Despite being a smoker, Leonard Nimoy lived long and prospered
Monday, March 2, 2015 at 13:34 Forget taste and decency.
The propaganda value of the death of a well-known long-term smoker is far more important, it seems.
In January Joe Cocker's death, at the age of 70, was marked by some pretty distasteful tweets by anti-smoking campaigners (see Dick Puddlecote on the subject, Death as a PR opportunity).
The death last week of Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy has generated a similar reaction.
Nimoy was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), allegedly from decades of smoking.
I don't doubt the connection (although the LA smog may have been a contributory factor, who knows?), but there are two things to note:
One, Nimoy died at the age of 83. The average life expectancy for a white American male is 76 years.
I don't know where Nimoy lived but the state with the best average life expectancy for a white American male is the District of Columbia at just shy of 81.
He might of course have lived in pain and discomfort for many years. Again, I don't know.
What I do know is that he was only diagnosed with lung disease in February 2014, at the age of 82, one year before he died, at which point he began urging everyone to quit smoking.
Nimoy's death at the ripe old age of 83 will come as no consolation to his family, but let's get it in perspective. He was an old man who appears to have lived a long and extremely full life.
That hasn't deterred the tobacco taliban of course, hence these tweets this morning from ASH:
What Killed Spock: Leonard Nimoy killed by cigarettes he gave up 30 years ago http://t.co/2w8×0Mova3
— ASH (@ASH_LDN) March 2, 2015'Don't smoke. I did. Wish I never had. LLAP', Leonard Nimoy
— ASH (@ASH_LDN) March 2, 2015
Reader Comments (5)
Notice how the anti's keep quiet when a smoker dies as a result of anti smoking laws and bigotry.
If I recall, an anti in the comments section on the report on the Cheryl Moss murder said it was 'sick' for pro smokers to use her death as an example of why smoking bans should be repealed. Yet anti's are doing the very same thing here to further their cause.
So it's ok for them to do it but not ok for anyone else to?
Do you think that he suffered a premature death? whatever that is. I know quite a few never smokers who have COPD and if he gave up 30 years ago I can see how it would have any effect if indeed there is any correlation. The antis are despicable. I have smoked for 57 years and don't have it.
30 years? Are they being serious?? The time-lapse just gets longer all the time, doesn’t it? But it’s actually pretty counter-productive for all these antis to keep increasing the length of time that “having ever smoked” causes a person’s death or illness. Pretty soon it’ll grow to 40 years, then 50, then 60 then …. It doesn’t yet seem to have occurred to them that they’ll soon reach the point where, if you’ve ever smoked, then there isn’t, to be honest, any point in stopping, because “the damage is already done.” Which is just fine by me, á la: “Oh, well. Too late now; might as well just keep enjoying it." :)
So what ASH is really saying is that there's no point in quitting because even if we do then 30 years on from our last cigarette, we can still die from the same illnesses that everyone else in the world gets. OK. I'll take their advice for once, keep smoking and live the next 30 years happy and untroubled.
Emma2000 - I was the youngest child smoker I know - except for my mates. Now grannies and grandads, some have quit and others haven't but certainly when I look at the smokers I've known in my lifetime, they are still alive when one in two (oops the dramatic value has increased that to two in three) are supposed to be dead.
After 47 years and still smoking, I don't have copd either.
That must really upset ASH. We pesky smokers just can't die quick enough for that bunch of thugs.
If you lived till 110 and smoked the anxed ridden zealots would say that smoking killed you.
The despised poster boys of europe, aka the Irish Govt, and their former health minister who would make a better poster boy for the werewolfe, have been congratulating themselves again on TV tonight for being the first country in the EU to bring in plain packaging.
Funny that, because the plain packets that were displayed like trophies, are covered in disgusting pictures of rotten teeth and lungs.
Maybe its me, but I always thought plain meant blank.
Its all about protecting the children they say, nothing whatsoever got to do with a looming election or votes, no of course not.