I think also that developing software has no health benefits, none, but only as a counterpoint I do not wish to argue. The better argument is that something is deadly, not that something has no health benefits.
What I do wish to argue is that the author failed to recognize the difference between tobacco, and what is in nearly all manufactured cigarettes, that is killing people. What is killing people is that most smokers are not smoking tobacco, but half-tobacco, half recorrugated garbage off the floor made into a paper before shredding and infused with additives like 300 carcinogenic chemicals intended to increase the addictiveness of nicotine and smoking.
Pipe tobacco is just plain old tobacco, with no additives but water. Pipe smokers don't seem to suffer the fates of cigarette smokers.
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. [1]
Among the pipe smokers.... The US mortality ratios are 0.8 for non-inhalers and 1.0 for inhalers. [2]
This means pipe smokers who inhale live as long as nonsmokers, and pipe smokers that don’t inhale live longer than non-smokers.
I don't really want to criticize the author, who is merely expressing frustration and compassion and attempting to persuade smokers to quit and non-smokers to never start. But his beef is not really with natural tobacco. Big Tobacco (with their chemical death sticks) is the enemy here.
"Even if you don't inhale, you can get cancer from smoking pipes and cigars. People who smoke cigars regularly are 4 to 10 times more likely than nonsmokers to die from cancers of the mouth, larynx, and esophagus." [1]
"Between pipe and cigarette smokers, no or only minor differences were found in mortality from any cause and the specified smoking-related diseases. Pipe smoking is not safer than cigarette smoking." [2]
Not sure if pipe smoking is a better alternative. Would love to hear your thoughts on what I've shared.
The trouble here is that I can't see actual paper in [2], cigars don't enter into it, and that the study I referenced, and subsequent studies, show that what causes cancer is carcinogens, which are intentionally addrd by Big Tobacco to increase addictiveness. The fact is everyone has cancer, but we're not all sick because we naturally slough off cancer cells. Is anyone particularly aware of cancer rates in Native Americans from the 1300s to the 1940s? Why aren't we? Probably because they were low enough to be noise against the natural occurrences of cancer.
Smoking anything can cause emphysema, and I wasn't ever making a claim that smoking is healthy or safe, so there are some straw man fallacies present in your reply. What I was drawing attention to is that cigarettes are not tobacco, and that due to the intentional infusion of 300+ known carcinogens [1], it is no wonder it kills so many people every year. I don't have any references, but I expect before the chemical revolution in the 1950's, smoking cigarettes didn't kill remotely as many people.
> Pipe smokers don't seem to suffer the fates of cigarette smokers.
Oh yes they do. See eg [1]. Also logically, both are inhaling smoke from burning organic matter. There is no way it is not going to be very unhealthy, once you look at the chemical composition of the smoke.
[1] Between pipe and cigarette smokers, no or only minor differences were found in mortality from any cause and the specified smoking-related diseases. Pipe smoking is not safer than cigarette smoking.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20952559/
According to the US Surgeon General report I cited, my statement is true.
> Also logically, both are inhaling smoke from burning organic matter.
No, that is my point. At least half of what is in national brand cigarettes is not organic. [1]
> There is no way it is not going to be very unhealthy, once you look at the chemical composition of the smoke.
Since I made no mention of health, this is a straw man. Please take better note of what my claim is, which concerns mortality, not health. But yes, the chemical composition of cigarette smoke is terrifying, though there is confusion here. Cigarettes are not tobacco, and what is in (nearly all) cigarettes is not natural tobacco.
Regarding your endnote, what you are (effectively) claiming is that the infusion of 300+ known carcinogens in cigarette tobacco has no effect on mortality, which is absurd on its face. Also, it is possible to likely that popular pipe tobaccos have in the last 45 years changed to include these carcinogens. If so, these participants were not smoking natural tobacco, and the study says nothing whatsoever about smoking natural tobacco.
So please produce a study showing the differences in mortality rates between smokers of national brand cigarettes (which since the 1950's chemical revolution or thereabouts have intentionally added carcinogens [1]) compared to mortality rates of smokers of unadulterated natural tobacco, as in tobacco that is merely grown, dried and smoked without any processing.
> what you are (effectively) claiming is that the infusion of 300+ known carcinogens in cigarette tobacco has no effect on mortality, which is absurd on its face
It's not absurd once you account for the already present carcinogens from burned plant material. And even smokeless tobacco (chewing etc) causes oral, oesophagus, and pancreas cancer.
What is in national brand cigarettes is not tobacco, but a product made from tobacco that is almost entirely unlike tobacco. Tobacco is put in a vat, the nicotine is extracted, a mash is made into which nicotine is infused at higher levels than in natural tobacco, and 300+ known carcinogens are added called additives, from the mash a paper is made, the paper is sliced into little pieces, this is mixed with cut stems, whatever fell on the floor, and previous recycled product that was never sold, all stuffed into paper.
Natural tobacco, on the other hand, is grown, dried, and sold. Sometimes water is added.
Your claim is both products are equally lethal. If smoking pipe tobacco (which as I have always seen it sold, is natural tobacco, easy to tell by looking at it) is just as bad as smoking cigarettes, then adding 300+ carcinogens to cigarettes has no ill effects. This is what is absurd, because, of course adding 300+ carcinogens is going to make the product more lethal. The 300+ carcinogens is the reason why 400K Americans die every year do to smoking-related illness. Prior to the 1950's chemical revolution, the mortality rate of smokers did not even begin to approach this number. Beginning in the 1950's is when smokers started dying en mass every year.
There is a massive difference between natural tobacco and what is in cigarettes. The latter is lethal, the sole cause of the high mortality rates of smokers. The former is merely unhealthy. Pipe smokers that inhale live as long as non-smokers, and pipe smokers that do not inhale live longer than non-smokers. That's what the US Surgeon General report says.
I don't care about some chemicals that go into American cigarettes. I am not American and I don't smoke. I only know people died from lung and other cancers or copd on a massive scale long before anything was added to tobacco. I objected to your claim that
"Pipe smokers don't seem to suffer the fates of cigarette smokers", because of course they do. One of my uncles died of aggressive lung cancer and he smoked natural tobacco from a pipe. Smoking tobacco will not be healthy even if it is the most bio organic tobacco available.
Some believe that this is why replacements that contain only nicotine (e.g. nicotine gum and patches) aren't really all that effective as smoking cessation aids.
What I do wish to argue is that the author failed to recognize the difference between tobacco, and what is in nearly all manufactured cigarettes, that is killing people. What is killing people is that most smokers are not smoking tobacco, but half-tobacco, half recorrugated garbage off the floor made into a paper before shredding and infused with additives like 300 carcinogenic chemicals intended to increase the addictiveness of nicotine and smoking.
Pipe tobacco is just plain old tobacco, with no additives but water. Pipe smokers don't seem to suffer the fates of cigarette smokers.
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. [1]
Among the pipe smokers.... The US mortality ratios are 0.8 for non-inhalers and 1.0 for inhalers. [2]
This means pipe smokers who inhale live as long as nonsmokers, and pipe smokers that don’t inhale live longer than non-smokers.
I don't really want to criticize the author, who is merely expressing frustration and compassion and attempting to persuade smokers to quit and non-smokers to never start. But his beef is not really with natural tobacco. Big Tobacco (with their chemical death sticks) is the enemy here.
[1] https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/tobacco/nnbbmq.pdf No. 1103, p.112
[2] ibid., No. 1103, page 92