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The king of smokers

thomas-morris.uk

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Re: The king of smokers

#21

Post by Karunamon »

JadeNB wrote: post #15
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been intrigued by this. I have never smoked any substance, but I don't care if others do at all, really. I acknowledge the benefits of it, but when I point out that inhaling smoke of any sort is bad for you at some level, I get a LOT of pushback for a claim that seems self-evident.

> when I point out that inhaling smoke of any sort is bad for you at some level, I get a LOT of pushback for a claim that seems self-evident. I don't argue this claim—I don't have any evidence either way—but nor do I regard it as self-evident. An honest, not rhetorical or leading, question: why should inhaling smoke be bad when inhaling, say, ordinary air isn't? Is it the heat? Particulates? EDIT: Thanks for the exce…

Particulates and byproducts from burning matter - the reason smoking cigarettes kills your lungs isn't the tobacco, it's the tar and other garbage you're inhaling from combustion products.

Re: The king of smokers

#22

Post by goldfeld »

mercer wrote: post #11
derekp7 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same observation, that the people I know who smoke pot always seem to have that typical dunceness about them. But then I've wondered if the cause and effect is reversed -- maybe it is people who already have these cognitive attributes are more likely to be predisposed to smoking pot?

I'm sure that's at least a partial explanation. I've met quite a few people who struck me as stoners who only 'picked up the habit' later on. I've also met regular smokers who don't conform to the stereotypes. That said, I personally don't feel comfortable indulging in something chronically that has such pronounced effect on my mental abilities. Even if it has no long-term physical consequences, the habit (and what c…

That may explain part of your negative bias. I barely eat during or after (munchies are emotional in nature), don't have TV, dropped net/phone addiction (far more insidious an evil in this age), and usually get high to sing, compose on the guitar, dance, stretch, sometimes some light programming.. I do it every day. It's about what you do with it, isn't it? Get high every day to be a vegetable: train to become better vegetable. I'd rather train useful skills when I'm in a THC rush of relaxed flow.

Re: The king of smokers

#23

Post by Bartweiss »

tptacek wrote: post #14
Synaesthesia wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tobacco is carcinogenic, even if chewed or sucked, and lacks any legitimate medical use. However Cannabis has many medicinal uses, is very safe and non-toxic with no signs that it causes cancer. I don't think that smoking weed is necessarily good though - I would recommend vaporizing it.

It seems pretty unlikely that cannabis smoking is significantly safer than tobacco smoking for lung health, and far more likely that the gap in outcomes in the literature is due to the difficulty (historically) of doing studies on the same scale as the tobacco studies. We seem too ready to forget that the cancer/tobacco link was itself once controversial.

I think this issue is muddied by conflating two different questions.

1. Tobacco itself is quite carcinogenic. Snuff, chew, gutka, and any other means of consumption all have strong cancer links. Cannabis, as I understand it, is not nearly as carcinogenic as that.

2. Smoking is also, separately, carcinogenic. Regularly breathing dense smoke is terrible for your lungs, even if you're smoking dried lettuce.

I think it's pretty well established that via 2, smoking cannabis is bad for you. If it's less bad than tobacco, that's as likely to be usage habits as anything. But people are still arguing fairly extensively over 1 - tobacco is a known carcinogen no matter how you ingest it, but I'm not sure that's a settled question for cannabis.

Re: The king of smokers

#24

Post by adrusi »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #12
k-mcgrady wrote: post #2

I wonder how much the current 'marijuana is good for you' attitude resembles the 'smoking is good for you' attitude in the past? NB: I think all drugs should be legalised so this isn't an anti-drugs post.

Tobacco is carcinogenic, even if chewed or sucked, and lacks any legitimate medical use. However Cannabis has many medicinal uses, is very safe and non-toxic with no signs that it causes cancer. I don't think that smoking weed is necessarily good though - I would recommend vaporizing it.

lacks any legitimate medical use

Nicotine is a nootropic

no signs that it causes cancer

Its a hard connection to prove, but all smoke contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer. Eaten cannabis probably isn't carcinogenic, but smoked probably is. Few cannabis smokers inhale nearly as much smoke as tobacco smokers. Also, tobacco is a nightshade and toxic if eaten, so maybe that has something to with it being more damaging when smoked.

Re: The king of smokers

#25

Post by HillaryBriss »

> [tobacco's] virtues rarely get a hearing, and yet the latter are many and great. To quiet nervous rest; to soothe a ruffled temper; to favour calm and partial thought; to steady and clear (not to cloud) a confused, overworked brain; to counteract the effects of physical exhaustion

Taking this at face value, I wonder what impact such a drug could have on the productivity of a workforce, especially programmers.

