UK Death Rate at Record Low
Discussion
The UK's death rate in 2024 was the lowest ever recorded.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j09vn2x2ko
Scotland's rate of deaths from drugs is disturbingly high. Why is that?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y5ll3ler7o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j09vn2x2ko
Scotland's rate of deaths from drugs is disturbingly high. Why is that?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y5ll3ler7o
JagLover said:
Slightly below the pre-Covid level, but that could be actually down to the number dying due to both Covid and less access to medical care and the actual trend is flat, as it was before Covid.
The actual trend is almost flat, but still a very gradual downward trend.The sooner we can get people to stop smoking, the better. Perhaps a ban on the manufacture or importing of cigarettes would be good.
As for vaping, well, that is ludicrous.
My folks wonderful next door neighbour got some brain disease type illness
He was a wonderful guy, started acting up, then came the diagnosis
Fast forward a year in a nursing home cycling between yelling in pain whilst waiting for the dr to arrive to give him something to knock him out
It would wear out and repeat
Over and over for 5 or 6 years
Simply awful that he wasn’t allowed to be put to sleep
He was a wonderful guy, started acting up, then came the diagnosis
Fast forward a year in a nursing home cycling between yelling in pain whilst waiting for the dr to arrive to give him something to knock him out
It would wear out and repeat
Over and over for 5 or 6 years
Simply awful that he wasn’t allowed to be put to sleep
Alickadoo said:
The actual trend is almost flat, but still a very gradual downward trend.
The sooner we can get people to stop smoking, the better. Perhaps a ban on the manufacture or importing of cigarettes would be good.
As for vaping, well, that is ludicrous.
Water about banning alcohol?The sooner we can get people to stop smoking, the better. Perhaps a ban on the manufacture or importing of cigarettes would be good.
As for vaping, well, that is ludicrous.
or dangerous sports?
what about only making "healthy" food available?
Putting speed limiters in all cars?
Making full PPE mandatory for all tasks?
Drumroll said:
Water about banning alcohol?
or dangerous sports?
what about only making "healthy" food available?
Putting speed limiters in all cars?
Making full PPE mandatory for all tasks?
I get this feeling that you aren't being entirely serious.or dangerous sports?
what about only making "healthy" food available?
Putting speed limiters in all cars?
Making full PPE mandatory for all tasks?
How about some sensible, realistically achievable suggestions?
Do you really think that the smoking of cigarettes is a good idea?
Alickadoo said:
I get this feeling that you aren't being entirely serious.
How about some sensible, realistically achievable suggestions?
Do you really think that the smoking of cigarettes is a good idea?
Of course it’s not, but where do draw the line? Not sure why driving down the death rate is a goal in its own right. How about some sensible, realistically achievable suggestions?
Do you really think that the smoking of cigarettes is a good idea?
Alickadoo said:
Perhaps a ban on the manufacture or importing of cigarettes would be good.
Of course we want to reduce or eliminate the health problems caused by smoking etc. But I'm not sure a ban would do this.A ban on hard drugs hasn't stopped people using them. In fact I heard recently on a Radio 4 programme that the UK adopting the US "War on Drugs" from the previous "your GP can prescribe drugs to addicts" approach has massively increased the number of addicts.
US Prohibition didn't stop people drinking either - it just made criminals money and caused more health problems as illegal items are by definition not regulated.
I suspect a ban on cigarettes will just be good news for criminals and substandard products will cause more health problems.
Alickadoo said:
Drumroll said:
Water about banning alcohol?
or dangerous sports?
what about only making "healthy" food available?
Putting speed limiters in all cars?
Making full PPE mandatory for all tasks?
I get this feeling that you aren't being entirely serious.or dangerous sports?
what about only making "healthy" food available?
Putting speed limiters in all cars?
Making full PPE mandatory for all tasks?
How about some sensible, realistically achievable suggestions?
Do you really think that the smoking of cigarettes is a good idea?
Yes my other comments were not entirely serious, but banning things or making other things compulsory doesn't always make the problem go away.
Taking most drugs (without prescription) is illegal, the problem hasn't gone away. People still get them.
Unless smokers and drug users place an unimaginable strain on society then I'm not sure what the concern is.
I find it more disturbing that we're allowed to become fat blobby chronic sufferers of disease for the bulk of our adult lives, and even now children, because of crappy food and crappy food habits, but that's all ok... and in practice this likely isn't what people want and will have big societal impacts on physical and mental health and burden on the health services.
But hey, that good is cheap and the traffic lights look good, so great eh?
But drugs, ooooo bad.
I find it more disturbing that we're allowed to become fat blobby chronic sufferers of disease for the bulk of our adult lives, and even now children, because of crappy food and crappy food habits, but that's all ok... and in practice this likely isn't what people want and will have big societal impacts on physical and mental health and burden on the health services.
But hey, that good is cheap and the traffic lights look good, so great eh?
But drugs, ooooo bad.
I suspect a ban on cigarettes would be difficult to enforce, but IMO it would be much harder for criminals to supply cigarettes in the quantities required, than it is for them to supply drugs in the quantities required.
