Pipe Smoking Study, It Doesn't Look Good.

[unadoptedlamp]

Well this has certainly taken a turn to interesting.

I, for one, am glad that humans have mostly passed through the Age of Enlightenment. Life became a little more complicated, but switching to using reason and critical thinking (and the scientific method!) was a pretty big breakthrough for us, when religion became more distanced from... well, reason and critical thinking. It's just my opinion, though.

I'm genuinely interested in peer reviewed studies that show smoking is beneficial in some way. I'll happily whip them out when someone starts poking me for smoking and mentions how stupid it is because of all of the negative health implications. They'd be great for these kinds of threads too, which consistently come up.

The tobacco industry, without a doubt, has left no stone unturned and during their time of making billions of dollars in profits, absolutely searched for these studies (and funded a good number of them).

They must be in the public domain. "Big Tobacco" has very deep pockets and they would never let something of that kind of importance be swept under the rug.

They could even use it in advertising (which is perfectly legal if you can prove a claim), so I'm just wondering where they are. We find a load of information contrary to a lot of claims here, but very little (none presented so far) that supports them.

Seriously. If it was found that a cigarette, or half a cigarette, somehow presented a measurable and accepted health benefit, the tobacco industry would be on that like mosquitoes on a moose. They'd sell single dose packets with the health claim! Because they could! Legally.

 

[olkofri]

@brian64: well, to be honest the graphs aren't mine, took them from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. Sorry, I shoulda cited sources, I'm losing my academical touch.

 

[warren]

"Big Tobacco" has very deep pockets and they would never let something of that kind of importance be swept under the rug. " You are being factitious, right?

Is there a "big tobacco?" I don't believe there has been for many, many years. It certainly doesn't exist in the US any more as an entity passing out moneys. I'm defining "big tobacco" as any company with sufficient sway to move governments to act in their, "big tobacco's", best interest.

"Big Tobacco" is a figment of someone's imagine these days. And, the (2?) large international tobacco conglomerates certainly are not going to fight a war, in the West, lost long before they started picking up failing or barely surviving tobacco companies.

 

[unadoptedlamp]

Warren- A little bit. I do not subscribe to conspiracy theory thinking.

The tobacco industry is still very much engaged in lobbying and does have influence at the government level (as do many other industries with substantial profits), but yes, it is in decline.

The Canadian tobacco market is segmented between Tobacco Canada (49%), Rothmans, Benson and Hedges (37%) and JTI-MacDonald (13%). In 2015, those three companies made a combined 23.4 billion in profits.

That is most definitely "big business." We're just talking Canada here... which is a mote of a country.

What I am saying is, if there was any way in which health benefits from smoking could be claimed, they would have certainly found it. But, well, they haven't.

I guess I engage with threads like these only because they go in so many different directions. I'm currently waiting for something, and it passes the time. Isn't it a little bit entertaining?

 

[unadoptedlamp]

I should mention that you can also look up how much industries are spending on lobbying in countries like the United States.

Tobacco, for example, spends the majority of their money on Republican sources. Reynolds and Altria donated $1.5million to Trump to celebrate his inauguration. His inauguration!

In the first quarter of 2017, tobacco companies and trade associations spent $4.7m lobbying federal officials. Altria hired 17 lobbying firms. Reynolds hired 13.

You could go on all day if you start looking. A lot of money and influence is still being thrown around. When you're making tens of billions of dollars a year as an industry (with just a few companies), it is not small potatoes and there is absolutely influence.

It's probably the only reason they aren't outlawed already... reason being their influence on government, that is.

 

[warren]

The Canadian tobacco market is actually split between one Japanese company and BAT which is British.

Benson and Hedges is BAT owned I believe in Canada.

Imperial Tobacco Canada, steadily moving away from cigarettes to "less risky products" (there words) such as vaping, is a wholly owned subsidiary of BAT.

JTI-McDonalds makes my favorite Canadian cigarette, Exports, and is a wholly owned by the Japan Tobacco International.

23.4 billion Canadian Dollars is very much split between two foreign companies. BAT getting 87% per your numbers.

A billion here and a billion there and in time you are talking big money.

The main reason smoking isn't banned are the taxes. It's a conundrum for the politicians.

 

[brian64]

well, to be honest the graphs aren't mine, took them from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. Sorry, I shoulda cited sources, I'm losing my academical touch.

That's perfectly ok...I wasn't assuming you created them from scratch...but you had the presence of mind to apply them to the discussion at hand.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Roll up some GH Dark Birdseye and you have yourself a cigarette my friend. The addicted brain will always find a way. As long as shag (or plugs for that matter) exists, so do cigarettes.

Wrong.
Form factor and availability are key to the prevalence of Cigarettes in society.
If RYO was all that existed you would dramatically reduce the smoking population. People get addicted and sustain their addiction because Cigarettes are available everywhere and can be smoked hassle free any time.
Making it easy is half the problem, and this specific formula is why the majority of people are so upset by Tobacco.
Of course someone who is already addicted will go to extremes to support their addiction (because chemical addiction is a type of mental illness), but without ”Cigarettes” the ubiquity of the Nicotine delivery device would be eliminated, and the number of new addicts would fall dramatically.

If the Cigarette had never been invented Tobacco would still be publicly acceptable, and Pipe Smoking would be exponentially more common than it is now.

 

[warren]

Check history. Smoking, until the World Wars and women starting to smoke was never really publicly acceptable. Smoking was for the rich and usually done in one's club or home. Smokers wore gowns/jackets and caps so as not to carry the reek into public places. Smoking outside was usually limited to areas where males congregated, the military, farming, ditch digging, etc. Wives more often than not prohibited smoking in the house or at least restricted it to the den/library exclusively. Your imagined smoke friendly past simply doesn't hold up to what is known with respect to tobacco use.

The twenty/thirty year period of widely accepted smoking in public phenomenon started to come to an end in the 1950's with the rapid growth of the American Cancer Society and the awareness of the health debilities associated with tobacco. Whether the science was good or bad is simply deside the point. A percentage of today's smokers appreciate smoke free bars and dining establishments as do the non-smokers. There simply isn't a reason for society to tolerate the use of tobacco in public. Certainly accommodating a small/tiny/wee, insignificant percentage of humanity smoking isn't a consideration.

 

[anotherbob]

side note studies like this are one of the reasons taxes on pipe tobacco haven't gone up as much as they have on cigarettes. A tin or pouch of pipe tobacco only cost a few more bucks then when I started where as cigarettes have quadrupled in price. If it increased by the same percentage a tin would cost what a pound costs now. If it increased the same dollar amount we'd be paying the same for pipe tobacco as Canadians do.

 

[alaskanpiper]

Wrong.
Form factor and availability are key to the prevalence of Cigarettes in society.
If RYO was all that existed you would dramatically reduce the smoking population. People get addicted and sustain their addiction because Cigarettes are available everywhere and can be smoked hassle free any time.
Making it easy is half the problem, and this specific formula is why the majority of people are so upset by Tobacco.
Of course someone who is already addicted will go to extremes to support their addiction (because chemical addiction is a type of mental illness), but without ”Cigarettes” the ubiquity of the Nicotine delivery device would be eliminated, and the number of new addicts would fall dramatically.

If the Cigarette had never been invented Tobacco would still be publicly acceptable, and Pipe Smoking would be exponentially more common than it is now.

I wouldn't call RYO "going to extremes" but you are absolutely right! They will do this to satisfy their addiction (my initial point). And younger people will see them doing it. Which means younger people will want to try it. And they will. And then they will begin Rolling their own. And younger people will see them doing it......and cigarettes will continue to exist.

Making it slightly more difficult to prepare could reduce the smoking population somewhat, you may be right about that, we'll never know. But it will never come close to outweighing the power of influence people have on their younger peers, and the curious brain. Nor will it ever come close to outweighing addiction. RYO instead of a pack of filters is simply nowehere near enough of a change to make any significant impact on the existence of cigarettes and cigarette use.

Young people enjoy things that are difficult to obtain (let alone simply prepare) on a daily basis (alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, etc.) and they will continue to do so indefinitely, especially when their elder peers do so and enjoy it, whether it is RYO or a pack of filters. This has far more of an impact on the continuation of use than availability.

As far as your statement on "if cigarettes had never been invented" I'll follow that up with a statement with equal significance, scientific merit, and pertinence: Some people say cucumbers taste better pickled.

 

[brian64]

We just have these long, sometimes entertaining posts, repeated often, which provide ... I really do not know what for some of our members.

LOL...You are typically one of the primary participants in these threads Warren, so I guess you'll have to ask yourself what it "provides".

You have to remember that the only political/legal/social issue we're really able to discuss here is that which surrounds tobacco use. Most of what is said in these threads applies to many other things. Unfortunately.

 

[philairfoil]

Vaping is the next step down that slippery slope.

The State of Michigan, U.S.A. , the esteemed Ms. Governor Whitmer, has outlawed certain flavors of the Juul nicotine delivery system (vape).

I really don't know how anyone can think this is not a civil rights issue...Freedom of life, liberty, and happiness is in the U.S. constitution.

To let people who can't decide which bathroom to use, to decide what is right or wrong...is missing the point. Notice what the E.U. has become? That's the plan.

