in terms of conflict-of-interest issues. There's really no such thing as independent medical / clinical research any more and until there is, this is the way funding is going to go. If NIH or FDA or whomever can't put forth the big money, as they often can't, then private companies step in. Is that worse than no research at all? I really don't know.

@TheHonJudgeSmails: Was that his point? Write slowly to me-- it wouldn't be the first time I've missed a joke around here!

The main point I take from the NYT story: the funding "foundation" is super sleezy. Bias hidden in this manner is bad for research, bad for non-profits, bad for the general public (smokers and non-smokers alike).

@TheHonJudgeSmails: I was gestated in a gentle sea of nicotine-rich, alcohol-enhanced, cyclamate-sweetened amniotic fluid in an earlier, lead-painted, asbestos-insulated, duck-and-coverin' age. It was a age rich in the vitality of Vitalis; when men popped Seconol and Dexadrine, not collars. Maybe scientists should study how any children before the 80's made it out alive into adulthood.

@rubyruby: The difference is disclosure. They've created what seems like a sham foundation to hide the true source of the funds. Had someone not gone digging, the tie to big tobacco would not have been clear.

Disclosure: I'm a Non-smoker who supports the right of others to smoke in bars, wherever.

More importantly, will they allow us to have cigarettes while we're stuck on the tarmac in a plane without food and water for 8 hours? I mean, give us something.
I normally refrain from calling commenters names, but to that silly ass wussball that had shit to say about my comment yesterday along the lines of "I guess the star means the commenter's a jerk", look no star! Oh, by the way, I still don't feel that inmates need cable so suck it alright!

I hated all the ambiguity about tobacco research and the controversy associated with smoking. It's all so confusing. That's why I switched to crack.

Cigarette companies should start funding the studies that say that smoking is bad. Problem solved, smokes for all!

I cannot make out with a smoker, therefore, smoking = bad.

@BadUncle: Lead paint consumption, high fat Mcdonald's, playgrounds on cement, no bike helmets and riding in the beds of pickups among other common dangers really toughened us up. Now everyone needs to be sealed in a big rubber ball and fed pure oxygen for their own safety. Bah!

@TerseNursePornstein: Agreed. I'm just saying in general, for journals to say, "no, we won't publish anything sponsored by tobacco, but Merck! step right up!" it's just weird. And I say this as someone used to be in the clinical trials business (gov't-run trials, sponsored by pharma. the very definition of "clusterfuck" i think). But you're right, it was shady of Cornell to not be forthcoming. Disclosure: Also from a non-smoker who appreciates the ban now that it's in place, but didn't necessarily support the ban that seems to have led to all sorts of "lifestyle" laws that border on the idiotic.

Look, if it's a question of saving either of my parent's lives, both long time smokers, or accepting big bad money from evil corporate minions, sorry Mommy and Daddy, you're both going down. I've got principles.

Bring back legal smoking on the subway platform. at the very least, let me smoke outside a fucking entrance. because being told by a security guard in midtown that i was "too close to the entrance" at fucking 30 rock while having a smoke is not only annoying, but asinine.

@rubyruby: You're right-- I had not realized before that unlike drug companies, a tobacco company, even if fully disclosed, would nevertheless be compania non grata to the NEJM.

@mitchel_stevens: Hey. I work there too! wanna have a smoke and tell the gaurds to fuck off?
Seriously, I hate when that happens in front of a bar to the point where the asshole doorguy is pushing you to the furthest corner possible.

Why doesn't everyone here come and visit Scotland. Here, you can be fined 200 of your "American dollars" for simply smoking in a bus shelter. Yes. A bus shelter. The things that protect you from the rain that would put out your cigarette if you went out in it.

Next, they'll be fining me for smoking crack outside the school gates down the road from me. Fascism!

@TerseNursePornstein: I am also a non-smoker that doesn't care about smoking in bars. Presumably I'm at a bar to pickle my liver so worrying about someone's secondhand smoke seems a bit silly.

@allyzay: Fox News has the Internet beat in the Nazi invocation department, unfortunately. Fox News on Barack Obama, direct quote: "Hitler got the crowd excited. Barack Obama gets the crowd excited. You do the math!"

Game, set, and match.

@Cheap Shot:
to be honest, i'm a few blocks down near bryant park. I only come up that way for two boots on the nice days.

also--bad memories of being young, naive and "hey--that page program sure sounds nifty!"

Judging by their price per pack imported from Russia, Liggett must have saved 30 years to run this study. Anyone acutally smoke these things?

Nearly all the cancer risk from tobacco comes from what they call "combustion products." In other words, you don't burn it, you have very little chance of getting cancer. Send to Sweden for some snus (a kind of a lozenge) or just buy a packet of chewing tobacco. Considerate it Red State research. Only don't spit right outside the door!