Tobacco and China and Productivity

Heard on the radio today that one out of three cigarette smokers in the world lives in China... This is about twice the average percentage of the world's population which smokes, if my mental arithmetic is correct. More interesting, though, the percentage of Chinese smoking continues to increase as the resto of the world's smoking percentage declines. The apparent reason is that the Chinese government has a virtual monopoly on cigarette manufacture and sales, and it gets ten percent of its revenue form thjis activity.

So long term China is looking at big time health care and lost productivity costs due to smoking.

Charles

Perhaps, but China has been aggressively limiting their population for some time now, and if you're not wealthy do you really think that cancer deaths will cause a great health care cost like they do in this country? "You have lung cancer, goodbye" is likely to be more the norm than the years of limping along on oxygen, chemotherapy and radiation common here.

Besides, if the air and water are as full of carcinogens as they're reputed to be, what's a little cigarette smoke going to hurt?

Well said Comatose - If I lived in China I'd be doing quite well to aford cigarettes and live long enough to die of lung cancer.

I had a Chinese roomate many years ago. I noticed that he did not follow the western smoking pattern. He did not light up several times a day; rather, his smoking pattern looked like how some people go on a drinking binge. He would get depressed or frustrated at something and chain smoke a carton in 1 or 2 days. When he felt better, he would stop for a month or more. I've been told this is a common pattern of smoking in China.

Ted

I don't think you guys get it. China is whupping the worlds a$$ _because_ they smoke. People on this forum go on and on about how tariffs killed our industry, or the republicans, or the Democrats, or this or that.

Face it, it was the surgeon generals report.

Trace the rise and fall of american manufacturing and innovative might, and it closely tracks the invention, widespread use, and then decline of cigarette consumption. Nicotine was the drug that fueled the, shall we say "smokestack" industries.

Go back and watch movies, especially documentaries of things like conventions, and 2 things are striking: Everyone work a hat, and the air is a miasma of tobacco smoke. Things got done at full speed. People were lean and ambitious, and cigarettes kept them that way.

Heck, even the europeans know this. In proportion, their populations smoke at 2 to 3 times the rate of americans. France makes all our farm equipment, the Italians own quite a bit of our heavy industry, Germans still have a machine tool and manufacturing industry and own much of our former car industry, and the English are still a force to be reckoned with.

Do a graph of population vs tobacco consumption for a range of nationalities, and the message is glaringly obvious. Notice the populations that virtually don't smoke at all. Who ever heard of Eskimo industrialization, or South Sea islander manufacturing might?

(Full disclosure: I don't smoke and despise being in situations where there is second hand smoke. I did chew tobacco starting when I was 16 but gave it up 20 years ago.)

smt

Might be that more Chinese smoke because more of them can afford to smoke. Might be, as Ted said, that they are self medicating. A lot of traditional Chinese medicine is self medicated.

I think a lot of American tobacco manufacturers export to China. I wonder what will happen if the Chinese ever become tobacco nazis and demand reparations from America? It's not like we didn't know that tobacco was dangerous.

Gene

Nicotine does speed up brain synapse response. It is both relazing and stimulating at the same time, if that makes sense.

From what I hear, Chinese have a low cancer rate. So do Middle eastern arabs who smoke a lot (Mostly Camels?)

There are a couple theories out there. One I have heard is that the tobacco fields in the USA are contaminated with radioactive dust. Whether accidentally from atomic testing or deliberately, I don't know. And this radio activity causes cancer.

Also, in the book "Sugar Blues", he talks about chimney curing versus air curing. Seems the speed up in the curing methods cause a difference in chemical makeup of the tobacco. I can't remember the details. But the author proposses that the different curing method causes the cancer. He compares smoking in USA with Middle east and cancer is almost non essitant in places that smoke more than the USA.

I never could stand cigarette smoke. It clogs up my nose instantly. My Dad would smoke in the car when I was a kid and wouldn't let me roll down the window, in cold weather, not even a crack. I think he did it to torture me. Me always hated me.

There must be something beneficial about cigarette smoking or the government wouldn't be against it.

Also, according to Gordon Liddy, you never give someone a cigarette when you are questioning them. It will make them think quicker and resist intimidation better. He was in the FBI, and I guess that is experience.

back in 87, I got to install a graphite electrode machining system out in Lanzhou in central China. All the trains were coal fired then and all of the heat for the apartments- cooking and room heat was coal. All of the chinese helping me except the peasants brought in to tear up the crates and degrease stuff smoked like chimineys. WE were about mid range for their ballistic missle tests and underground nukes were being tested about 150 miles away.
About 1999, I spent a few weeks with a chinese nuclear physisist on a project in the Dallas area.
When i told him of my stay in Lanzhou, he was agast. He said that it was the most radiation polluted city in the world excepting those places in the ukraine.
Noone there was at all concerned about radiation or th edust that was everywhere(fallout?) They smoked, tried to keep me puffing. The cigs I don't think affected their output, at a dollar a day, you're going to excell at getting though the day. The hospital in town wasn't anywhere i would want to go for any kind of treatment, so the idea that you're going to get cancer and die is pretty real.

There are a couple theories out there. One I have heard is that the tobacco fields in the USA are contaminated with radioactive dust. Whether accidentally from atomic testing or deliberately, I don't know. And this radio activity causes cancer.
Also, in the book "Sugar Blues", he talks about chimney curing versus air curing. Seems the speed up in the curing methods cause a difference in chemical makeup of the tobacco. I can't remember the details. But the author proposses that the different curing method causes the cancer. He compares smoking in USA with Middle east and cancer is almost non essitant in places that smoke more than the USA.

Click to expand...

But these places are all smoking American cigarettes. If the problem is in the fields or in the curing, foreigners would be getting as much cancer as Americans.

American brand cigarettes, maybe. But not necesarily rolled in the states or made with stateside tobacco.

Actually tobacco, along with casino gambling, are the ways the American Indian is dealing with HIS illegal immigration problems...

Charles

The statistic I heard was that smoking cut about six months off of your life. I have known some pretty old smokers.

I have known people who get stressed at work, and they smoke a cig. It seems to calm them. So I would say there would be a link between cigaretts and productivity. Most work places are stressful these days. Or just agravating.

I worked at this place in Califonia, made capacitors. We had a two man department, me and my boss, Dan. So it was Dan and Dan. Then he had a boss, Ed. Dan smoked, which I didn't enjoy. Funny thing is, Dan didn't smoke until Ed called him. He might go most of the day without a cig, and then the phone would ring, and he would start talking, and I knew it was Ed because Dan would lite up one. Ed made him nervous and a cigarette helped him. He chained smoked while Ed was talking.

This might explain it:


Break Time at the Factory