every once in a while one of these nerds really swings for the fences pic.twitter.com/pWDayP5rSK
— soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) May 27, 2023
look, i get that most people who remember fascism and measles outbreaks are dead now, which is why so many people can get away with saying "they weren't so bad actually," but i will not accept this for fucking SMOKING https://t.co/3Va7hLDmos
— Josh Fruhlinger (@jfruh) May 26, 2023
I can understand ‘classic’ libertarianism — You are not the boss of me, ask any four-year-old — but ‘Left’ libertarians will forever be a mystery to me. The nanny state wants to deprive you of the chance to die horribly, just to support health insurers!
millions of lives saved over the 59 years since the surgeon general officially stated the position of the united states govt, that smoking kills people, reduced to a pseudo-left argument that private health insurance companies are the REAL beneficiaries of the war on tobacco
— Sam ??? (@SamtheNightOwl) May 26, 2023
building up the social stigma against smoking is probably the single most effective public health intervention in terms of years of life added since like the polio vaccine https://t.co/jsIIEs7bgw
— matt voted for brandon johnson (@questionableway) May 26, 2023
Good thing that tobacco companies aren't big business constantly trying to make smoking seem like a good idea because otherwise we might have to think he is not immune to propaganda!
— ????Surplus Cornbread???? (@SurplusCornbre1) May 26, 2023
If you tried to ban indoor smoking now, people on here would be getting 70k likes for calling it "neoliberal paternalism" that targets the "marginalized communities" and
— Black KOC (@BLACKMESSlAH) May 26, 2023
i am a smoker and am genuinely glad we banned this terrible shit indoors in the 90s before it was easy to organize mobs of antisocial losers with oppositional defiant disorder https://t.co/hkpTonsOmp
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 27, 2023
am very, very glad that open carry proliferation and anti-smoking laws did not really intersect
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 27, 2023
In HS and early college this stuff offended me because I was sure intelligence and the market would handle the stupidity. Ladies and gentlemen, I was wrong. So, so wrong.
— ***Sarcasmic continuum*** (@SarcasmoDeMiami) May 27, 2023
HumboldtBlue
California cops illegally share data with anti-abortion states, civil rights groups say
Alison Rose
I smoked in high school, but I quit a few months after I turned 18, and I’m glad I did…but I’ll admit, even now, for some fucking reason smoking still looks cool. I don’t know why we tend to think that, but there you go. But it’s gross and one good thing about never being able to leave my apartment is I don’t have to smell people’s cigarette smoke.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: Fuckers. And jeez, it’s not even limited to the areas of the state you’d expect. Marin cops??? Fuck outta here.
mrmoshpotato
The content of this post just confuses me. Good night.
Redshift
I was lucky in being allergic to cigarette smoke, so I could never stand to be around it, much less do it, no matter how cool it supposedly looked.
Redshift
@mrmoshpotato: Yeah, more than most, it’s hard to tell if any of what’s being responded to us real or just trolling.
opiejeanne
My dad smoked when I was a kid, and I was used to it but it caused damage to my lungs.. He quit smoking after my sister and I left home. i went off to college and my roommate was an ex-smoker who took it up again after a couple of months, and I felt I had to change roommates. I lived in California, so after the state banned it in restaurants and public places, it was a shock to visit another state where they still allowed smoking in restaurants, almost like a physical assault.
piratedan
@Redshift: I kind of get the sense that some people are just too addicted to their on-line “sea-lion” personas that they feel the need to be contrary about damn near everything just to show that they can.
Captain C
I smoked in college (a little in high school), and quit soon after at the age of 22; when I did, some of my idiot friends thought it was funny to blow smoke in my face, which was annoying as bleep but did mean I could deal with being in smoky places and not feel a craving. Then, about a decade or so later, give or take, AZ outlawed smoking in bars. I was prepared to be outraged on behalf of my smoking friends, and then had my first smoke-free night dancing. It was wonderful! So I said fuckem, this is the way to go.
Jay
Still smoke. Took it up in the day, when it was like self defence in the clubs and pubs.
Don’t smoke around other people, at all.
Trying to cut down, but it’s hard.
JWR
For anyone interested, here’s Sunday morning’s Background Briefing. (Soundcloud URLs lurk within.)
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose: The po-po are our homegrown Sturmabteilung. We learned that during the 2020 Police Riots. They rioted to show us that if they were not allowed to murder Black people at their whim, they would, they *would* fuck us all up. And for that, they weren’t punished in the slightest.
When Teh Fash take over the Federal government, they’ll be able to force states to stay in line simply by giving the signal to their Sturmabteilung. And the icing on the cake is that in every Blue city, in every Blue state, *we* are paying to keep those stormtroopers housed, fed, and trained.
And nobody is doing anything about it. It’s all “hope and a prayer” stuff: maybe it’ll all just work out fine.
MisterForkbeard
@Alison Rose: Marin cops have always been awful assholes, and the people I knew in Marin tended towards self righteous assholery. I’d believe it in a second.
boatboy_srq
@Jay: The tobacco companies have spent the last five decades making any reduction in consumption more difficult. By making the stuff more addictive, they’ve solidified their market, and now they can tell thebpeople they’ve deliberately hooked that they weree warned and their addiction is their own fault. Fight it.
notjonathon
A story from 55 years ago:
On the Bonanza set, I bummed a cigarette from Dan Blocker. Dan, Michael Landon and Lorne Greene all smoked the same brand as I did (you know, that one with the long cigarettes in a red package). We all used to bum cigs from one another when we didn’t happen to have easy access to our own.
“Thanks,” I said, “I haven’t had a smoke in three weeks, and I’m going crazy.”
Suddenly, the cigarette was rather violently jerked from my mouth. “I’m not gonna be the cause of your starting to smoke again.” I haven’t had a cigarette in 55 years, three months and 17 days.
