I remember him from when I had cable still. He had his sub Colmes then. Wasn't pretty.

Does Mike Pence's view that "smoking doesn't kill" bother any Trump supporters?

Realistically, the VP will have little to no influence on public health, but his 2001 op-ed (based upon the fact that 2 out of 3 smokers do not die from a smoking related illness) on the subject demonstrates one of two things:

1) He is a corporate sell-out to the tobacco industry and puts his finances over the health and lives of potentially uneducated people
2) He is a poor critical thinker who does not understand the scientific method, including the concepts of statistical significance and odds ratio

Please refrain from bringing up HRC or any other political candidate in your answer. Does it bother you guys that Pence could advocate for something that is so destructive for the health of the public with a straight face?

Can you provide a source for further reading?

Sure, here's his 2001 op-ed on the subject:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010415085348/http://mikepence.com/smoke.html

This is a non-issue in my book.

And anyway, you didn't refute his argument.

It seems as though him saying "smoking doesn't kill" is poor wording as he continues with

His argument seems to be that government creates hysteria in order to pass laws and gain more power, he is against that and not saying that tobacco is good for you. I don't think Pence is denying science.

It's true that 2 out of 3 smokers do not die from a smoking-related illness. But that is an extremely misleading thing to tell uneducated people because smoking is highly associated with smoking-related illnesses.

Like I said, his stances on public health issues probably won't have much to do with his role as VP (unless he breaks a tie in the Senate over a public health bill or becomes president himself), but what do you think it reveals about his character?

Do you think he was acting as a corporate sellout for the tobacco industry to try and downplay the negative effects of smoking or do you think he fails to grasp the concept of relative risk?

Please refrain from bringing up how HRC is a sellout. We all know this, and its an aspect of her candidacy that Trump supporters criticize so you might think they'd criticize it with Trump's runningmate, too. Disavow this type of unethical behavior!



Be honest with yourself. Pence was acting extremely misleading in this op-ed. Any time you have to back track to say that smoking actually isn't good for people, you've probably made a really misleading claim before that.

It's also important to keep in mind that people are extremely unedcuated about public health topics, and that telling them that only 2 out of 3 smokers don't die from smoking-related illnesses is potentially very destructive for public health. Especially with something as bad as smoking, where smokers are often looking for any piece of evidence to justify continuing smoking when they actually know it's bad.

Personally, I don't think he is intentionally denying science, either. I think he's smarter than that. Looks like a straight-forward case of being a sellout to the tobacco industry to me. He's also said that condoms "are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases."