On the other hand, a person smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes near me is actively harmful to my health. If you want to find a field somewhere to smoke sure, I won’t find it obnoxious, but no one does that.
>Extremely common
sure I’ve met those people, I’ve never met one who does it anywhere near daily. Also most of the ones I’ve known drift in and out of periods of being heavy smokers.
Again I have met many people who can drink a glass of wine every night. I have never met a single person who smokes a single cigarette after dinner. To me that says there is something different about cigarettes that makes them harder to moderate.
On the other hand, there are people who smoke one cigar occasionally: cigarettes, for whatever reason, seem to be a lot more addictive than other forms of tobacco consumption.
The good thing about cigars is that they're terribly inconvenient. They're harder to acquire, harder to store properly, harder carry around, and they take nearly 10x as long to smoke. I've smoked a few cigars per year for almost 2 decades, and I can't imagine doing the same with cigarettes. Nobody really buys and smokes an entire pack of cigarettes in one night every few months (because it would be insane), but if they did, it's unlikely they'd become addicted.
Excellent observation. What is in cigarettes is not really tobacco.[1] Also, cigarettes are intentionally more addictive than natural tobacco, and far more harmful.
According to the US Surgeon General Report Smoking and Health:
No. 1103, p.112 >Death rates for current pipe smokers were little if at all higher than for non-smokers, even with men smoking 10 pipefuls per day and with men who had smoked pipes for more than 30 years.
No. 1103, page 92 >Among the pipe smokers.... The US mortality ratios are 0.8 for non-inhalers and 1.0 for inhalers.
...which means pipe smokers (smoking natural tobacco) who inhale live as long as nonsmokers, and pipe smokers that don’t inhale live longer than non-smokers.
Smoking anything is bad for you, but national brand cigarettes are deadly. There are over 300 added carcinogens in cigarettes. My personal feeling is it is the added carcinogens that is causing cancer, and not tobacco. So it isn't smoking, per se, that is killing people en masse, but smoking cigarettes made by Big Tobacco, which will be any national brand (other than Natural American Spirits, which guarantees the only ingredients are natural tobacco and water.)
Everyone smoked during the Colonial era, including nearly all the Founding Fathers. Native Americans smoked for centuries if not millennia. Ever heard of a Native American with lung cancer? Only after the Chemical Revolution did smokers begin dying en masse annually.
People feel very strongly about this, and usually the information I provide stirs a strong reaction, because everyone knows smoking kills! But the devil is in the details. Carcinogens cause cancer and kills people in droves. Smoking tobacco, actual tobacco, causes emphysema, not cancer.
“Native American with lung cancer”
A quick google search shows Native Americans are more likely to have lung cancer.
If you’re talking about pre industrial Native Americans, it’s impossible to tell, because of a relative lack of written records and no accepted standard of what to even call lung cancer.
You’re entire post is so incredibly misleading. Look at the amount of tobacco smoked per capita between 1800 and the peak in the 1960s. The invention of the mass produced cigarette is certainly the cause of the increase in lung cancer deaths, but primarily because it made smoking tobacco much cheaper and therefore drastically increased consumption.
That's good news, because it means you will have no issue citing these studies and the cancer rates of smokers of natural tobacco.
> If you’re talking about pre industrial Native Americans, it’s impossible to tell, because of a relative lack of written records and no accepted standard of what to even call lung cancer.
Lung cancer was first described medically in the mid 19th Century, a century before the Chemical Revolution in the 1950's. If smokers were dying as fast as they are today (and have been since the 1950's), someone would have noticed. But smoking only became linked to cancer in the 1950s, the very dawn of the Chemical Revolution.
> You’re entire post is so incredibly misleading. Look at the amount of tobacco smoked per capita between 1800 and the peak in the 1960s. The invention of the mass produced cigarette is certainly the cause of the increase in lung cancer deaths, but primarily because it made smoking tobacco much cheaper and therefore drastically increased consumption.