Dan died of a heart attack at 44 (my father, a heavy smoker, died of a heart attack at 66). Mike Landon died of cancer at 54, and Lorne Greene died of cancer at the age of 63. I’m now an octogenarian, and I’ll always be grateful for that moment in 1968.
In times of stress, I used to dream that I had started smoking again, hiding behind my car so no one would know. That went on for at least thirty years.
sab
@notjonathon: Wow. What a story.
My mother smoked and my dad was a pathologist who taught a med school class on pulmonary pathology. Mom was only allowed to smoke in the kitchen by the exhaust fan and in the basement
ETA Mom tried to quit all her life and never managed it for more than a week or two. Mom didn’t die of cancer, but dad’s smoking sister did.
Joey Maloney
I blame Jimmy Carter for my smoking. I started smoking tobacco at college. It was around the time that Carter’s administration authorized the spraying of paraquat herbicide on the fields of Mexican marijuana that was then the bulk of what was sold in the USA. Deprived of my after-class (and before-class, and before-dinner, and after-dinner, etc.) joint and living with roommates who smoked tobacco, I started smoking to have something to do with my hands.
Smoked off and on for 20 years. Quit for good while in a long-term relationship with someone who was violently allergic. For awhile I tried the occasional cigar or cigarillo (hello, Swisher Sweets) and I liked them, but having to strip down on the porch and bag my tobacco-scented clothing before I was allowed in the house, and then head straight for the shower to get the smell out of my hair, quickly became too tedious. I haven’t had any tobacco since 1998-ish. It was another ten years before I stopped having smoking anxiety dreams.
Nowadays I don’t mind the smell in small doses but it doesn’t evoke the slightest bit of longing. Thank goodness.
Dangerman
I smoked two cigarettes in my life. Not sure I finished either one. The second cigarette was because I was SURE I missed something the first time around. Well, I didn’t, I tossed it, and the rest is history.
Only thing I’m really addicted to is coffee (and one motherfucker of a sweet tooth). I blame the quad shots I used to drink in Seattle. Now that got me going. Or a dark chocolate bar. Then I’m looking for rooms to paint again.
Maxim
When I was five years old, I was wandering around at a Little League playing field, momentarily unsupervised. I picked a cigarette butt up off the ground (I know, disgusting) and took a drag.
The violent, lengthy coughing that immediately ensued instantly and forever cured me of any attraction to smoking. Which is good, because as it turns out, I’m violently allergic to cigarette smoke. It would be a special kind of hell to be addicted to tobacco.
Maxim
A reference to Australia in the Ukraine thread reminded me of commenter … Aussie Sheila, I think the nym is? Haven’t seen anything from [her, presumably] for a while. I hope she’s okay.
Tony Jay
@notjonathon:
Now that is an anecdote.
If you have more, including one about a secret Fight Club that included most of the casts of Bonanza, The High Chaparral and I Dream of Jeannie as participants, (especially if Henry Darrow knocked out an over-confident Larry Hagman with a single punch and that time Barbara Eden drunkenly introduced Michael Landon to the feel of double-denim) I would very much like to put in a preorder for your memoirs.
RobertDSC-iPhone 8
Mom continues to smoke even after two triple-A surgeries. I was born with a host of physical problems because of her smoking.
I love her so much and am glad she just made it to her 73rd birthday, but it kills me inside to see her lighting up nowadays, not two months removed from the ICU.
JWR
I’d forgotten that I share a birthday with this scumbag. (From NBC)
Peace through negotiations, is it? Stunningly brilliant, Henri.
NotMax
Smoked non-filters in college (Chesterfields and occasionally English Ovals). In the back of a drawer somewhere is the little square sold brass flip-top pocket ashtray used to bring to classes. Switched to filtered cigarettes some years afterwards. Tried a pipe for a while but that’s too much dang work, eclipsing the bulk of the pleasure derived.
Strictly cigars for the past forty or so years. Aficionados turn up their noses at them but since the brand I previously swore by (Schimmelpenninck Duet Panatellas Grandes) became absolutely impossible to find anyplace at any price in the U.S. I favor only a select few brands of the little machine made filtered cigars the size and shape of a cigarette, except with a brown wrapper, as an everyday choice (not any of the awful fruity flavored ones, thenkyewveddymuch). ‘Real’ kind of cigars — or more often cigarillos — on special occasions. Whenever I do stop smoking people I know practically get down on their knees begging me to please, please, please start again. Heck, can barely tolerate being around myself at those times when I’ve given it up. Smoking calms the grouchiness and keeps me on an even keel like nothing else does.
Pete Downunder
Here downunder the sale of vapes (e-cigarettes) with nicotine is restricted to prescription only sales at pharmacies but that hasn’t stopped the tobacco companies from selling candy flavored vapes to kids loaded with nicotine. So far the governments (states and federal) are waking up to the problem but have not done bugger all to stop it despite it being clearly illegal. I suspect tobacco company money is there somewhere in the background. Oz has banned all tobacco advertising and smoking in public places, imposed sky-high taxes on tobacco products and required plain packaging with gruesome photos so the tobacco companies are trying to sneak in the back door to get the kids addicted.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Looks like I picked the wrong week to start smoking
Andrew Abshier
I’ve always said that the smartest thing I didn’t do was start smoking. In high school I had reverse peer pressure–I didn’t like my peers, so I didn’t emulate them–plus I was cheap and didn’t want to spend the money.
I’ve just outlived my father, who smoked for all of his adult life. He died badly of emphysema at age 63. I cheered every limitation placed on smoking. if it were up to me, I would ban it entirely.
