[cmrdporcupine]

I enjoy the plant. I grow it in my garden for the beautiful scented flowers, and then I dry it or buy higher quality pipe tobacco and smoke it in my pipe in the summer and fall. Or a nice cigar when I'm on vacation in a warm place.

The industrial cigarette product.. yeah that's something else. Gross.

But I don't see how the two can be reasonably separated from each other, though, and how you can realistically police cigarette consumption. You'll just end up with a black market.

Seems like the current approach in western countries of high taxation and intensive education and regulation is (slowly) working.

[ivanhoe]

In many countries it's illegal to grow tobacco on your own, while it's perfectly legal to buy the industrial product - because government wants their tax money - and I think that's also the reason why the tobacco industry is not more regulated. It's still a huge money not just for the manufactures, but also for governments, and you don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

[jonsen]

So that's the real reason tobacco taxes rise; the number of smokers decline.

[63]

You've hit upon the article's exact thesis.

[cmrdporcupine]

Not really, I read the article and saw the thesis, and I took exception to the "tobacco has no benefit", hence what I was saying about the beauty of the plant and the pleasure of some of the product. Many things have no benefit when taken from that same angle of medical analysis. The tobacco plant has benefits like many other pleasures, and a long social history on this continent of North America and in this region, among the people who were here before my people.

Despite people's dubious health claims about anti-oxidants and resveratrol, wine also has "no benefit" when taken from this angle. Alcohol generally, beyond its anti-septic/cleansing properties. But it has at least a 10,000 year history of pleasurable and social use, like tobacco.

It just has to be taken in the right context and the culture around it one of education and management of risks and context.

[63]

>"So there is the conundrum: tobacco has no benefit, yet it can’t be outlawed. So, as a society, and as health care professionals specifically, we are driven to what remains for us to use as tools for smoking cessation: rational or emotional arguments, structured cessation programs, drugs, patches, e-cigarettes and gum, among others. And these are working, albeit slowly."

>"But I don't see how the two can be reasonably separated from each other, though, and how you can realistically police cigarette consumption. You'll just end up with a black market.

Seems like the current approach in western countries of high taxation and intensive education and regulation is (slowly) working."

The above conclusion in the article and your conclusion in your comment are identical was all I meant.

[cmrdporcupine]

Ok, fair.