Just How Dangerous Is Smoking Really?

Spokey

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"IFLS, as long as it's very polemic and not really science so I can shout down people with doubts about the supplied evidence." Isn't as catchy I suppose.
 

Jib

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I've been smoking cigars infrequently for a couple years. And when I say infrequently I mean probably one every couple weeks on average, sometimes would go months without going near one.

I recently started experimenting with cigarettes. And by recently I mean the past week. I've smoked a total of maybe 4 cigarettes through inhaling, and maybe 3 or 4 more just puffing on them, like I would a cigar. When I'd puff them, I would just load pipe tobacco into it instead. (e.g. Prince Albert Cherry Vanilla, Middleton Apple, etc.) Seemed to work fine.

I have thumb hypoplasia on my left hand (I pretty much can't use it for anything) and while I could learn how to roll with one hand....pretty damn hard. I got a rolling machine and it didn't work, and trying to hand-roll with hemp paper was a disaster.

So I use filter tubes (just picked up some Gambler filter tubes), fill them myself with a machine, using American Spirit organic tobacco. I lost my pipe, and I never could keep the damn thing lit anyway (even packing it loose, then tighter, then tightest, lighting it, tamping it down, re-lighting it, etc. -- I would watch videos and kept trying and trying but never got the hang of it)....

I use a permanent TarGard filter system too.

Anyone have any opinions on the TarGard permanent filter system?


A massive amount of tar builds up in this thing, even after one cigarette. I really like using it, especially since I tend to get the filter wet from saliva, which is gross, so having the TarGard as a holder is nice on top of the extra filtering it does via the Venturi principle.

Also, any takes on pipe tobacco? I actually enjoy pipe tobacco stuffed into a cigarette filter tube, with the TarGard filter on the end. Very pleasant smoke and in my experience from smoking cigars before, the TarGard seems to cut some of the 'bite.' It's a very pleasant smoke with just as much aroma and flavor but less harshness. Of course with a normal cigar you can't use the TarGard. With tipped cigarillos you could pull the tip off and replace the TarGard but the TarGard is meant to fit over filtered cigarettes.

I only intend on using cigarettes/cigars occasionally. Same with how I drink. It never got out of control.

If drinking can be good in moderation, why couldn't smoking?

I've also had a history of addiction issues (mostly behavioral -- compulsive masturbation to porn, and self-mutilation -- very similar to the rhesus monkeys in Harlow's experiments that were socially isolated)

...and I'm convinced, through my personal experience, of the "Rat Park" theory -- that addictive substances aren't as addictive as they're alleged to be, and it's more the underlying stressors that drive addiction. For example, rats in an isolated cell will drug themselves into oblivion, given the chance. Rats in the "Rat Park" with plenty of socialization and healthy interaction and stimulation choose to indulge much less in drugs, some even VOLUNTARILY going through withdrawal symptoms, because being in a good environment made the drugs that much less appealing.

Is it COMPLETELY UNREASONABLE to include light, occasional smoking as a part of a healthy lifestyle? Is that really such an extreme position to take?

If so many people have accepted that drinking in moderation is actually healthy, why not smoking? Is there any kind of equivalent to the 2-3 drinks a day recommendation? And if smoking IS beneficial to some degree, where is the point of diminishing return?

Completely blacklisting drinking and smoking reminds me of raw vegans blacklisting cooked food -- just seems extreme to me. People are so cautious about drinking and smoking, with drinking they'll list some benefits but heavily encourage people, "If you don't drink, don't start drinking to get any alleged health benefits."

Come on. Like a double shot of Maker's Mark is going to kill you on the spot. With smoking it's even worse. A quick Google search led me to some articles about how light, social smoking is JUST AS DANGEROUS as heavy smoking.

How does that make ANY sense at all? That's like saying having a shot or two of liquor every night is JUST AS DANGEROUS as binge drinking every night.

There's a lot of fear and propaganda. Let me be clear here: there is no doubt in my mind that over-indulging in alcohol, and over-indulging in smoking, are both EXTREME health hazards.


"The Dose Makes the Poison"
is a saying that most likely applies here. I would actually advise anyone to just go out, get a cigar or an organic cigarette, light it up and smoke it. ONE. ONE TIME. And see how you feel. Notice that you don't die. Also notice any adverse reactions. What you like and what you don't like. But most importantly that YOU ARE IN CONTROL...

...and know that you have NO OBLIGATION to try it ever again if you don't want to. But it's a good experience to just get over the hump of doing it if you never have.