Ten Bears
After many years and thousands of quits I’m down to five point five (5.5) a day, two packs a week
What really chaps my ass is the holier-than-thous who have no concept of what it is to deal an addiction that dates to the good old days (not quite seventy years ago). I’d like to lay hands on the so-called ‘scientists’, the ‘doctors’, who figured out how to addict me to something before I was born. Dig ’em up and burn them
Not sure that I’ll ever be able to quit, but I’ll be happy if I can get it down to less than five (5) …
NotMax
@JWR
He still escorting younger women around? (Except now they’re in their seventies.)
//
Rhythmic best wishes to you (but not to him).
Tony Jay
@JWR:
Belated happy birthday! Sorry you have to share yours with a malignant scumbag.
Now I’m waiting here for the usual media-friendly suspects to lambast Kissinger for his pro-Putin naivety. After all, the only narrative allowed to dominate in the UK is that any talk of a negotiated end to the Russian invasion is exactly the same thing as promoting Putinist supremacy and wanting Ukraine to be disarmed and crushed.
You’ll never make it as an Nu-Lab MP with that kind of talk, Henry, despite all of your other lip-smackingly odious qualifications.
NotMax
Oopsie doodle. Fix.
@JWR
He still escorting younger women around? (Except now they’re in their seventies.)
//
Rhythmic best wishes to you (but not to him).
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Obligatory?
;)
Joey Maloney
I’m just wondering what a benign scumbag would be like…
JPL
@JWR: Pretty sure you share a birthday with Marjorie Taylor Greene also .
Only the best
The Thin Black Duke
Cigarettes killed my father, both of my uncles and my favorite aunt. When I worked at the Worse Job I Ever Had, I was killing myself with Newport Menthols. I stopped the day I coughed up blood and scared the piss out of me. What’s horrifying is realizing that if they tried to implement a non-smoking policy in the country today, it probably wouldn’t happen.
NotMax
@Joey Maloney
Pick any character ever played by Gale Gordon.
:)
Narya
I quit my 2-3 packs/day habit when I turned 30 and realized I’d been smoking more than half my life. It’ll be 35 years in August. My dad’s COPD and bladder cancer, and the bladder cancer of an aunt and uncle, are/were almost certainly related to smoking. It IS hard to quit; I told myself that there was no problem that cigarettes made easier, which changed the question from whether I’d smoke to what I would do instead of smoking. That helped, a lot, but it is still an addiction.
notjonathon
@Tony Jay:
Well, I did write a script for Henry when I was on staff, but I never managed to mash together that many programs. It was all a long time ago, and in another incarnation of my life (I eventually ended up as a professor in a small Japanese college after taking a late PhD at UC Santa Barbara). When I lived in L.A. I kept saying to myself, why am I here, and it soon became obvious that the Hollywood life was not for me.
notjonathon
@Ten Bears:
There were campus reps who gave you a free carton of cigarettes–I had managed to stay tobacco free throughout high school in spite of smokers all around me, but that carton got me hooked. I smoked for nine years after that, and it took me several tries to quit. I did get dependent on Stimudents (I think that’s what they’re called) for a time.
Brachiator
Balloon Juice slow news time machine? Cigarettes and Henry Kissinger. Wow.
My favorite anecdote about smoking, from an interview with George Burns.
I grew up with the warnings about cigarettes, the Surgeon General’s report, and cigarette warning labels. Never smoked, but had one girlfriend who did. I thought some people in old movies looked cool smoking, but never confused that with real life.
I notice a fair amount of vaping among younger people. Does Henry Kissinger vape?
ETA. I recall some NYT old hand claim that one of the reasons that the Times initially got the Watergate story wrong is that they regularly had weekly off the record meetings with Kissinger and he assured them that Watergate was nothing.
Kirk
Forty, forty five years ago my dad sat the three of his aged 9 10 11 children down on the front steps of the little yellow house in goodland Kansas and made us all smoke what I later learned was the nastiest unfiltered he knew. He made us smoke at least a third, till we all three were puking our guts out and having trouble breathing.
At that point he’d been smoking over half his life and he didn’t want us starting the habit. It worked, none of us took up smoking.
He’s been gone a decade now, and after a lot of attempts managed to avoid smoking for the last decade of his 78 years. I miss him, I’m glad it stopped the habit before it began, but I still can’t decide if he was right or wrong to do it that way.
JWR
@Tony Jay:
@NotMax:
Thanks, guys. I just wish I’d waited a few more days before mentioning it, because I really hate any repetitive chorus of belated HBDs. Okay, I don’t really hate it, I just don’t care much for it. ;)
@JPL:
Oy, I’d forgotten about MTG. Maybe there’s something defective about May 27.
Frankensteinbeck
Me, I remember major pushback against cigarette and seatbelt laws from the “You’re not the boss of me” set, and being told in agriculture class – in the 90s – in college that tobacco was king and not going anywhere.
I also am completely infected with ‘smoking is cool’, but I refuse to start something I can’t control or quit. If they weren’t addictive, I am sure I would smoke some, but they are wildly addictive so fuck that, no first cigarette.
This thread only reinforces that decision.
lowtechcyclist
@notjonathon:
Hadn’t heard about that before, but it was well known that the cigarette companies generously supplied with cigarettes all of our GIs who went off to fight the Axis in WWII, thereby assuring themselves of a long-term clientele.
I was just shy of ten years old when the Surgeon General’s report came out in early 1964. Being a logical little kid, I went, “ok, no reason to smoke then” and never did.
It was definitely an addiction, but I didn’t realize how strong it was until they started banning smoking on airplane flights under X hours’ duration. People I knew were genuinely going, “how am I going to make it that long without a smoke?” That really opened my eyes about how powerful an addiction it was.
One of my earliest memories of flying is that before take-off, the stewardesses would pass out these mini-packs of three or four cigarettes to all the adults, and small packs of chewing gum to us kids.
lowtechcyclist
MAD Magazine had a great back cover about smoking once. It showed a conversation among headstones in a cemetery, referencing a certain ad campaign:
Headstone #1: “Winston tasted good like a cigarette should’ve!”
