I’ve wondered about it for years. When the entire establishment and media seem to be against something, chances are, it’s probably good for you.
Keoni Galt puts his finger on it in a post worth sharing:
Two things we must consider first and foremost – one, their may or may
not be a significant difference between cigarette smoking versus cigar
and pipe smoking (the difference between inhalation and puffing of tobacco smoke on health); and two, natural/organic tobacco versus “Big Tobacco” grown with possibly radioactive fertilizers and adulterated with a host of additives that may or may not be the real reason why Big Tobacco cigarettes may be what is really harmful to human health…not tobacco itself. This is a topic I’ve covered before:
“There are over 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke and at least 69 of those chemicals are known to cause cancer.”
Oh wow…so you’re telling me that if I took a seed from a natural,
organic tobacco plant, and grew it in my yard, and than harvested the
leaf, dried it and smoked it, I’d be ingesting industrial chemicals like
cadmium, formaldehyde, arsenic, toluene, hexamine, and methanol?
Somehow, I don’t think so.
So the real question here is this: Is the tobacco plant itself a cancer
causing agent in the human body, or is the fertilizers and/or additives
put into the tobacco by the Big Tobacco producers?
I know what I think about that particular topic.
But how about taking it a step further, and consider the idea that not
only is tobacco smoking possibly not bad for you at all, but actually
quite beneficial to health and longevity?
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Just as the whole “saturated fat gives you heart disease” paradigm is being disproven, and the idea that exercising during pregnancy is dangerous has gone out the window, I think one day it’ll be obvious that tobacco isn’t and never was the demon we’ve made it out to be. The danger of tobacco, in my opinion, are completely and utterly overrated.
13 responses to “Everything You Know About The Dangers Of Tobacco Is Wrong”
Having just lost my Mom to COPD (she was a smoker for 60 years) my first thought when I read this post was ~ "Are you crazy, of course it's bad for you!". But I completely get the message here. I'm all for legalizing medical cannabis too (and I don't smoke, nor do I plan on smoking it). But that's another topic up for major debate. :-)
Yes. There's a big emotional tie-up for a lot of people.
If smoking is blamed for someone's death… then those that person left behind will always blame smoking, even if that wasn't a primary cause. And again, there's a strong division between the factory-created chemical-laced comfort sticks that are cigarettes… and good tobacco as a natural herb.
It's good of you not to immediately jump into "NO WAY!" mode. I can totally appreciate your thinking.
Wooah, I’ve never seen Hawaiian Libertarian referenced by anyone else, interesting the paths that cross. Saw you like Vox and Owen Benjamin too somewhere. I agree that it’s not the tobacco, it’s the poison sprayed on it.
Back in college we had a rabid anti-smoker prof who taught the health class we were forced to take. I did my final paper on the "ten hidden health benefits of smoking". He of course gave me an automatic F but couldn't fail me in the class because of my overall grade. I eventually got his grade overturned in an appeal. I remember that even back then there were some questions about some the assumed effects.
Smoking greatly increased focus abilities and decreased accidents when doing repetitive labor. It increased circulation and in some cases decreased blood pressure and heart rates. There were some other points which I have forgotten but it seemed to me that the trick of course was in not over using tobacco.
Personally I have always wondered how so many can be such rabid anti-smokers yet be fine with pot use. I find tobacco smoke rather pleasant smelling where as the pot is just Ode de skunk.
Aren't colleges supposed to be the place for wide-open thinking and questioning? Heh heh.
I agree with you on the smell. First time I ever smelled pot was at a concert when my date pointed it out. Weird, sick-sweet smell. Maybe it tastes better than it smells?
Hey David, did you bring some tobacco seeds down? I need to shift through all those seeds and check. Not sure about growing tobacco for the smoking (cough, cough) part, but I'd sure like to give a few insects a whiff of the leaves.
Hmm… I don't know if I did. Maybe. They might be in some half-inch or so papery pods. The seeds inside are only a little bigger than dust motes.
Wow! You have stirred up so many thoughts in my brain, it's about to explode. So I will spare y'all and just say, "Great posts!"
I worked with someone who's family worked as tobacco farmers for many generations.His grandad told him when he was young that something changed around W.W.II. with how tobacco affected people.His extended family had always chewed,used snuff,or smoked in moderation without harmful side affects,But after the war, cancer and other bad side affects started to occu and were blamed as a result of tobacco use.
I just quit smoking a little over two years ago after smoking for 20+ years. I have found since then that if I smoke high quality tobacco cigarettes, then I can smoke on occasion (at camping events, at bars, probably 10 cigarettes a month) and I still don't want one on a regular day. Maybe what is causing all the health problems (in addition to the tons of chemicals sprayed on tobacco and the general low quality in cigarettes) that the problem is that we're smoking TOO MUCH.
Robin Hanson has written a lot about this. I think that his final position is that smoking is bad for your health but not nearly as bad as the anti-smoking activists say.
From the link above:
So we don’t have clear evidence that smoking kills on net; it could be that most or all of the death-smoking correlation is due to selection effects, and not smoking causing death. Experts say there is a substantial causal component, and for now I’m accepting that claim, but this lack of clear evidence is suspicious, and disturbing. Now for some details.
Good article, Viidad…and thanks for the linkage!
I've been considering trying to grow my own…when I order some seeds, I will certainly be coming back here to read up on growing your own!
Aloha,
VFM *0223
You bet – I read every post you put up. VFM #0156