[beloch]

"Our governments collect $2.81 billion in tobacco sales taxes federally (2), which is >1% of all federal government spending in 2013 (3) ... However, the direct and indirect cost of lung cancer, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Canada is $12.0 billion (2012 figure), of which smoking is considered to be the number one cause (4). That’s not a good trade-off, even if you only consider it economically."

Tobacco sales taxes show up in the current fiscal year, while chronic respiratory health costs show up decades down the road. Governments tend to be better than corporations at prioritizing long-term concerns over short-term accounting. However, there is substantial demographic that opposes regulations on narcotics. Specific ones, at least.

Look at how popular legalizing cannabis was in Canada over the last decade. Smoking pot is the most popular form of delivery for that narcotic and it's likely going to prove to have many of the same long-term consequences as smoking tobacco. Nonetheless, Canada legalized it. Doctors raised concerns and were ignored. The public willed it, and politicians don't stay politicians by ignoring the public's will.

Why do we still permit tobacco use? Because politicians have the power to prohibit it, not doctors.

Perhaps the doctors espousing prohibition don't have the right of it either. Narcotics have been a part of human existence across the globe for all of recorded history. Although many people successfully abstain from them, narcotics seem to fill a basic human need.

Research on safe, enjoyable recreational drugs is virtually nonexistent. Perhaps we should focus on filling that human need while minimizing the side-effects. To put it another way, with all the medical and pharmacological advances we've made in the last century, does it really make sense that people are still sucking on burning leaves to get high?

[retrac]

> The public willed it [...] because politicians have the power to prohibit it, not doctors

At face value you seem to be arguing for a medical technocracy to replace democracy.

Pre-legalization I expected the government to strongly discourage /smoking/ cannabis. Edibles and sprays and non-combusting vapes would be emphasized. But nope, my local cannabis shop prominently sells rolling papers and bongs. You can buy pre-rolled joints ready to go from the government distributor directly.

I feel this aspect of legalization was handled poorly. The public wanted legal cannabis. Our politicians should have done so while emphasizing harm reduction. They talked about it but perhaps unsurprisingly it didn't really materialize.

[Mavvie]

I may be in the minority here but my family hasn't smoked any pot since legalization. It's now so much easier and safer to get edibles, why smoke it?

[k12sosse]

The prohibition of the sale of cigarettes, ready to smoke, would be a good start. Treat it like weed, buy it loose-leaf, roll your own.

That way people still have their freedom and it's not so easy to "just have another one" when you're a kid.

Also since legalization, I've eaten more weed than I smoke, the freedom to grow means I have surplus to bake with and experiment with. My inhalation is near 0. (Smoked weed and cigarettes for 18 years).

Stopped smoking cigarettes thanks to "vaping" and weed thanks to "baking".

Just because people are allowed to have it doesn't mean we should let them buy 25-packs, ready to go.

[brnaftr184]

Honestly, you might be right. The way that pre-Colombian societies used it was totally different than the methods Europeans adopted upon introduction. And this is kinda interesting because the native cultures had thousands of years of experience with this stuff, and Europeans, even now, have about 500. Now as for scientific rationalism being applied in those communities, nobody can really say, so an argument positing that they did some actuarial science over the subject in such a long trial may or may not be spurious, but the long-range experiment being conducted may well have yielded plain and visible results. Maybe there was a reason they hadn't adopted alternative methods.

"Everything from effigy pipes topped by exquisite animal carvings (used to smoke a variety of tobacco strong enough to induce trance-like states" Graeber, via Goodman et. al - Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology

Evidently the Amerindians smoked high doses from pipes, enough to induce a trance-like state. Having made use of pre-rolled filtered Tobacco extensively, I'd surmise they were either using it infrequently, or making themselves use it infrequently. In the first case, they show enough self-restraint to forego daily use, which allowed them to remain sensitive to the drug. In the latter case, they frequently poisoned themselves by indulging in a very high level of consumption - I suspect this would discourage frequent use as the side effect tends to be nausea and sudden onset anxiety. Of course, my perspective on this is limited, as my exposure is largely (near-exclusively) that of commercially treated tobacco with its various additives and mode of transport - paper. They were smoking I imagine largely unprocessed tobacco out of pipes.

Altering the cultural fabric of smoking itself might actually yield better outcomes. I'm not so interested in the topic as to find statistical demonstrations, but I suspect at least a portion of the damage that smokers can be directly attributed to the physical characteristics of the smoke, and the frequency of use. Cooler smoke inhaled through a pipe constructed with a conductive material like ceramic or stone done for ritual purposes might well yield a better social outcome than what our current smoking modality does without infringing on human rights and wholly eschewing the use of tobacco and all of its cultural complement.

Something to think on in any case.