 

[lankfordjl]

Smoke can physically irritate cells which can lead to cancerous mutations. It's the same for anything that is an irritate. Smoke, petroleum products, alcohol. Heck look at the current lawsuit on talc. Talc is a nonhazardous substance but over time, with overuse, it can be cellular irritate and cause a cell to mutate. Genetics, age, stress levels all play a role because it's up to your immune system to destroy mutated cells - some people's immune system is efficient and others are not; the immune system's strength declines with age and high stress. I'm a seasonal smoker; I enjoy the aesthetics of a pipe on the porch in the Fall...that's one of my favorite medicines.

 

[brian64]

To let people who can't decide which bathroom to use, to decide what is right or wrong

 

[alaskanpiper]

Well, I consider psychology a pseudo-science. I'm with Arthur Machen on it: "psychology is one ounce of sense and a pound of nonsense". If you ask me, the pound has become a ton in the century between Machen's observation and us. My good friend, the one who majored in psychology and ditched it because he found it folly, and is now working as a physiotherapist agrees.

I observed months ago on this site that most of the shrinks I know agree that, at best, their profession is "witchcraft". At worst, an amalgam of "best guesses" based on years and years of anecdotal evidence presented by other practioners.

There is a lot of good science in the field of psychology. There is also quite a bit of anecdotal "qualitative" crap. It is a "soft science" for sure. However, having practiced in various different roles in the field for some time, I can tell you that psychotherapy helps a great deal of people, and harms very few. It also does absolutely no good, or harm for many. Does it work for everyone? Of course not...

It has much do with finding the right practitioner who can apply the right modality, which can of course be a time consuming and exhaustive process for some. People with a fundamental misunderstanding or lack of knowledge on what is a very broad and extremely varied field (when it comes to implementation, ethics, and competence especially) like to write it off as quackery or bullshit, but the fact is, in many cases it can be quite beneficial for many people in one facet or another, and in most instances it is well applied and based on a good deal of legitimate empirical science. How you define what is legitimate empirical science is of course going to vary greatly from individual to individual so I don't want to kindle an argument on that point, as people's opinions and definitions on that will always run a very wide spectrum.

Much of the reason for the stereotype around the field being what it is stems from the now outdated and largely ignored early roots of the field in the era of psychoanalysts such as Freud and the like, in which anecdotal case studies and pure speculation were erroneously labeled science, and rightfully pissed off a lot of people that were trying to perfect a rapidly growing scientific method. As it should have. It also doesn't help that psychology/psychiatry is still portrayed this way in the media regularly (not to mention practitioners in the field are always rampantly violating ethical guidelines in media portrayals as well) Today's psychology is (for the most part) quite a bit different, and much more scientific and clinical in nature.

Please excuse my non-tobacco related rant.

 

[brian64]

the immune system's strength declines with age and high stress.

It also declines with poor nutrition and toxic food.

 

[brian64]

Much of the reason for the stereotype around the field being what it is stems from the now outdated and largely ignored early roots of the field in the era of psychoanalysts such as Freud and the like, in which anecdotal case studies and pure speculation were erroneously labeled science, and rightfully pissed off a lot of people that were trying to perfect a rapidly growing scientific method. As it should have. It also doesn't help that psychology/psychiatry is still portrayed this way in the media regularly (not to mention practitioners in the field are always rampantly violating ethical guidelines in media portrayals as well) Today's psychology is (for the most part) quite a bit different, and much more scientific and clinical in nature.

IMO a lot Freud's ideas had merit, but were limited and off base in certain ways as well.

Jung, on the other hand, was much more profound and much more relevant to the true nature of "psychological" problems/issues in humans...imo.

As for "today's psychology" and its "clinical nature", the widespread pharmaceutical treatments, including and especially the mass drugging of children that's been going on for many years now, is one of the absolute worst travesties of so-called medical science that's ever been done legally. The amount of harm it's caused is incalculable, imo.

 

[alaskanpiper]

Anyone with interest on how smoking can lead to cancer and how cancer develops, etc. I would highly recommend reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's "The Emperor of all Maladies."

It is a great synopsis of the history of cancer from the beginning of time, reads almost like a novel, and is an excellent facts first educational book that will give a great many people not only a better understanding of how cancer develops, runs its course, and is treated. It also gives a great history on the politics surrounding cancer and an eye opening explanation of what a varied, genius, and downright impressive monster cancer is.

I would recommend it for anyone, but particularly for smokers. I think it will give most people a much better understanding of any risks associated with smoking actually run their course in the human body and provide them with alot more ammunition to make informed decisions. It is also admirably unbiased (although not completely devoid of bias of course), especially for something written by a doctor. It is written in a very outside looking in manner, which is refreshing.

 

[lankfordjl]

It also declines with poor nutrition and toxic food.

And lack of cardio exercise - which a lot of smokers avoid