During US prohibition, it was fairly easy for anyone and everyone to produce alcohol, as it would be today. So that was clearly a pointless ban. I mean, I could make a few litres of alcohol in my own home right now if I wanted to using readily available ingredients and a bunch of bits from B&Q.
Most cannabis sold in the UK is grown in the UK, so it doesn't present too much of a supply problem. Other drugs like heroin and cocaine are imported, but in their pure forms they take up very little space/volume. A recent bust of heroin showed about 370kg of it hidden in fruit juice bottles in a container, and that was valued at nearly £40m. You really don't need to get much Class A into the country for it to be worth it financially.
There are 46 million cigarettes smoked daily in the UK. That is an absolutely enormous physical volume of product. A full shipping container holds around 475,000 packs of cigarettes (just under 9.5m individual cigarettes).
You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
During US prohibition, it was fairly easy for anyone and everyone to produce alcohol, as it would be today. So that was clearly a pointless ban. I mean, I could make a few litres of alcohol in my own home right now if I wanted to using readily available ingredients and a bunch of bits from B&Q.
Most cannabis sold in the UK is grown in the UK, so it doesn't present too much of a supply problem. Other drugs like heroin and cocaine are imported, but in their pure forms they take up very little space/volume. A recent bust of heroin showed about 370kg of it hidden in fruit juice bottles in a container, and that was valued at nearly £40m. You really don't need to get much Class A into the country for it to be worth it financially.
There are 46 million cigarettes smoked daily in the UK. That is an absolutely enormous physical volume of product. A full shipping container holds around 475,000 packs of cigarettes (just under 9.5m individual cigarettes).
You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
Edited by Mont Blanc on Monday 3rd March 10:37
Desiderata said:
Bad news for you all!
Death rate was, is, and always will be...100%
Nearly 100%. I’m immortal but don’t tell anyone.Death rate was, is, and always will be...100%
I also don’t see why a) driving down the death rate is a target in and of itself (assume that’s just giving people a few more years at the ‘bad’ end) and b) why you’ve picked smoking specifically. If you really want to do something about it then obesity should be your go-to problem to tackle
Mont Blanc said:
There are 46 million cigarettes smoked daily in the UK. That is an absolutely enormous physical volume of product. A full shipping container holds around 475,000 packs of cigarettes (just under 9.5m individual cigarettes).
You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
I'm not sure about that - illicit cigarettes accounted for 22% of the market in 2000/2001 and presumably more were smoked back then than now. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-...You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
Edited by Mont Blanc on Monday 3rd March 10:37
Mont Blanc said:
During US prohibition, it was fairly easy for anyone and everyone to produce alcohol, as it would be today. So that was clearly a pointless ban. I mean, I could make a few litres of alcohol in my own home right now if I wanted to using readily available ingredients and a bunch of bits from B&Q.
I'm not sure if this is how it works, but we buy fresh pressed apple juice (a non-heat treated type) and once it's past the best date it kinda goes fizzy and then gets very funky tasting... is this just slowly turning to cider, with the sugars and bacteria present doing it's thing?Mr Whippy said:
Mont Blanc said:
During US prohibition, it was fairly easy for anyone and everyone to produce alcohol, as it would be today. So that was clearly a pointless ban. I mean, I could make a few litres of alcohol in my own home right now if I wanted to using readily available ingredients and a bunch of bits from B&Q.
I'm not sure if this is how it works, but we buy fresh pressed apple juice (a non-heat treated type) and once it's past the best date it kinda goes fizzy and then gets very funky tasting... is this just slowly turning to cider, with the sugars and bacteria present doing it's thing?The captured alcohol can then be poured into other beverages, or have flavour added.
trevalvole said:
Mont Blanc said:
There are 46 million cigarettes smoked daily in the UK. That is an absolutely enormous physical volume of product. A full shipping container holds around 475,000 packs of cigarettes (just under 9.5m individual cigarettes).
You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
I'm not sure about that - illicit cigarettes accounted for 22% of the market in 2000/2001 and presumably more were smoked back then than now. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-...You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
Edited by Mont Blanc on Monday 3rd March 10:37
Mont Blanc said:
trevalvole said:
Mont Blanc said:
There are 46 million cigarettes smoked daily in the UK. That is an absolutely enormous physical volume of product. A full shipping container holds around 475,000 packs of cigarettes (just under 9.5m individual cigarettes).
You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
I'm not sure about that - illicit cigarettes accounted for 22% of the market in 2000/2001 and presumably more were smoked back then than now. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-...You need a steady stream of almost 5 full shipping container loads of cigarettes to enter the UK every single day, to keep Britain smoking.
You can't easily grow and process tobacco in the UK, and certainly not in the volume required. Importing it is very difficult, again, due to the sheer volume of product required. There is most certainly a limit to how much people will pay for a pack of cigarettes, and I doubt there would be enough margin to seriously interest the class A importers.
Edited by Mont Blanc on Monday 3rd March 10:37
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