Being raised in a puritanical household, I was scared to death the first time I smoked a cigarillo. Same thing with the first time I ever did anything with a girl. Both in my early 20's. I remember when I was a teenager having a panic attack because I thought I had to tell the priest that I masturbated. I thought I was going to have to keep it as a deep, dark secret and I would eventually die and go to hell because I'd touched myself in a sexual way.

Can smoking be dangerous? Sure. Is the propaganda surrounding how evil it is on similar levels to the proposed evils of masturbation? Sure. I've even read that smoking has been referred to as "Masturbation of the lungs." Go figure. Heh.

Now one thing I'm interested in: what's the safest way to smoke? What resources are the most natural, additive-free for filling, rolling, lighting, and filtering? And inhaling vs. not inhaling, e.g. aromatic pipe tobacco vs. regular cigarette tobacco?

And is it similar to drinking in that it can have benefits as long as it's kept in moderation? And is this really such an extreme position to take based on the actual information we have about the health effects of smoking, or is the only reason it seems extreme because of very strong and deeply ingrained emotional/cultural biases against smoking?
 

jyb

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Jib said:
I
And is it similar to drinking in that it can have benefits as long as it's kept in moderation? And is this really such an extreme position to take based on the actual information we have about the health effects of smoking, or is the only reason it seems extreme because of very strong and deeply ingrained emotional/cultural biases against smoking?

Look at how people feared butter and red meat and thus embarked on high pufa consumption for health. Some people are still very scared before putting butter on toast, they'll tell you it they may get a heart attack half jokingly, before opening the margarine and not risk it.

So, yes, it's perfectly possible that there are gigantic cultural biases.

The potential benefits of some components like nicotine are undeniable. It's more a matter of knowing what are the drawbacks of tobacco or nicotine, if and when the benefits are worth it, at what dose, etc.
 

tara

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I'm not going to address everything in your post, but I want to respond to a number of points that I think don't make strong arguments at all for the safety of tobacco or cigarettes. I have not made and am unlikely anytime soon to make an exhaustive review of the literature.

RichardWhite said:
Nicotine has powerful effects on concentration and cognitive ability, so much so that smokers are not only able to perform better after a smoke, but better than non-smokers overall (individual exceptions occur, no doubt). The downside is when they are smokers but are deprived of a smoke, their cognitive ability becomes worse than a non-smoker.

This looks like a net negative to me. But maybe some people could reasonably choose the boost for a limited time for a particular purpose, and with awareness that there are costs as well as benefits.

RichardWhite said:
Secondly, whilst there are chemical additives, they make up a minute amount of the cigarette: most artificial chemicals and additives constitute 0.0001% of the cigarette. Given the size and weight of a cigarette, it is very obvious that 0.0001% amounts to practically nothing. To give a more accurate example, in the brand Marlboro Red there are 0.035 milligrams of flavourings – both natural and artificial – per cigarette. Smoking twenty cigarettes a day still only produces 0.7 mg, not even one thousandth of a gram. To put this into context, the Queen’s nose on a British coin weighs a gram, yet it is over a thousand times more than the natural and artificial flavourings present in a cigarette.

Some chemicals are bioactive in very small amounts. Substances which have hormonal signalling effects, eg estrogenic substances, can have effects in very small quantities (ie for some substances 0.7mg etc is not 'practically nothing'). I don't know exactly what applies for all the chemicals in cigarettes, but for another context, consider T3, which a healthy body produces at a rate of 3-4mcg/hour (75-100mcg/hr). Many drugs and poisons have effects at less than 0.5mg/day, especially if they accumulate.

RichardWhite said:
Furthermore, there is not a single ingredient in tobacco products that is not approved for use, nor is there a single chemical or additive that we do not get from other sources including food and water. Ammonia, for example, is present in fertilisers

I don't think you'll get far here arguing that 'it's been approved for use so it must be safe'.
Lots of things are approved for various uses that are not healthy to eat or inhale. I certainly am not in the habit of either eating or inhaling fertiliser if I can help it. Nor rat or fly poison, which is also approved for use.
Even amongst things that are generally regarded as safe for consumption in food, I think you will find a lot of people here avoid a number of foods and food-like substances that have been demonstrated to be harmful. Have you read here about the care some people take to avoid soya lecithin in chocolate because of it's estrogenic effects? Or E407 (carrageenan) for its damaging effects on the digestive tract and subsequently other organs and systems? Some widely used food colourings are associated with metabolic disturbances for sensitive people. Canola oil is sold by the litre as food, and fish oil is promoted as a supplement, but there is clear evidence of their damaging effects.
See articles on raypeat.com/articles for a scientific take on some of these things.

