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Comment by nthcolumn | Hacker News Reader

Hitting yourself repeatedly over the head with a hammer can give you a headache. Not sure DeWalt are worried from a litigious point of view. I doubt there is a smoker alive today who can reasonably claim to have been unaware of the risks when they started.

Anal point - why the apostrophe? Should it be "Smoking becauses hundreds..."?

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There is literally a 69 year old woman in the article who claims just that:

> "Had I known as a teenager that smoking caused mutations which would stay with me for life then I would never had started"

It agree with you that it's a little silly, especially for young people, but it wasn't that long ago they started forcing cancer warnings on tobacco.

I'm an ex-smoker and I had the same thought as I read the article: I wish I'd known this.

But really, I know it wouldn't have made a difference. From an early age I was taught at school that smoking would kill me and I started anyway. The idea that detailed knowledge of one particular cause of death would have made a difference is laughable. It's just a way of deflecting blame from one's own responsibility.

I dunno, there's a fun argument to be had about informed consent.

It's fair to say that everyone know smoking is bad by now, but does everyone possess a correct and complete enough understanding of how and why to meaningfully consent to the risks? If you understand that smoking can cause cancer, but not that it can cause cancer even years after you stop smoking, is that good enough? If you think you can go on a cleanse and purge the toxins from your body, are you really competent to consent to the long-term risks? We don't let minors do nearly anything, from sex to signing contracts to receiving medical treatment, because we do not believe they are mature enough to properly weigh the consequences. If a minor decides to begin smoking, are they able to meaningfully consent to the risks, even if they have been adequately explained?

All medical interventions are weighing hopefully large benefits against hopefully small side effects, but even terrible side effects can be acceptable if the benefits are large enough and people receiving the treatments have been adequately informed and can meaningfully consent.

Not sure where you live but in my country we already don't let minors smoke.

In most parts you can legally have sex before you can legally smoke.

In my country it is illegal for minors to smoke, and a majority of smokers start smoking as minors.

Well sure but I'm just pointing out that the analogy isn't great. There are already plenty of things minors can't legally do and we don't try to ban them for everyone.

It's not a question of illegal or not, it's a question of whether smokers are able consent to the risks of smoking, and therefore whether the companies are absolved of damages.

Your argument was that minors cannot meaningfully consent to the risks. But smoking is already illegal for minors.

How can a company be held liable for people who choose to use their product illegally? This doesn't make sense.

(It's different of course if they are directly encouraging children to smoke. In that case, they should have the book thrown at them.)

This is just an old woman being dishonest with herself. The US was the 1st to put warnings on tobacco packaging in 1966. This was about the time this woman started smoking. Is it really believable that an additional scientific data point about the harm would've swayed her decision? Especially one she wouldn't have even understood at the time? It's always been abundantly clear that inhaling smoke into your lungs is not a good idea - the scientific details aren't really necessary in making the decision not to smoke. What was necessary was a shift in the culture and advances in general healthcare which made the trade-offs worth the delayed gratification

There are plenty of people alive today who were unaware of the risks because until about the mid-80s the cigarette companies could actively deny them. You can only argue ignorance from when the mandatory product warnings were introduced.

In the US warnings were introduced in 1966.

It's not an apostrophe, it's a single quote. The article title is:

> Smoking 'causes hundreds of DNA changes'

I'm guessing HN trimmed the closing quote to change it to:

> Smoking 'causes hundreds of DNA changes

It's now been changed to:

> Smoking “causes hundreds of DNA changes”

Those are weird quotes too, not the normal ". There are lots of different quote characters. :)

Pedants will probably like this magazine: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/df/b7/74/dfb7741e5e84...

The obvious difference being: that is not the intended use for a hammer.

Is there anyone marketing cigaretts able to claim they're unaware? Aren't those also adults?

I smoke (trying to quit) and I don't think cigarette manufacturers are doing anything immoral. I enjoy smoking! Why else would I have ever tried it when I knew all the risks?

Nobody is getting tricked, here. People are selling a product that other people want.

Have you read "the easy way to stop smoking"? He makes a great point about the claim that smokers don't actually enjoy it. It's addiction, thinking you enjoy it is a mechanism of avoiding the guilt of the addiction. Or something like that, his argument was much more convincing.

That's akin to saying "you don't actually enjoy eating food, you're just hungry". Addiction and enjoyment are not mutually exclusive.

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