Headstone #2: “You mean, as a cigarette should’ve.”
Headstone #3: “What did you want, good grammar or good taste?”
Headstone #4: “I wanted to live a lot longer than this!”
catclub
@Alison Rose:
…marlboro man advertising, smoking in movies, cigarette advertising works.
JWR
@Frankensteinbeck:
And a sound decision it was! I’ve struggled off and on with the evil weed. I’d smoke for a few years, then quit for a few more, and I can remember the triggers that pushed me to start, and those that forced me into beating back the addiction. (Why would anyone have to be reminded about how difficult it is to quit?) Again, congratulations on one of the best decisions you’ve ever made!
Mousebumples
My dad did something similar with beer when I was 2 or 3. He gave me a sip of his beer, and I hated it. Not really tempted to do any underage drinking until college, and even then, I avoided the beer that was easier to gain access to. (and never tried to get a fake ID)
Now I know that my dad and I have very different taste in beer, so I’m not sure if his, “Here, try this” was an intentional way to get me to not drink beer or not, lol.
Re: quitting smoking, I believe I had learned once upon a time that it takes ~10 quit attempts before a smoker can stay quit.
To all current smokers who would like to quit, there are a number of drug options that may help. Chantix (varencicline) and Zyban (aka Wellbutrin or bupropion) can help with the addiction or craving component.
Good luck!
catclub
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
 
I think there may be benefits to starting smoking in your late 70’s or early 80’s. Nicotine does some things to attention and clarity.
Ohio Mom
@Jay: Good luck on quitting. It is hard, it’s horribly addictive stuff. Maybe just concentrate on cutting back. My aunt got herself down to two cigarettes a day.
Brachiator
@catclub:
How long has it been since cigarette ads were banned from mainstream television?
According to the CDC, about 11.5 percent of Americans smoke. Among people age 18 to 24, only 5.3 percent smoke. Huge correlation with education. College graduates are much less likely to smoke than those with less education. Something like 5 percent for college graduates vs 30 percent for those with a GED.
Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. But efforts to reduce smoking have been hugely successful.
JPL
@JWR: You show that’s not true.
BellyCat
Nicotine gets a bad wrap due to traditional carcinogenic delivery methods and is under-studied medically due to smoking prohibitions. Separate the tobacco from the nicotine and its fairly miraculous stuff. As NotMax said, it’s one of the few drugs that both calms and energizes. Also sharpens memory.
Never smoked in earnest but have been doing nicotine gum (initially) and nicotine mini lozenges (now) for sixteen years. Have stopped a couple times but feel like a dull crayon and am WAY less patient; so I revert back to it.
Lost a number of friends to smoking (COPD and cancer) and I figure it’s the sweeteners in the lozenges that will likely kill me — but at least my lungs will be OK?!?! (FYI: Walmart is half the price of big box stores)
Gvg
The thing about smoking is you are polluting the air for all the people near you. It’s not just you personal choice, it’s imposing on other people. I HATED smoke, grew up in a smoke free household. I also didn’t like conflict and usually said ok to get along. In my 20’s I started having allergy sinus issues and all kinds of things bothered me including people perfumes and smoke. So I would sometimes say yes I do mind. And friends would say OK and then a few minutes later start smoking. It was habit. Their hands did it. They would be really embarrassed when reminded but it would keep happening.
Florida banned smoking in public buildings in the 90’s. It was such a relief. Work was much better. They dithered over bars and restaurants for awhile with the bars predicting economic doom, but then….it actually improved business slightly. Turned out more people had been staying home than were upset at the ban. I would have been one of them if I weren’t just an introvert anyway.
Smoking areas inside don’t work. Smoke floats. Which gets back to why I say it’s not just your choice.
My sister the doctor has described some difficult conversations with smoking parents. Their minds don’t want to hear stop smoking and try to reinterpret what they are told to just very limited times. And then they don’t even do that. This is with children with breathing medical issues.
Sallycat
I started smoking when I was thirteen and quit cold turkey when I was sixty. I was in a bad mood for six months. I am certainly glad that I quit, but I still want a cigarette at times. Then I imagine what it would feel like in my throat, and the craving goes away. Remembering the awfulness of the withdrawal reminds me not to start. I’ve been tobacco free for over twelve years now and will stay that way.
Gvg
@BellyCat: nicotine is used as an insecticide and cigarette butts can kill pets if eaten. I assume the gum has a much lower dose, and as a matter of fact all meds can be toxic in too high a dose, almost anything can, but I’d be careful with nicotine.
lowtechcyclist
@BellyCat:
Until recently, there hasn’t been a much of a population of nicotine addicts who’d never smoked, so there probably wasn’t much call to study it. I expect the rise of vaping has changed that.
So AIUI, we don’t really know whether nicotine by itself it a harmless addiction, or whether some of the negative effects of regularly inhaling a burning plant were due to that drug itself. But presumably nicotine isn’t any less addictive all by itself than it was as a component of a burning plant, so it would still be the devil to quit if it turns out it’s harmful all by itself.
I can understand why persons trying to give up smoking turn to alternative nicotine delivery systems, because you do get rid of ‘tar’ and all that other crap in the burning plant, and no doubt that substantially reduces the bad health consequences. But if one has never smoked to begin with, why would one take a chance?
JWR
@JPL: Aw shucks! <blushing, moving dirt around with toe./>
;)
Benno
I’ve never wanted to smoke and much as I want to smoke since I moved to Karachi for work 10 years ago. I don’t, but ye gods the urge is powerful.
CliosFanBoy
Tried a few cigarettes while smoking in college in late 1970s. Woke up coughing one morning, thought “f this shit” and that was that.