By the mid 17th Century, tobacco was so overproduced that it cost a penny for a pound of tobacco. Accounting for inflation, that penny is worth $4.29 today when a pound of loose tobacco costs about $15 and the average price of a pack of cigarettes, containing less than half an ounce of tobacco, is $8. Tobacco hasn't gotten cheaper, quite the opposite.
What dramatically increased consumption was that nicotine levels were intentionally drastically increased, and nicotine was intentionally made more addictive by chemically freeing it from its molecular base. Since the 1950's smokers of national brand cigarettes are literally freebasing nicotine. Along with the massive advertising budgets of Big Tobacco, it was a one-two-three punch that caused the peak of "tobacco" use in the 1960's. Mass production was incidental.
Again, let's not equivocate natural tobacco with what is in national brand cigarettes. I repeat, smoking anything is not healthy. But what is in cigarettes is a whole other level of lethal. The lung cancer rates of cigarette smokers is far beyond what it is for smokers of natural tobacco, and this is what the studies show.
And again, these facts disturb many as well as yourself, because Nancy Reagan and the American Lung Association did not discriminate. While a manslaughter is a bad thing, a mass murder is far worse. As we can objectively discriminate between a drunk driving fatality and Josef Stalin, so we also can scientifically discriminate between how lethal different types of smoking are.
For example there are hardly any cases of lung cancer among cannabis smokers, even if we can all agree that smoking anything is not healthy, it is far less lethal to smoke cannabis than it is to smoke, say, Marlboros.
In the same way, it is far less lethal to smoke natural tobacco than it is to smoke any mass produced national brand cigarette produced by Phillip Morris. But let me be clear to the curious: do not smoke. Smoking is very bad, and is made far worse by addiction. Once addicted to the nicotine levels in national brand cigarettes, it overwhelms the individual's agency to choose not to smoke. Nicotine addiction robs you of free will.
The only speculation I have made is why, that I believe the smoking gun for cigarettes causing lung cancer rates to skyrocket among smokers is the intentionally added 300+ known carcinogens, which started in the 1950's.
What is insidious is this all came out in the 1990's government case against Big Tobacco, the production methods and the chemical additives, all of it. Big Tobacco was fined, but they were not restricted in their production methods. They paid some of the fine, but the remainder, iirc more than half, was forgiven in the early 2000's. If the government wanted to make a dent in the cancer rates of smokers, they would have dismantled the industrial processes of producing those weird and bazaar things everyone calls cigarettes and incorrectly believe are filled with tobacco.
Tobacco has been demonized unjustly (and smokers, who are all victims, right along with it), because while tobacco has certainly killed, it's not as many as you think, while the substances that definitely have killed exponentially more continues to slip by unnoticed, the intentionally added chemicals like hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia. Hopefully we can agree that smoking hydrogen cyanide is worse for your health than smoking natural tobacco. And if we can agree on that, maybe we can also agree that it would be better for smokers, if they are unable to stop, to smoke instead just about anything other than national brand cigarettes. Maybe if we're just a little more honest about what has happened and continues to happen, we can reduce suffering and keep these poor souls around a little longer, and even if it is just a little longer.
https://econpapers.repec.org/article/agsuersja/144742.htm
>What dramatically increased consumption was that nicotine levels were intentionally drastically increased, and nicotine was intentionally made more addictive by chemically freeing it from its molecular base. Since the 1950's smokers of national brand cigarettes are literally freebasing nicotine. Along with the massive advertising budgets of Big Tobacco, it was a one-two-three punch that caused the peak of "tobacco" use in the 1960's. Mass production was incidental.
Cigarette consumption increased exponentially from 1900-1950 and then the growth dramatically slows starting around 1950. Clearly the acceleration in growth happened and then reversed well before any changes to cigarette manufacture in 1950.
>For example there are hardly any cases of lung cancer among cannabis smokers, even if we can all agree that smoking anything is not healthy, it is far less lethal to smoke cannabis than it is to smoke, say, Marlboros.
