Joel,

In my 20 years in AA I have known exactly one person who died from smoking.

Nemo I've known two in the last 2 years alone and my home group has ten people in it. It's not always obviuos, like the thin 55 year old who drops dead of an "unexplained heart attack" You don't have to take my word for it though, smoking kills more alcoholics than alcohol . It a widely accepted fact you can verify.

It's completely my business whether i smoke in the same way it is completely my business whether i drink or take any mind altering substance.

Once difference that I have noted between smoking and other drugs is that smoking does not seem to stand in the way of people staying sober, having a spiritual awakening and living a sober, spiritual life. Whereas other drugs generally seem to lead people back to drinking pretty quickly and abuse of them very clearly stands in the way of spirituality.

Joel,

I hope you'll forgive my reluctance to jump on this bandwagon, but eight grueling semesters of research methodology and inferential statistics in college and graduate school have given me a rather keen eye for spotting exaggerations that I can't confirm with direct observation and common sense.

Somewhere around 44 million Americans smoke, and the government says more than 400,000 people a year die of smoking-related illnesses. That may sound like a huge number, but when it's expressed as a percentage of the total number of smoking-related deaths per annum, it comes out to 0.0091, or slightly under one percent-- i.e. one in a hundred.

To many, myself included, this is an acceptable level of risk. Soldiers, skydivers, scuba divers, small plane pilots, bungee jumpers and race car drivers gladly and willingly face much greater odds. And who's to say they shouldn't?

>> All I'm saying is that AA DOES have opinions about drug use ...

Where is that opinion, Joel? Truly, I have never seen, heard or even heard of one for now nearly 30 years.

Your, my own and/or anyone else's concern about the well-being of others can be whatever it is, Joel, and even commendably so, yet A.A. does *not* have any opinions other than the essence of these:

__an opinion as to the soundness of the doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol (as found in "The Doctor's Opinion")

__We feel that elimination of our drinking is but a beginning.

__We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough.

__We feel that each family, in the light of their own circumstances, ought to decide for themselves [about keeping liquor in their homes].

__We feel it better to let our friends recommend us [than to promote ourselves]. (Tradition Eleven)

We are not social engineers.

Nemo that's 1% risk of death PER year! Far greater than the risk presented by maybe 100,000 deaths out of what 150 million drinkers?? And Lee, come on man . I might have fallen off the turnup truck, but it weren't yesterday. Most AA's in most meetings advise against drug use other than tobacco, whether it's in the book that way or not.
Anyway , I think we've all said what we've had to say on the matter and it's time for me to leave this thread alone for now as my ego is starting to get involved. I'm probably the only one .
I hope noone bears me any animosity, I think these discussions are good

>> Most AA's in most meetings advise against drug use ...

... and in violation of A.A. Tradition, if they do!

>> I hope noone bears me any animosity, I think these discussions are good.

Same for me, and we agree.

Joel,

That's common mistake made by many who haven't studied statistics. A 1% chance in each of, say, 60 years is still a 1% chance in any one of those years. You can't add probabilities and say that a 1% chance per annum over 60 a span years totals up to a 60% chance in that length of time..They're not cumulative.

The American Cancer Society deliberately and admittedly used people's ignorance of that with their famous stat that one in nine women get breast cancer, and they did it in order to scare them into getting mammograms, a procedure that is now quite controversial. They took the average risk in five-year increments from ages 15 to 85 and added them. The reality is, however, that any woman's realistic chance of getting breast cancer in her whole lifetime is about one in 900. Still insisting they were doing a good thing by fudging the numbers, the Cancer Society never admitted to any ulterior motive for their deception.

Sorry, that first paragraph should have been, "You can't add probabilities and say.that a 1% chance per annum over a span of 60 years totals up to a 60% chance in that length of time..They're not cumulative."

You raise a vey valid point Dont tread. Caffeine can also be included to a lesser extent - the effects are less devastating in the long run, but the mood alteration is very real.

I suppose It just comes down to how far do you want to take things. First things first is apropos here - as the book says.

Well Nemo in this case it IS cumulative. At least 50% of smokers eventually die from there disease. I may not have your education but I did go to college. I even figured out , without taking a special course, that the risk of death in year one of smoking is much lower than the risk of death in year 35.
I'm trying to let this go, obviously unsuccessfully. So if I'm reading you guys right if you were walking through the smokers outdoors to get into a meeting and one of them was firing up a joint you would see no difference? Outside issue right?

Joel,

I can't validate those numbers from personal experience. My grandfather died from a head cold at the age of 94, with his next cigar waiting on the nightstand. My father, who smoked a pack and a half of Camels per day all his life, died of an intestinal virus at the age of 86.

I'm going to be 70 in August, and even though I have a severe vascular defect that I was born with, I'm still firing on all cylinders. And maybe I should add that both of them were moderate drinkers in a family where 60% of the males in the last two generations have been admitted alcoholics. So just maybe, as we're now learning about many forms of cancer these days, there's a genetic factor which places some people at much higher risk than others. Maybe, as with alcohol, it's simply impossible to set a standard where there's one measure for all.

But the point you're making really has nothing at all to do with the health risks of using tobacco. Instead, the issue is whether we as AA members have the authority to tell anyone else in AA what they should or shouldn't do. I've known plenty of people who came to meetings with liquor on their breath and lied about it. Our response to such is always a gentle, understanding laugh and an open invitation to keep coming back. I currently know a few members who still smoke pot and have been for decades. I often suspect they'd be happier campers if they didn't, but I don't live in their skin and one of them has actually been an enormous help to me in my own sobriety.

My point is that I'm not the arbiter of anyone else's substance use except my own, nor is AA collectively. For my part, I've decided to mind my own business and let God be God in other people's lives. That's how I was treated when I came into AA and that's what made it attractive to me. Had it been the sort substance-sniffing police state you seem to be advocating here, there's no doubt I would have been one of those who turned his face to the wall and died.

Yes I find the outside issues thing a bit of a handy way to avoid an issue.

The Big Book talks about sedatives and other similar drugs.

I once heard some one say "eveything outside of the big book is an outside issue, so has no place in AA" - it made me chuckle, but he kinda has a point.

All that said, I'm glad AA doesn't have an official stand point on smoking, coffee, drugs etc etc - it really is up to the individual to work through these and I'm really happy you got free of nicoteine too.

Non-smoking meetings are a good idea.

So Nemo you're a statistican who believes more in antedotal evidence than empirical evidence?? And yes, genetics has alot to do with it but smoking is bad for everyone to some degree.
Anyway if you guys really believe that AA is hands off with all drugs that's fine with me. That's not my experience. My experience is more like " pot will get you drunk boy ( I believe that and have said it myself) but pass me a cigarette please. I was seeing a double standard and perhaps that doesn't exist outside of my area? And yes, some evidence does show that smoking interferes with recovery. The connection between tobacco and alcohol was made by Ben Rush over 200 years ago

Joel,

So what exactly are you advocating here? Do you want AA members to take a tougher stance on tobacco? If so, this seems hardly the place to be pressing the point, as there are so few of us here. What I suspect you're going to run into with a broader campaign is a solid wall of ambivalence and indifference. Most of us aren't in AA to impose our views on others, and you're certainly not getting a lot of support here.

Not to change the subject, but you do seem to have a compelling preoccupation with death. Would you care to discuss what you find troubling about it?