Honus
I couldn’t believe it when Virginia, a tobacco state, banned smoking in bars and restaurants in 2009. There was a lot of talk about how the restaurant owners and staff would hate it because it would impact business. To the contrary, the staff, bartenders and waitstaff loved it because they didn’t have to breathe smoke for their entire shift.
A couple of years after the ban went into effect I went out to hear some live music in a local bar for the first time in a long while. (I had kind of gotten out of the habit while we were raising our kids) I remarked to a friend that it was surprisingly enjoyable, I hadn’t felt like shit the next day, and I might start going out more often. He said “that’s because there’s no smoking in the bars anymore. You don’t have to breathe smoke for three hours while you’re listening to the bands these days “
Of course you’d never get a ban done these days because of republican “freedom”
kalakal
Smoked for years, back in the day everybody seemed to, resteraunts, planes, buses. When you went into a pub the haze could be so bad you couldn’t see the far wall. Quit & lapsed dozens of times, tried gum, acupuncture. What did it for me was vapes, haven’t had a cigarette in 8 years. I use the ultra low nicotine, unflavoured juice, it’s actually hard to get unflavoured, but I liked smoking cigs, not guava and raspberry.
Now when I smell cigarettes it’s a real turn off.
The weirdest thing about smoking is smokers don’t realise how it smells, when you’re actually smoking sure it smells, but 5 minutes later you’re convinced there’s no smell whereas to anyone else…
I’d nip out the office, have a cig , glass of water and a mint and thought no one would ever know when I walked back in…
Butch
The casinos here are on Native American land; although you can’t smoke in the hotel sections, it’s allowed in the casinos. The few times I’ve gone I’ve wanted to incinerate everything I was wearing when I got home. I can’t stand the smell.
BellyCat
Not advocating that anyone *start* an addictive (and expensive) substance out of curiosity.
Rather, simply pointing out that (1) nicotine may actually offer genuine under/unstudied medical benefits for some, and (2) lozenges and gum are viable alternatives for those wishing to stop inhaling nicotine while retaining the benefit they enjoy if they do smoke.
To believe that all people smoke because *it’s cool* is an incomplete picture. Coolness may be how they started, but the reasons many continue, even in the face of overwhelming science (and loss of friends and family who smoked) may involve more complex factors, including beneficial stress management and an improved sense of well-being. In other words, conflating inhaling smoke and nicotine as one and the same (with both being perceived as one and the same and as being bad for a person) might be unfairly prejudicial to nicotine itself, which may offer medical benefits to some.
As to the question of dose, alternatives are available in 4 mg and 2 mg.
evodevo
@NotMax: Yep…Mr. Evodevo quit cigarettes in the Eighties, and the few times he tried cold turkey were awful…for everyone around him lol. He went to a pipe for 20 years, and then went to smokeless when he retired in 2000. Both his parents ended up dying from lung cancer, so he took the hint, but never could beat the nicotine addiction….still healthy at 79, knock wood.
Another Scott
When I was a Boy Scout one of our activities was helping out at a Smoke Enders (IIRC) group’s meetings. Their mantra was “I choose not to smoke”…
When I was around 8 I stole some cigarettes from my mom’s purse. I tried a couple of times to inhale and had a huge coughing fit. It broke the desire, forever. ;-)
My paternal grandma smoked unfiltered cigarettes (she broke off the filters). She died of cancer in her very early ’60s. :-(
A colleague at work is a pipe smoker – Captain Black. I’ve joked with him a few times over the years that while it smells great it’s really, really bad for him. “Yeah, I know. You’re right…” I saw him last week and he pulled up his shirt and showed me the railroad tracks on his chest. “I had a stress test 6 months ago and passed with flying colors, but at my last checkup they said I needed a triple bypass, STAT, so…” :-/
Best of luck to everyone trying to quit. Keep at it – it’s worth it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@notjonathon: Wow. You worked on the Bonanza set? And had Dan Blocker as your addiction counselor?
Now that’s a story you don’t hear every day! Good for him *and* you.
artem1s
full disclosure – I’m an ex-smoker, father died of lung cancer and my mom almost certainly died prematurely due to the effects of second hand smoke. I spent years trying to quit and know for certain that I would have relapsed perpetually if it hadn’t been banned. banning smoking nationally might be the second greatest public good achievement of the 20th century after the New Deal.
what people forget is how pervasive it was. it was everywhere. you couldn’t get away from it. your home, your workplace, hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations, universities, teachers lounges. every TV show and movie predominately showed smokers as sexy, cool, strong, manly, etc. the most pervasive non-sense trope about smoking was the libertarian, independent rebel without a cause. there was no such thing. threaten to take away our drug for even a few hours and everyone of us would melt into a slobbering heap of withdrawal and shakes. it was the great American myth and we couldn’t get past it until we did.
what I remember about Big Tobacco was that one day it was everywhere and then suddenly it was gone. it had an insurmountable stranglehold on politics and the courts. it was impossible to sue them for wrongful death until it wasn’t. the DOJ pursuit of taking down those death merchants seemed pointless until it wasn’t. letting the addicts run the country and make all the decisions seemed to be inevitable until it wasn’t. yes there are still red states and social pockets where we give in to the Big Tobacco money (and now big marijuana money). casino smoking sections is where I see it most. but for the most part the remaining great american smoking addict is dying along with the rest of ‘real’ america. every kid who gets to grow up in a house and social circle free of tobacco is one kid less likely to ever start smoking. looking back on it now it’s hard to explain to anyone who didn’t live thru it why we put up with it for so long.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: As mentioned up-thread, nicotine is a poison. (And not in the hur-hur dihydorgen monoxide will kill you way.)
ClevelandClinic.org:
The risks of accidental poisoning are potentially higher with vape products (e.g. if the liquid gets out).
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
Oh, and just for the record…quitting smoking (tobacco) was actually *not* that difficult for me once I made up my mind I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I had started and stopped a couple times, and then started again in my forties (as a “social smoker”) and got mad when a guy I knew then teased me about being addicted. I was all, “Right, well I’ll show *you*, I’m never touching a cigarette again!” And I never have – even the smell makes me feel queasy now.