I also wonder what has replaced it as the fraction of the smoking population declined over the last four or five decades.

Re: The king of smokers

#26

Post by Bman456456 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #2

I wonder how much the current 'marijuana is good for you' attitude resembles the 'smoking is good for you' attitude in the past? NB: I think all drugs should be legalised so this isn't an anti-drugs post.

I knew this post would be here, haha.

There is some evidence that THC has some anti-cancerous properties that could make this different. There is also a lung specialist (Taskin) who researched it and it went against his original hypothesis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23802821

One thing to note, is that people tend to smoke a lot less cannabis than they do tobacco.

More research needs to be done and hopefully it will be coming soon.

Re: The king of smokers

#27

Post by dragonwriter »

Bartweiss wrote: post #23
tptacek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty unlikely that cannabis smoking is significantly safer than tobacco smoking for lung health, and far more likely that the gap in outcomes in the literature is due to the difficulty (historically) of doing studies on the same scale as the tobacco studies. We seem too ready to forget that the cancer/tobacco link was itself once controversial.

I think this issue is muddied by conflating two different questions. 1. Tobacco itself is quite carcinogenic. Snuff, chew, gutka, and any other means of consumption all have strong cancer links. Cannabis, as I understand it, is not nearly as carcinogenic as that. 2. Smoking is also, separately , carcinogenic. Regularly breathing dense smoke is terrible for your lungs, even if you're smoking dried lettuce. I think it'…

> If it's less bad than tobacco, that's as likely to be usage habits as anything.

If by "usage habits" you mean "usual quantities of material smoked and inhaled", then, sure, that's probably a pretty big difference. Now, legality (and, price, which is strongly influenced by legality) plays some role in that, but the inherent nature of the effects of each drug and their concentrations in the material that is smoked also play a pretty big role.

Re: The king of smokers

#28

Post by Alex3917 »

tptacek wrote: post #14
Synaesthesia wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tobacco is carcinogenic, even if chewed or sucked, and lacks any legitimate medical use. However Cannabis has many medicinal uses, is very safe and non-toxic with no signs that it causes cancer. I don't think that smoking weed is necessarily good though - I would recommend vaporizing it.

It seems pretty unlikely that cannabis smoking is significantly safer than tobacco smoking for lung health, and far more likely that the gap in outcomes in the literature is due to the difficulty (historically) of doing studies on the same scale as the tobacco studies. We seem too ready to forget that the cancer/tobacco link was itself once controversial.

> We seem too ready to forget that the cancer/tobacco link was itself once controversial.

Because most studies showed that tobacco didn't cause cancer up until cigarettes were invented. And even to this day it's still not really clear to what extent tobacco itself causes cancer.

Re: The king of smokers

#29

Post by dpark »

JadeNB wrote: post #15
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been intrigued by this. I have never smoked any substance, but I don't care if others do at all, really. I acknowledge the benefits of it, but when I point out that inhaling smoke of any sort is bad for you at some level, I get a LOT of pushback for a claim that seems self-evident.

> when I point out that inhaling smoke of any sort is bad for you at some level, I get a LOT of pushback for a claim that seems self-evident. I don't argue this claim—I don't have any evidence either way—but nor do I regard it as self-evident. An honest, not rhetorical or leading, question: why should inhaling smoke be bad when inhaling, say, ordinary air isn't? Is it the heat? Particulates? EDIT: Thanks for the exce…

> An honest, not rhetorical or leading, question: why should inhaling smoke be bad when inhaling, say, ordinary air isn't? Is it the heat? Particulates?

"Ordinary air" is bad for your lungs when it's full of dust, soot, or other particulates. Smog is bad for you. So is smoke. So is pretty much anything else you might breath that includes particulates. Your lungs can handle it in small amounts but it's never good for them and long term exposure can be really bad for them.

The heat probably isn't great for your lungs either. But I doubt it's a significant factor.

Re: The king of smokers

#30

Post by ableal »

Bartweiss wrote: post #19

The "clever calculator" mentioned in the post is perhaps a bit less clever than suggested. 500,000 quarts of beer, spread evenly over an 80-year drinking career, still amounts to 34 pints per day. However great his appetites, I'm a bit skeptical of that number.

There must be an order of magnitude error there, possibly an extra zero in the printed number.

The smoking of four tons looks feasible, for sixty years at about 180g/day (enough tobacco for 9 packs of cigarettes, but used in pipes ).

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