Finally
Spamming does something good for the world?
Distracting and nagging text messages help smokers stop smoking, Chinese researchers have found. In a clinical trial, smokers who agreed to join a cessation programme were divided into three groups. One received a high volume (five a day) of cognitive behavioural therapy-based personalised SMS messages, another a lower volume …
"As long as you don't expect TPTB to leave it at that, before moving on to other 'undesirable' behaviour..."
ack - and, who knows, maybe California is headed that way as well, very soon... [if Silly Valley has their way]
it is the nature of gummints to be this way, as "big nanny" types weasel their way into positions of power so they CAN impose themselves on the world. The only thing "them" is "us".
I wonder if there is also a cultural component that would not easily translate to other locales.
Communist Receives Text: Obediently complies
American Receives Text: Defiantly stubs out cigarette onto the phone screen, curses, squints through burn marks in screen while ordering new phone
quitting seems to be extremely difficult
Because it is both chemically and psychologically addictive. And maybe that's why the actual success rate of 6.5% is pretty dismal, and the marginal impact of repetitive nagging is only that last 0.5%?
I'd have thought that if this could be significantly effective it would have be in conjunction with other tools, be that support groups, friends & family, nicotine substitutes.
Besides, the smoke is also harmful to non-smokers. I have never smoked in my life*, being allergic to even small quantities of tobacco smoke (pot is even worse in that respect), so I am spared the difficulty of quitting. I will applaud anyone's effort to stop, however
* Tobacco, that is. I have smoked duck, chicken, salmon, mackerel and a few other species of fish. Whisky-marinated and cedar-wood-smoked salmon is to die for. Tobacco, by contrast is to die off
ack - more effective "non government mandate/irritate" methods exist already.
A lot of people switch to vaping, which every study I've ever read suggests is SIGNIFICANTLY less hazardous to the user, and practically benign to everyone else [unlike smoke, which generally irritates EVERYONE, etc.]. But here in Cali-Fornicate-You, the ninny-nanny types are NOW altering the anti-smoking ads [paid for by deliberately excessive tobacco taxes] to _INCLUDE_ vaping, which I believe is incredibly STUPID...
so maybe "that" is next. Then it'll be caffeine and alcohol. Well, alcohol has been tried already [and the dramatic failure of U.S. prohibition stands as a testimony to why such things should NOT be passed into law]. And in China, I suppose anti-gummint thoughts will need to be purged, too...
bombastic bob,
"... SIGNIFICANTLY less hazardous ..."
So still hazardous then !!!???
Therefore should be included in the anti-smoking ads !!!
In general Vaping was rather too quickly pronounced 'Safe' with much much less testing than smoking ever got.
Only now are people looking a little more closely at its problems and the 'interesting' testing methodologies used to 'prove' vaping is 'Safe'.
It was pushed becuase it is 'better' than smoking but this is the same 'better' that applies to ..... it is 'better' to only cut off 1 leg rather than 2 when you know 2 have been working quite well. !!!
There has even been stories recently of schoolkids drinking the stuff ..... which is a big 'BAD IDEA' if you want to continue living. (Luckily the hospitals treated then quickly and the schools had to broadcast mesages to advise 'Do Not Do This !!!'.
Apparently, it is now being taken up by US Teens at a high level [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46592521]
Just swapped one addiction for another .... which was very obvious and the Tobacco Manufacturers are now buying up these firms to get in on the act, plus developing their own similar & new products to get the 'nicotine habit' started.
Amazing how nicotine products are allowed 'STILL' when the addiction issue is well known !!!???
Why nicotine but not other addictive substances ???
Especially after 3-5 decades of the tobacco corps. pushing advertising that blatantly says "The West is rich. All Westerners smoke. You want to be rich like Westerners, don't you?"
On a side note, I've never really understood what was so 'cool' about throwing huge chunks of ones hard-earned-money at big faceless multinational corporations and their government sycophants! If that is 'sticking it to the man' send me a suit and a sex change, please, 'cause I'd be happy to be said 'man'.
Remember in the days when smoking was 'cool', cigarettes weren't massively taxed - and so it was a very cheap habit to maintain.
It was so cool that when my Mum was asked if she smoked by a government survey at school, in about 1952 (she was 14), she said yes. They nearly trapped her with the trick question of what brand, but she remembered Senior Service in time to not get rumbled.
I ain't Spartacus,
They should of caught her out because she did not have a voice like a 'bag of gravel' and a nice cough to go with it !!!
'Senior Service' cigarettes, from my memory of my parents and their friends smoking, was the real 'Tar/Nicotine addicts' smoke.
[Most people would not take one when offered .... which was an 'advantage' to the smoker who did ;) ]
Tended to be smoked by Dockers and the like, from what I was told.
P.S. Not saying anything against Dockers .... my dad did work there at one time. :)
Didn't the dockers generally 'find' the Senior Service on the quayside just after the ship they'd been loading had sailed?
Grandad worked in the docks (long ago..) when such accidental events (with easily carried items) were surprisingly common ;) I've heard stories of distillers putting pallets of half bottles at both ends of a shipment due to the 'dock tax' at both ends of the trip.