Chewing tobacco causes oral cancer, this link was made all the way back in 1903. Clearly there is something different about tobacco, natural or otherwise.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246763/
>Since the 1950's smokers of national brand cigarettes are literally freebasing nicotine.
According to this study Natural American Spirit cigarettes had far more free-base nicotine than other brands.
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
This study also finds that they have a higher nicotine content
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8075288/
There are precisely zero studies showing that natural cigarettes are less likely to cause lung cancer. The only evidence you have is that lung cancer rates increased after 1950, which is also explained by the dramatic rise in smoking tobacco between 1900 and 1950. "Natural" pre 1950 chewing tobacco was suspected to cause oral cancer in 1903.
"Natural" pre 1950 smoking tobacco was suspected by many to cause lung cancer in the 1930s. In 1939, over a decade before the "chemical revolution" of the 1950s, Franz Hermann Müller, published an epidemiological study linking smoking to lung cancer. In 1943, another larger study by Eberhard Schairer and Eric Schöniger reached the same conclusion.
Clearly smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, whether they are pre 1950 "natural" style cigarettes or not.
You are grossly exaggerating with your assertion that any link was noticed "well before the 1950's," when the earliest historical evidence points to the late 1940s. What "people" noticed a link between lung cancer and cigarette smoking in 1850? I believe you invented this out of thin air. The Industrial Revolution also easily and more thoroughly explains the graph in that paper released when? Oh, 1956. Thanks for driving my point home.
> Cigarette consumption increased exponentially from 1900-1950
A four-fold increase indicated by the graph you cited is not an exponential increase. Again, you are exaggerating intentionally and deceptively.
> Chewing tobacco causes oral cancer, this link was made all the way back in 1903. Clearly there is something different about tobacco, natural or otherwise. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246763/
Your claim is again deceptive. The association published in 1903 was between oral cancer, tobacco, and poor nutrition. Regardless, this is a straw man argument, as I've never argued that chewing tobacco causes lung cancer; my argument only concerns smoking what is in national brand cigarettes verses natural tobacco.
> This study also finds that they have a higher nicotine content https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8075288/
>>Results: Under intense smoking conditions, nicotine in smoke of NAS cigarettes averaged 3.3(±0.7) mg/cigarette, compared to 2.4(±0.4) in other brands.
Oddly, the study does not name any of these "other brands," nor defines what intense smoking conditions actually means, but it doesn't sound like average or normal smoker behavior to me. It seems obvious this study was funded by Big Tobacco in order to level the playing field with Natural American Spirits. Big Tobacco has been going after and suing independent natural tobacco producers and retailers ever since they came on the market.
> There are precisely zero studies showing that natural cigarettes are less likely to cause lung cancer.
If true, do you even realize what this means?? Absolutely nothing. But your claim here is, in fact, false. I have already cited the Surgeon General's report, Smoking and Health, which thoroughly proves otherwise.
> The only evidence you have is that lung cancer rates increased after 1950, which is also explained by the dramatic rise in smoking tobacco between 1900 and 1950.
You are deeply confused about the meaning of rates, because your claim makes no sense. Tobacco lung cancer rates prior to 1950 are what they are. Regardless of how many people were smoking, the rates would remain flat had nothing changed. Increasing the number of smokers does not increase tobacco lung cancer rates among smokers. After the 1950s, the tobacco cancer rate itself increased dramatically among smokers. That strongly suggest something changed with the product in the 1950s. Again, more people smoking doesn't increase the possibility of lung cancer in any of them. The chances were what they were, but the odds of a smoker getting lung cancer notably increased in the 1950s.
> "Natural" pre 1950 chewing tobacco was suspected to cause oral cancer in 1903.
I have no idea why you are going on about chewing tobacco other than to advance your straw man arguments.