If only my *other* addictive habits were that easy to quit…le sigh.
BellyCat
BTW: My S.O. is a pulmonologist and she’s actually bought into my perspective. (And she’s seen me both with and without nicotine — much preferring the former behaviorally!)
Per her, one of the main reasons that inhaling smoke is so bad for the lungs is that the inhaled tar first coats the micro villi in the lungs and they start to stick together and can no longer move air and particulates in and out as effectively, nor can they expel mucus (coughing) as well. This mucus builds up, eventually creating the thick *smoker’s cough*. Things go downhill from there with the passage of time.
sdhays
I find it kind of fascinating that to some people, developing an addiction – something your body compels you to do all the time and obsess about when you’re not doing it – is “freedom”.
When you’re counting down to your next smoke break, you’re not “free”.
Smoking bans in the US are one of the few things I can say without qualification that the US is better than most of the world (or at least led the charge). And it’s all the more remarkable since the US is (was?) the world’s biggest producer of tobacco and managed to ban smoking indoors in public anyway.
JWR
@artem1s:
Now, if we can only do the same thing with guns.
different-church-lady
Meanwhile in the real world nobody is arguing about smoking.
UncleEbeneezer
@Alison Rose: Smoking had the benefit of being something that could be an easy, quick signal of coolness in tv/movies. Even more so than drinking. While holding a martini glass could be used in the same scenarios and style as smoking (before/after sex, trying to meet a deadline, having important BTS discussions with powerful people etc.) drinking still often had its’ negative effects centered in media depictions (town drunk, violent abuser, incoherence, bad judgement etc.) so when we saw a movie star drinking, there was a good chance it was telling us something bad about the character. Not really so, for smoking. There are zillions of film/tv scenes of a character being told to “get off the sauce” or whatever, but I can’t think of any where a character smoking immediately gets a negative reaction from other characters. Or where the character is viewed negatively as a “smoker” they they would be as a “drunk.” Like it’s their (bad) identity. So smoking, in cultural depictions, was almost entirely “cool” scenes and sexy stuff (while also being the thing that kids weren’t supposed to do) in a way that alcohol or drugs never were. Many of the people I idolized as a kid (musicians, movie stars) were constantly photographed holding cigarettes. Which is why it sill looks cool to me even though I know it’s not. Same goes for characters holding a gun in tv/films. Sure, if it’s a police officer, Confederate soldier or some obviously Domestic Terrorist/MAGA type, I will be immediately repulsed, but if there’s none of those contextual signifiers my knee-jerk reaction is to assume it’s a cool character being bad-ass in some way, even though I don’t own guns, am well aware of the horrific stats of gun violence/suicide and would fully support repealing the 2nd Amendment in a heartbeat, if it was ever possible.
BellyCat
@Another Scott: Many drugs are poisonous if taken in too large a dose. In fact, a derivative of rat poison is commonly used as a blood thinner for the elderly. But your point is well taken.
It has been theorized that nicotine may help resist COVID infections. Anecdata here, but my S.O. and I have the same vax’s and I’m 12 years older (at 57). She’s very fit and active (more than me), masks religiously, but finally caught COVID. Thought it was a cold at first. We shared the same bed for three days until she tested before going to work. My son (age 6) tested positive too. He co-sleeps. I didn’t get COVID from either and have not had it yet (knocks wood).
I find my resistance inexplicable and nicotine use is seemingly a factor worth examining.
different-church-lady
@JWR: “being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to give themselves lung cancer, shall not be infringed.”
evodevo
@Another Scott: yep…ask any young male who has housed tobacco in KY about “green tobacco sickness” – nicotine poisoning from handling sappy cut tobacco plants by the hundreds while hanging it up in the drying barn in nasty hot humid weather – nausea, vomiting, headache, etc. Used to get a lot of that in ERs around here. Now the work is done by immigrant labor, and you don’t hear about it any more. No telling how many of them have succumbed to poisoning, since wingers don’t care
SteverinoCT
Connecticut is actually a tobacco state. In the area around Bradley airport, tobacco for cigar wrappers is grown.
I grew up in a smoking household, to the point that the white ceiling was tinged brown, but neither I nor my sister ever smoked. Go figure.
UncleEbeneezer
@Miss Bianca: My wife’s quitting experience was like that. She’d smoked forever. And when we first met she was still defiant about quitting. But then she decided she wanted to get as much time together as possible and knew it was bad for her etc., so she just flipped a switch to vaping briefly and then stopped that too. She missed smoke breaks with friends, smoking at a bar and maybe while driving, but otherwise had a pretty easy time changing her lifestyle with no withdrawal issues. Now she hates the smell of cigarettes even more than I do!
Mousebumples
@different-church-lady: interesting quote there. I was also seeing some parallels with guns and wondering if there’s any chance the danger of ammosexuals will be accepted by the general public as much as the dangers of tobacco smoking are. May be wishful thinking but… 🤞
prostratedragon
@JWR: Uh, Happy Birthday? Don’t worry, I share mine with Dick Cheney.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Another show I’m going to have to get around to watching.
@notjonathon:
I respect your reticence, but all I’m hearing is “It’s all true, crazier than you can imagine, but as long as Ricardo and Lorna and the rest of the Midnight Gang can keep the secret, so can I.” 🤫
different-church-lady
@SteverinoCT: Although my father smoked, my parents did something quite clever. They said to us kids, “You can smoke, but if you do you have to tell us.” Instantly removed any elicit allure from the temptation.