RichardWhite said:
"A cigarette, on average, delivers 20-90 micrograms in mainstream smoke and up to 700 micrograms in side stream smoke. However, space heaters and gas ranges release 20,000–40,000 micrograms per hour. Formaldehyde is also used extensively in wood finish, glue, fabric coating, insulation, and many other places. In mobile homes, concentrations have been measured in excess of 5,000 micrograms per cubic metre."

Formaldehyde is clearly known to be poisonous, and many people get sick from overexposure for instance in new houses. The fact that you can get poisoned from other sources too doesn't make cigarettes safe.

RichardWhite said:
The main 'evil' we are told about smoking is that it causes lung cancer. Yet only around 10-15% of smokers contract lung cancer. Nowadays, with fewer smokers than before, non-smokers are contracting the disease more than smokers are - for decades the mantra of preventing and curing lung cancer is to stop smoking, and now swathes of people have been let down by the medical establishment because they've got a deadly disease and no idea how it happened.

Gee, only 10-15% get lung cancer? Oh, that's alright then, silly of us all to worry about it. Lol.
As you pointed out, there are lots of ways to get poisoned. There are lots of other industries that also operate by unethical means, externalising the costs of their products to society and the environment while internalising the profits. That doesn't make smoking safe.

Lung cancer is by no means the only 'evil' commonly associated with cancer. Breathlessness, smoker's cough, emphysema, and a number of other degenerative effects are commonly thought to be caused by smoking. As I understand it, these links are real.

RichardWhite said:
I think that CO is more of a theoretical harm from smoking - by which I mean, we know that CO can be lethal, and we know it's in cigarette smoke, ergo we can suffer ill effects from CO as a result of smoking. But I've not seen anything credible to support this. Given people have been known to smoke 100 cigarettes a day and not suffer anything close to carbon monoxide poisoning, I do wonder whether there's cause for concern for someone smoking 10 a day.

It's not just that carbon monoxide is known to be lethal in high concentrations, it's also that the mechanism of damage is well known: CO binds to haemoglobin in the place that would otherwise carry oxygen, so that less oxygen can be carried. Since insufficient oxygen supply is a major contributor to lots of degenerative diseases, we don't have to all suddenly drop dead from smoking a few cigarettes to think there are likely systemic degenerative effects from chronic low level CO inhalation. I don't know that that is the biggest problem with cigarettes - other factors may be more of a problem.

RichardWhite said:
This is where anti-smokers want it all their own way - smoking is bad because of the heat and smoke, apparently. Yet chewing tobacco is also dangerous...

Personally, I don't know, I've not studied chewing tobacco. I know to be sceptical though, because we live in a time where smoking and anything that looks like smoking is to be banned. For many of the people behind that agenda, it's better to demonise the entire plant.

I have not investigated this, and I don't know the stats. But I understand there is some evidence. (BTW, it's not just tobacco that can cause a problem if held in the mouth for an extended period.) I don't complain that people using chewing tobacco or snus are infringing anyone's right to relatively fresh air, but I suspect there are some risks associated with it. There may also be benefits, and I don't know how the pros and cons would stack up for any particular individual, or on a population basis.


RichardWhite said:
I dedicated an entire chapter to the low birth weight argument. My conclusion was simply this: "It is a commonly held view that pregnant women should not smoke because smoking is a cause of low birth weight. Once again, though, this is based on statistics and the idea that correlation means causation. As has already been established, the majority of smokers are from the lower social classes and those groups of people tend to be unhealthy, largely as a result of eating food of poor nutritional value. It is also an established fact that poor nutrition can lead to underweight babies." ...

Of course there are likely to be confounding factors in observational studies. Is it really the case that none of the many studies on smoking and pregnancy controlled for confounding factors such as socio-economic class, diet, an other relevant lifestyle factors, or published anything about such methodology? That would seem like an unusually high level of systemic incompetence, if it were the case. If the research is so poor (and I doubt it all has been been done or reported this badly - I think it more likely that the body of evidence is so large that you have not had time to go through it all), it still doesn't demonstrate that smoking is safe for pregnancy, given that there is other evidence of harm to general health.

RichardWhite said:
Whilst on the topic of smoking and pregnancy, the final word should come from Dr Richard L. Naeye, a leading obstetrical researcher who studied more than 58,000 pregnancies:
We recently found no significant association between maternal smoking and either stillbirths or neonatal deaths when information about the underlying disorders, obtained from placental examinations, was incorporated into the analyses. Similar analyses found no correlation between maternal smoking and preterm birth. The most frequent initiating causes of preterm birth, stillbirth, and neonatal death are acute chorioamnionitis, disorders that produce chronic low blood flow from the uterus to the placenta, and major congenital malformations. There is no credible evidence that cigarette smoking has a role in the genesis of any of these disorders.
I thought damage to and reduced blood flow through small blood vessels was one of the mechanisms of harm from smoking. Why was it so obvious to Naeye a few decades ago that it wouldn't increase the risk of difficulties in blood flow across the placenta?

