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by ChrisLomont 1463 days ago
>To have a fair discussion I think we should compare to other substances we legally consume.

To have a fair discussion you should compare both the costs and benefits of an item, not just a simplistic downside that is not even at that simplicity equivalent. Comparing damage from nicotine to the damage of sugar while ignoring that sugar is also necessary for human life shows the problem with your line of reasoning.

1 comments

I don't think this is the argument you want to be making. Sugar comes out on top for overall healthcare costs incurred over a more or less nootropic a notch above caffeine.

I swear we could cut down on 80% of the comments in this thread if people took a minute to learn that essentially all the health risks from smoking are the result of combusting plant material and not the effect of nicotine.

Moving the goalposts to costs and smoke doesn't change sugar is required for life, nicotine is not. It doesn't change that unrequired nicotine does have significant bad health effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/