Cigarettes are, overall, more detrimental to the overall well-being of Americans than alcohol.

I think my opponent may have miss-understood the point I was trying to make saying that a cigarette takes 11 minutes off of your life every time you light one up - it was not for how MUCH life it takes off of you, but for the reason it DOES take life off of you. Are you guaranteed, and I mean GUARENTEED, no doubt, absolutely one-hundred percent certain that you will lose 11 minutes off your life every time you drink a beer or alcoholic beverage? I have yet to see facts that say, no, that guarantee that fact. It is a definite fact that you WILL lose 11 minutes off of your life every time you smoke a cigarette. My opponent downplays this by pointing out how small 11 minutes is, but remember: you lose 11 minutes for every single cigarette you smoke, and people don't smoke just one. There are 20 cigarettes per pack. Let's say a person buys a pack and smokes it all in one day (which is a common occurrence; why do you think smokers lose so much money on their habit? ). Now we aren't talking about 11 minutes anymore. 11 minutes per each cigarette times 20 equals 220 minutes, or 3 5/6 hours, and that's just per-day. Now multiply that by 365 and you get what being addicted to cigarettes is all about: 80,300 minutes lost PER YEAR from being addicted to smoking. Where are the facts that drinking can do THAT to you? When I said that it has an effect on one's health, I concur with my opponent on the fact that it DEOS affect you . .. just not like a cigarette does. Yes, heavy drinking DOES cause heart disease, but smoking can do the same . .. and a lot more. My opponent states "Just one drink . .. well. " Well, a cigarette, one cigarette, starts the deadly chain reaction described in my first paragraph. The only reason I say smoking has anything at all to do with heart disease is because the cases of heart disease it causes are a good part of the 440,000 deaths attributed to smoking each year. Now, in my statistic, I did NOT act as if it was the ONLY thing that impacted Americans. This is a greater of two evils situation: yes, they are both bad. Yes, they both kill people. Yes, they are both horrible addictions. But when you look at statistics alone, it proves that smoking is WORSE. I have not yet seen anything from my opponent to contradict those facts or my position. Next, my opponent states that "Yes, you did misword . .. evens the numbers out. " Deaths from smoking according to (. http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com.........): 440,000 Deaths from drinking: 100,000 Evens it out? Not by a long shot. After that, my opponent states "Yes, but would you . .. little bit of smoke. " Does someone die every time someone else has a drink? HEAVENS no. Does someone die a little every time they have a smoke. DEFINETLY YES. My opponent asked me to come up with a domestic violence case that "Wasn't alcohol fueled". Well, I did: 1/3 of ALL cases are NOT alcohol fueled. Case and point. Finally, my opponent states "It only takes a few beers to cause cirrhosis. " It only takes one cigarette to offer a death sentence to the right person, too, but we're not arguing that they are un-detrimental; they ARE BOTH BAD. But we are arguing whether or not smoking is worse, and just by looking at the death totals: Smoking: 440,000 (source in round 3 argument) Drinking: 100,000 (source in round 3 argument) You can see that smoking is more detrimental, overall, to the American people than alcohol. Where are the statistics or facts that say otherwise? I'll tell you: there are none. Yes, both are horrible, but just from these totals, smoking is much, much worse.