Good people can argue over tax rates, regulations, and moral issues, but there are certain stone-cold, proven, undeniable facts that shouldn’t be up for debate. Especially when those facts can affect the public’s health. But for Donald Trump’s newly-chosen running mate, Governor Mike Pence, it’s completely fine to mislead the public on the dangers of smoking.
During Pence’s campaign for an open seat in the House of Representatives in 2000, Pence wrote a series of op-eds on his website, one of which was titled, “The Great American Smoke Out.” Inspired by debates in Congress over the regulation of tobacco products, Pence boldly and incorrectly proclaimed that “smoking doesn’t kill.”
Here’s an excerpt from Pence’s editorial:
Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer. This is not to say that smoking is good for you.... news flash: smoking is not good for you. If you are reading this article through the blue haze of cigarette smoke you should quit. The relevant question is, what is more harmful to the nation, second hand smoke or back handed big government disguised in do-gooder healthcare rhetoric.
According to Pence, big government is something we should fear much more than second-hand smoke. But according to the Centers for Disease Control, second-hand smoke kills nearly 34,000 Americans a year from heart disease and more than 8,000 from stroke. The CDC has yet to release any studies on the health effects of big government. Although Pence’s categorically-false beliefs on the dangers of tobacco are from 16 years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General documented the link between smoking and cancer back in 1964. So by the year 2000, Pence should have got the message.
Pence’s opinions on smoking are most likely connected to his relationship with big tobacco. According to Think Progress, Pence received around $13,000 from the tobacco lobby during his 2000 campaign and would go on to graciously accept nearly $100,000 from cigarette companies over his decade in Congress. During Pence’s 2012 and 2016 gubernatorial campaigns, he took around $63,000 from R.J Reynolds, the fine folks who brought you Joe Camel.
As America decides whether to choose Pence for Vice President we should ask ourselves: Does his op-ed reveal him to be so poorly-informed we should question his ability to hold office? Or so morally bankrupt that he’d lie to the American people about the dangers of smoking? We’ll see in November.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.