RichardWhite said:
You mentioned going out before the smoking ban and being around smokers. We've all been there so we can relate to this. Did you ever see anyone die as a result of it? I never did. If you sat in a garage with a car running and the door shut you wouldn't take too long to die, yet hundreds of smokers can sit in an unventilated pub and remain alive. Maybe it stands to reason then that we're having more CO exposure by walking alongside a road than from tobacco? (Did you ever notice that a baby's pushchair puts their face almost perfectly level with exhaust pipes?)

Do I have to have watched someone die from arsenic or cyanide or any number of poisons to know that they are poisons? Many things can kill slowly at a low dose, or quickly at a high dose.

I agree that there is also a problem with car exhaust poisons. I think it would be good if these were also addressed. (I support measures to improve active transport infrastructure, efficient public transport options, and appropriate town planning, etc.)
As people are exposed to so many different systemic environmental poisons, it gets difficult to prove that any one of them was the sole causal factor in a particular persons death.
But that doesn't invalidate all the evidence pointing to the specific damage done by smoking.

RichardWhite said:
There's also glutathione, the body's metal detoxifier and antioxidant. A study found that cigarette smokers had 80% higher levels than non-smokers.

"It is also known that smoking doubles the levels of the vital detox enzyme catalyse which neutralises alcohol, cyanide, formaldehyde and toxic metals. The study examined the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalyse (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSHPx), in alveolar macrophages (AM) from cigarette smokers and from smoke-exposed hamsters. They found that 'the activities of SOD and CAT from AM of smokers and smoke-exposed hamsters were twice that found in control subjects (p less than 0.01).'"

Sometimes the body responds to toxins by ramping up the detoxification system (eg glutathione levels) to deal with the threat. Glutathione etc are very useful, but that a particular chemical results in increased levels of them doesn't demonstrate that those chemicals are good for you.

RichardWhite said:
The point here is that net positives from smoking far exceed nicotine improving concentration, and the vast disproportion between smokers and non-smokers goes a long way to suggest that the gap can't be closed just by eating better.
Agree that not all problems can be solved by nutrition. Where the limits to this might lie is not well tested, given the generally poor quality of widely available food and nutritional advice. I am not convinced that net benefits of regular smoking have been demonstrated; it still seems to me that for most people regular smoking would be a net negative.
I'm not going to argue with any septuagenarians who think that smoking keeps their mental faculties working better, as long as they are not causing me and other people suffering by it.

RichardWhite said:
Tobacco has been revered as a medical plant for millennia - maybe there's good reason for that.
I am quite willing to believe that there are some potential benefits for using it in particular ways for particular contexts. Doesn't mean tobacco or cigarettes are good for us all on an everyday basis. Lots of plants have useful medicinal properties that don't mean everyone would benefit from using them all the time. Lots of medicines have net benefit only in a limited range of conditions. Things that have traditionally been revered are often not traditionally considered suitable for everyday use.
 

Ben

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Smoking is unhealthy, period. Good response Tara, some people need to stop ignoring the facts and accept the truth sometimes.
 

RichardWhite

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Hi Jib, excellent post! You are absolutely right that saying light, occasional smoking is the same as heavy smoking is ridiculous - but that's what they want us to believe. In fact they tell us THIRDhand smoke is "as dangerous" as smoking. Totally undermines their entire argument.

To answer your questions:

1) Safest way to smoke - who knows. American Spirit in a pipe would be the most unadulterated, and a pack of regular smokes from the store is not great. As for inhaling or not, a statistical anomaly has been found a few times, that inhaling smokers get less lung cancer than non-inhalers.

2) Yes, it absolutely can have benefits, even without moderation (the argument of excess doesn't so much erase the benefits, it just introduces dangers)

3) The reason it seems extreme is because we've had a constant onslaught for decades that smoking is that dangerous. I saw a photo last week saying smoking caused back pain!
 

RichardWhite

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Ben said:
Smoking is unhealthy, period. Good response Tara, some people need to stop ignoring the facts and accept the truth sometimes.

And this, I'm afraid, is the emotional response that smoking almost always elicits. "We know it's bad, we've been told it's bad, end of." But that isn't even an attempt at looking at, understanding or arguing against any position.
 