UncleEbeneezer
@artem1s: My grandparents’ house was an utter smoke pit. All my aunts and uncles and grandma just sitting around a big table playing cards and chain-smoking like you wouldn’t believe. A wall of smoke so thick you almost couldn’t see to the other side of the table. And when we visited, that was the main hangout. It was a major point of contention because me and my Mom both had sensitive lungs and got bronchitis easily. So every time we visited Pittsburgh my parents would end up in a big fight because my Mom rightly worried about me and my sister sitting there and inhaling all that shit. My Libertarian Dad thinking it’s no big deal. So after a brief flirtation with smoking in college (just a cigarette or two once in a while) I very easily jumped on board with the smoking-is-bad/gross movement in the early 2000’s, though I do still think it looks cool in old films.
Another Scott
@BellyCat: “One of ” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. ;-)
There’s a huge amount of bad stuff in cigarettes – not just nicotine, not just “tar”. “Low tar” cigarettes aren’t statistically safer than others.
And it’s not just lungs, of course. Heart disease and other non-lung cancers go way up with smoking.
[/soapbox]
Cheers,
Scott.
JWR
@prostratedragon:
Oof! I so feel your pain!
Alison Rose
@MisterForkbeard: I grew up in Marin, so the self-righteous part, yes. And as a teen I certainly experienced a lot of BS from the cops, but I guess this level of right-wing cruelty felt like something more Modoc than Marin.
BellyCat
@Another Scott: Not disagreeing (and not a doc), but describing how the downhill slope gets steep really fast according to my favorite pulmonologist. And it takes less exposure than one thinks because the lungs can’t shed sticky tar. And this tar captures deleterious items and chemicals the lungs would normally shed. (Bad air pollution is similar — not surprising that Pittsburgh is one of the largest centers for lung treatments!)
Cigarettes are full of bad chemicals and pesticides. Today, *cool* people are smoking Native Spirits because they’re organic or some shit. However, tar is the first wave of the assault and oxygen absorption is harmed regardless of chemical exposure.
Fun fact I learned from S.O.: the area of oxygen absorbing lung tissue in an adult is the size of a tennis court. (This is due to many micro chambers within the lungs)
frosty
@Kirk: I had a housemate who paid for a smoking cessation class and that was the first thing they did. “Bring two packs of your favorite cigarettes.” They were told to sit down around a garbage can and not take a breath without smoke. The garbage can was there for them to puke into. They did. It cured him.
The rest of the course was breaking the psychological habits, like learning something else to do with their hands and chewing on cloves instead of sticking a butt in their mouths.
Another Scott
@BellyCat: 👍
Cheers,
Scott.
Glidwrith
@evodevo: Husband grew up in KY working the tobacco field for his grandfather. Kept himself from being poisoned by regularly washing his arms and face, never bare chested despite the heat. He swore to never start smoking because of all the pesticides that went on the plants in order to keep them healthy.
Tobacco is no longer a profitable cash crop for the farmers in the hollers. I understand hemp has been imported and being used as an alternative to cotton in response to climate change.
Honus
@artem1s: it literally was everywhere. Hospitals and courtrooms had ashtrays. In 1971 I was hospitalized with pneumonia and my doctor smoked in my room. I recall many doctors had overflowing ashtrays on their desks. You get arrested for smoking on an airliner today. In the 1970s everybody lit up before and after takeoff. Most cars still have vestigial ashtrays today.
StringOnAStick
@notjonathon: Your story matches what I’ve heard; people dream about smoking for decades after quitting. It was discussed in my pharmacology class as being more addictive than heroin. Probably the only more addictive substance out there is meth, and that’s saying something.
artem1s
@JWR:
the one thing that Big Tobacco didn’t do as effectively as the NRA was to crawl up SCOTUS’s ass. given Roberts and his merry band of originalists already have a gun free space that is legally protected to live and work in (for them and them alone), it will be harder to get them to live with the repercussions of their decisions concerning guns. it’s going to be a harder lift for the DOJ than civil rights or tobacco ever was. but the more I see what Garland is doing, the more I have hope that the all the evidence collected for J6 and all the MAGAt related crap is going to strengthen future RICO and domestic terrorism cases. and strengthen cases where gun trafficking and election tampering is concerned. follow the money because it’s always about the money. AFAIK TFG and his MAGAt followers are the small fish. The big fish are much further up stream and we only just now learning a few of their names.
munira
Am I the only one who never thought smoking looked cool? My parents smoked and I could never stand the smell of it. Their second-hand smoke caused respiratory problems for me and even more for my sister. They finally quit in their 60’s – said they did it for us. We were grateful.
StringOnAStick
@BellyCat: Nicotinic acid is one of our naturally made, on-board neurotransmitters; there being a plant that makes this substance basically guaranteed it would be addictive to humans. That’s likely why you feel like a dull crayon without it, it’s a neurosystem stimulant because it juices the amount of this neurotransmitter that crosses the blood -brain barrier and and is available in the brain.
Kristine
I remember sitting in the back seat of our car amid a cloud while my folks smoked in the front seat. I was hospitalized with pneumonitis and chronic bronchitis at various times before I was 13 yo and suffered from asthma.* Luckily the asthma reduced in severity after moving north and, well, living in a smoke-free house for the last 16 years. If I use an inhaler 3-4 times a year, that’s a lot.
I do wonder sometimes how the smoke affected my lung development.
*growing up in Florida didn’t help. One organic chem prof told us that if you have no allergies and move to Florida, after 5 years you’ll wind up with every allergy known to man.
opiejeanne
@frosty: my dad quit cold turkey when he was in his late 50s. It wasn’t easy for him or for Mom, because he was so crabby at first. He said that he saw the study of how thoroughly your lungs can heal after giving it up, and that’s what motivated him. Until then he thought the damage was permanent. He lived to be 94, and would most likely still be here at age 105 if the doctors had paid attention to his “minor” ailments following a bout of food poisoning.
He used Lifesaver candies for “doing something with his hands”, got a little paunch from that but got rid of that eventually.
