Is smoking just a slow suicide?

Question

Is smoking just a slow suicide? I mean from a ethics point of view, you know you can get cancer from it and die, it's a proven fact.
In the same way you can survive a gun shot wound to the head and jumping off a tall building!

Answer 1

Driving your car is worse, by driving your car you have a higher percentage of dying, killing someone or mutilating yourself as well as others, but where are the damn anti driving advocates? Don't smoke, don't smoke, shut up. Your damn car infects thousands more with the carbon monoxide emmisions than my smoking will affect you. My health is my concern, don't worry about what other people are doing, it will give you an ulcer. Did you know you could easily kill a family of four while driving home from work where as a smoker it would take me twenty years or so. But I could always smoke and drive then I would be an unstoppable killing machine, (insert evil laugh here.)

Answer 2

I think it has a lot to do with who you are as a person. But for most- I believe it is a slow suicide. It is going to affect you in one way or another- may that be through lung disease, cancer etc. it is eventually going to come bite you on the butt! You may be able to survive a gun shot wound, or falling off a tall building, but it is still going to cause other problems like brain damage or broken bones which are going to ultimately diminish your quality of life and shorten your life span.

Answer 3

In my opinion yes you can die froma gun shot but smoking to me i think is like instyead of someone else shooting someone without them being aware of it smoking is liek someone shooting them self and thinking about it before coz they know the effect of the bullet like u may know the effect of the cigeret-- some ppl smoke all there life and dont die coz of cancer but then again some ppl do its really depends on the person -- a 70 yr old died of lung cancer he never smoked a day in his life but he was around ppl who smoked so i think it is in a way but on the other had some ppl dont think it will kill them so how can it be suicide? Someppl think it wont happen to them-- so i think it is 50-50 and there is never a sure answwer.. i hoped that hlped--- pinkfeverpink email me anytime and IM me

Answer 4

If definitely an act of rebellion initially when you take it up but I don't think it is subconsciously thought of as a slow suicide because when you start you don't realize how hard it is to quit and you don't realize how quickly time goes by and suddenly you have been smoking for years. At this point you regret having started and start worrying about cancer and your health in general. It sucks man. IF YOU ARE YOUNG DON'T START.

Answer 5

I wouldn't call it suicide, as i don't think many of them want to take there own lifes, some do it to relive them from stress or lose weight. They are damaging and shortening their life, but so does everything some slower than others, running gradually uses ur energy up and wears away your bones but you can counteract this by eating right and taking nutional supplements. But getting back to the question, no smoking should not be considered as suicide, presoming your asking about smoking normal cigarettes

Answer 6

Is it a self-righteous suicide? Or now that smokers are considered social pariahs, do the words of the Black Sabbath song Killing Yourslf to Live not ring ever more true:
People look and people stare
But I don't even care
You throw your life away
But what do they give
You're only killing yourself to live

In this world where determinism, where Government's and media attempt to mould a perfect model of health in their own image; where the last gasp of risk is removed by statisticians who judge how healthy a nation is by terming people who die before the national average of death as a loss of 'Potential Years Lived'; where over-eating, and drinking cost as many lives; and where fatalities from smoking tend to be among the less-educated and less literate poor statistical areas, there is only one real point to this over-long sentence - 100% of non-smokers die!

Answer 7

It's a fact only that it causes cancer. It is NOT a fact that EVERYONE will get cancer. Some people can smoke for 40 years and not get anything. I'd say it's more like a slow, Russian roulette.

Answer 8

No wise person would smoke, although it appears that once somebody has become addicted they find it very difficult to stop.

Smoking is not the same as suicide because people who commit suicide INTEND to kill themselves. Smokers hope they will be one of the lucky smkers who does not die of a smoking-related disease.


The question of intentionality is crucial to ethics because of its importance in allocating responsibility to moral agents.

Answer 9

Isn't being alive a slow suicide? You know, from an "ethics" point of view we are here to die, to work and play ourselves to death.

Answer 10

No; suicide implies the will to kill oneself. Most people who smoke don't do it in order to die, they just don't think about the health effects because they are a distant way in the future.

Answer 11

I don't think it can be called 'suicide', since the people who smoke don't (as far as I know) do it with the intention of killing themselves. Addiction and apathy are usually the reasons people continue to smoke, not a death wish.