RichardWhite

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Tara, great post and unfortunately I don't have the time to respond to each point just yet. But I will say this, quickly:

1) I didn't say 0.7mg was practically nothing.
2) I know that something being approved for use doesn't make it safe. I argue that exact point in my book.
3) I didn't say formaldehyde is safe because it is found elsewhere. The point is "the dose makes the poison" - if our exposure to something is much higher elsewhere, it's ludicrous to point out a single, small factor.
4) 10-15% of smokers getting cancer is actually a very big topic. It's not the same as the picture so many people believe exists, and leads to a very interesting topic of the difference between a cause and a factor.
5) CO - yes, you're right. But it's theoretical.
6) No you don't need to have seen cyanide poisoning to know it's a poison, but if you saw someone ingest it you would see them die. If you saw lots of people (especially over centuries) routinely ingesting it and not dying, you would not think of cyanide the same way we currently do.
7) Glutathione - sure, and you could argue the same with exercise, especially strong cardio and resistance.
8) Your last point is true, and not really in contradiction to anything I have ever said.

"That would seem like an unusually high level of systemic incompetence, if it were the case" - this right here sums up the anti-smoking tirade. Except it's not so much incompetence as it is planned deceit.
 

RichardWhite

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Such_Saturation said:

Indeed!
Seriously, if there was ever any evidence needed for someone to believe that the anti-smoking hysteria is not about health and not at all believable, that's it right there. Anything can be concluded in a study - and there have been smoking studies where the conclusion *contradicts* the actual results, but that's ok because no one reads the studies. Science by press release is commonplace too, which is where the 'researchers' will send a press release out with what they want people to believe; journalists don't have the time (and often lack the understanding too) to read the study, so just publish the results. If a correction is ever printed, it's never front page news like the original story, and so it gets the public believing what they want them to believe.
 

jyb

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barbwirehouse said:
The link between smoking tobacco and health problems is 100% supported by science.

The link between pufa and good health is 100% supported by science.
 
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jyb said:
barbwirehouse said:
The link between smoking tobacco and health problems is 100% supported by science.

The link between pufa and good health is 100% supported by science.

yippee.gif
 

magCarlsen

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Smoking is well-established and scientifically supported to be harmful but I can't see, say, a cigarette once a month causing much harm at all.

Now what's more of an interesting and controversial topic is, how harmful is nicotine?

Peat quotes on nicotine

In old people, a little nicotine can have a balancing effect, improving alertness, and probably protecting nerves, for example in the negative association with Parkinson's disease. But in younger people, its vasoconstrictive effect tends to promote the development of wrinkles in the skin, and I think it's likely to contribute to periodontal disease.

[NIACINAMIDE FOR STOPPING SMOKING] After middle age, nicotine isn't likely to become addictive, and in small amounts it has nerve protective effects. Some of those effects probably overlap with the nerve protective effects of niacinamide. I haven't experimented with nicotine or tobacco, but I think transdermal application is preferable to smoking; carbon monoxide and other serious toxins are produced by burning the tobacco.

He seems relatively... soft... on the substance when compared to the mainstream. :|
 
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And still the mainstream gives acetylcholinesterase inhibitors to ninety year olds. Very coherent of them.
 

jyb

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magCarlsen said:
Smoking is well-established and scientifically supported to be harmful but I can't see, say, a cigarette once a month causing much harm at all.

You just contradicted yourself with the quote from Peat mentioning some positive effects of nicotine. These beneficial effect of nicotine are very mainstream research. So, what do you mean by "well established"? I believe you are not informed on nicotine nor smoking. It's like people saying fish oil is great because there is a lot of good research on omega-3 without being aware of the debate.
 

magCarlsen

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jyb said:
magCarlsen said:
Smoking is well-established and scientifically supported to be harmful but I can't see, say, a cigarette once a month causing much harm at all.

You just contradicted yourself with the quote from Peat mentioning some positive effects of nicotine. These beneficial effect of nicotine are very mainstream research. So, what do you mean by "well established"? I believe you are not informed on nicotine nor smoking. It's like people saying fish oil is great because there is a lot of good research on omega-3 without being aware of the debate.

I didn't contradict myself at all. I said, beneficial effects of NICOTINE, there are WAY MORE COMPOUNDS IN TOBACCO that JUST nicotine.

You make it sound like Peat approves of smoking, he doesn't, in the slightest.

carbon monoxide and other serious toxins are produced by burning the tobacco

All smoke is carcinogenic. It's true that nicotine can be protective in some situations, and usually that's in older people. In those situations, it's best to use it orally or transdermally.

Mainstream science agrees with Peat.

Thousands of different chemicals in cigarette smoke, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzopyrene), formaldehyde, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), phenols, and many others contribute to the harmful effects of smoking.

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87.full.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084482/
 

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