JaneE
Years before the surgeon general report, cigarettes were called “coffin nails”. People did know that they were bad for them, they just didn’t know how bad. It didn’t take a genius to see the correlation between chronic coughs and smoking. It certainly didn’t take a genius to see that they were an addictive drug, by the grace of god one that was legal and cheap.
But “everyone” smoked.
cope
Smoking cigarettes is the only bad habit I never picked up for a variety of reasons, most of which have already been discussed. True story: as my step-grandmother was dying of cancer, my grandfather would hold lit cigarettes to her tracheostomy tube so she could continue to indulge. When he told me that, I didn’t know which one of them I felt more sorry for.
Juju
@munira: I never thought it looked cool. Any cigarette contact I had was peer induced. My father was a hematologist/oncologist and one of those doctors who didn’t smoke, even though it was allowed in the hospital. My father didn’t want any of his children to smoke because his daily life was spent watching a lot of smokers and former smokers die painful, preventable early death. His rule, and he meant it, was you are kicked out of my house if you become a smoker. He expected us to try sometime or other, and I think we all did. I tried two puffs on eight different cigarettes. I held some to fit in with my friends. After he smelled cigarettes on me a few different times we had a father daughter talk about it, and he told me it was a stupid to even hold a cigarette, and it probably made me look silly. He was right. He also mentioned that smokers age poorly. When you grow up in that kind of household, it’s hard to find cigarettes cool looking.
no comment
There is an episode on vaping in Broken (Netflix). There are only a few episodes, but the whole documentary series is depressing. (One is entirely on child deaths due to furniture tip-overs.)
The vaping episode discusses young teens getting addicted to vapes, using vaping to break cigarette addiction, regulations in the US vs those in England (IIRC), & tobacco companies adding ingredients to vapes to make them more addictive.
Maxim
@munira:
No, it’s always seemed disgusting to me (my five-year-old self was curious, but had no notion of it being cool). I hate seeing it in movies and tv shows.
Shana
@Jay: I was a long term on and off smoker and finally really quit about 5 years ago. I went from cigarettes to ecigs for a few years and then a long taper down via nicotine tablets. It broke the “having something in my hands” habit and then slowly weaned from nicotine. May not be everyone’s path but it worked for me.
BellyCat
@StringOnAStick: Makes total sense.
Ruckus
@MisterForkbeard:
I owned a business in Marin and lived there. I don’t disagree with anyone’s assessment of Marin, good or bad, because Marin had only one thing that many other counties don’t have, and that is that a high percentage of the people have rather large bank accounts. And that is it, the total difference. They are human, with all the possibilities and traits of humans – good and bad. They just have better outward appearances because of the money. Bigger homes, more expensive cars, fancier vacations, larger bank accounts. Some are great people and some are fucking assholes, just like every where else. I’ve lived and traveled extensively and interacted with people from every state in this nation, and in many countries in Europe. And I can honestly say that humans run the gamut of great to complete and utter asshole, everywhere. The ratio might change but the range is the same. The language may change but the thoughts really are very similar. We are all human, we run the entire range of great to pure shit, no matter where we live or what we do.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
I was studying to be a doctor, in the way back when. One of the things I got to do was to visit USC med school for a day. We went to the anatomy lab and saw one student’s cadaver. The bottom third of the lung was gray and someone asked why. The answer was this guy was a smoker. Someone asked, “A heavy smoker?” The answer was delivered very calmly, “No, if he was a heavy smoker his entire lung would be gray to black.” If there were any smokers in that room, my bet is that they stopped that day. Best non smoking commercial I’ve ever seen.
BellyCat
Another interesting angle just learned from My Favorite Pulmonologist ™. The main pathway for nicotinic acid is vitamin B3 (niacin). Flour is usually fortified with niacin, so B3 deficiencies are rare in developed countries (think bread and pasta).
Interestingly, as a celiac (wherein wheat, rye, and barley cause a damaging immune system response) I presumably lack normal B3 ingestion. Use of nicotine (lozenges) would (1) similarly stimulate the nicotinic pathways as B3, and (2) possibly exaggerate nicotine withdrawal effects in the absence of normal B3 ingestion.
Perhaps B3 supplements would help nicotine withdrawal — especially for celiacs?
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
‘Left’ libertarians — aka, ‘anarchists’. People with a deeply flawed understanding of human nature (particularly in regards to our strong and apparently in-born individualistic/selfish tendencies in contention with our evolved status as social animals) and how societies beyond hunter-gatherer level are (or even could) be organized, but whose hearts are in the right place.
‘Classic’ libertarians in modern times (such as they are, most people today who take on this identity are actually ‘glibertarians’) are all that, except their hearts are shriveled and mean, thus putting them on the right side of the political spectrum.
Scout211
@Kristine: Same.
Both my parents smoked in the house and in the car. It did have consequences for our health, IMO. I was hospitalized with pneumonia three times as a kid, my older sister developed chronic asthma and all three of us had numerous bouts of bronchitis. I am just waiting for COPD, but hoping it doesn’t happen. My sister still has chronic asthma.
It took forever (it seems like) to put into place regulations for smoking in public places. It’s really scary to imagine what kind of resistance would have happened back then if the current political climate plus the loud voices of social media would have been as prominent back then.
Citizen Alan
@Alison Rose: I can top that. I have never smoked, and there are times when I wish I did. Because I have been dealing with anxiety disorders for my entire life, and there is something incredibly appealing about the mental image of kicking back in a chair on the porch, inhaling on a cigarette, and letting anxiety reducing chemicals flood into my body as I watch the sunset.
Dopey-o
Smoked for 50 years, gradually cutting down. Then spouse brought some nicotine lozenges from the drugstore. Haven’t lit one up in 5 months.
Cheaper than tobacco, too.
Valdivia
Making sure I can post comments :)