> "Natural" pre 1950 smoking tobacco was suspected by many to cause lung cancer in the 1930s. In 1939, over a decade before the "chemical revolution" of the 1950s, Franz Hermann Müller, published an epidemiological study linking smoking to lung cancer. In 1943, another larger study by Eberhard Schairer and Eric Schöniger reached the same conclusion.
Again, you are inventing. Every study I have seen spotlights the 1950's, more accurately the period between 1949 and 1956, as when the first valid scientific studies regarding this correlation appear. And who really can tell when Big Tobacco companies began treating their product with deadly chemicals? The 1950's Chemical Revolution was driven by DuPont and pharmaceutical companies, is somewhat specific to the increase in use of prescriptions and plastics. The Chemical Revolution proper has its origins in the 18th Century. Also, not for nothing, that famous Müller study has been debunked.[1]
> Clearly smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, whether they are pre 1950 "natural" style cigarettes or not.
Not according to the US Surgeon General's report, Smoking and Health, that I have already cited.
Your argument seems to be that smoking natural tobacco is precisely as lethal as smoking a partial tobacco product that has been infused with over 300 known carcinogens, when my argument is the precisely the opposite. My argument boils down to this: more lethal products are more lethal. I am astounded that you can not accept this.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3640840/pdf/nih...
This would be impossible to verify and strains credulity. People have gotten a little too comfortable making outlandish claims about the effects of secondhand smoke.
The EPA and the CDC have outlined the risks of 2nd hand smoke pretty clearly and convincingly, with a plethora of citations, if you care to google it.
I think you have a strange way of placing responsibility, because I am nearly certain what is actively harmful to your health is choosing to remain in the proximity of someone that smoked not only one cigarette but more than one. We know why they're smoking: they're addicted to nicotine, and it's unlikely they chose to become addicted. Why would you linger near them? Is it peer pressure?
If someone walks around swinging a chain, so that everyone who doesn’t want to be hit has to run away from them, would you say that’s is my fault when I get hit?
Talk about victim blaming.
If the smoke doesn't alter your desire to be there, then it is still your choice to be there.
> If someone walks around swinging a chain, so that everyone who doesn’t want to be hit has to run away from them, would you say that’s is my fault when I get hit?
This is both the weak analogy and straw man fallacies in one.
> Talk about victim blaming.
One can believe you were offended, briefly, when they initially lit up, but once you stayed after they continued to smoke near you and completed their smoking, and then smoked a second cigarette, unless you were being restrained and prevented from leaving, then you were not being victimized. Once you chose to remain, you are stubbornly victimizing yourself. It is your choice to be offended when it is easy enough to walk away. Smoking is legal, and there are no stand your ground laws concerning it. If you were legitimately being victimized and you had the ability to move away, if you were rational, that is exactly what you would do. It would be similarly absurd for the smoker to be offended that you stayed within their secondhand smoke. You are in charge of you and not of them.
It also doesn’t change the fact that I am annoyed that I have to leave the area I otherwise desired to be in when someone else decides to smoke.
In most of the US smoking near the entrance to a public building is in fact illegal.
If I am waiting under an awning for an Uber in the rain and you decide to light up, you are an obnoxious, asshole, scofflaw who is actively harming me. Despite the fact that I choose to accept that harm rather than stand in the damn rain.
Generally speaking, (here) smoking is forbidden in most indoor-ish spaces - which is the only reason smoking is anywhere close to the same level of nuisance as drunk people. Note that the same people that would enforce "no smoking" can also do something about the "practically unbearable" drunk person. And in outdoor-ish spaces, you can often avoid being affected - except in e.g. restaurants, where someone chain-smoking on the neighbor table can ruin the evening.
It's extremely common.
> Smoking is also much more obnoxious
I'm not sure I've ever disagreed more with a claim than I do this one. People who have consumed alcohol are practically unbearable to the sober. And that's before we get into stuff like the fact that alcohol is implicated in some staggering percentage of all violent crime. Or drunk driving. Etc, etc.