201–210 of 259 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, that's all also true of woodsmoke, and while some (IMNSHO, deluded) people are trying to ban fires, charcoal cooking &c., the societal consensus right now is that it's okay.
People aren't inhaling large amounts of woodsmoke on a regular basis for years.
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Zero (cigarettes are highly addictive). My point is that reality limits how much safer you could make a product. Would it be nice for cigarette or alcoholic beverages to be safer? Yes. Is it possible? Apparently not. Either tobacco becomes a controlled substance (I am deeply opposed to this given the catastrophic social consequences of prohibition in general), or adults behave like adults, understand the risks, decid…
> Either tobacco becomes a controlled substance What on earth are you talking about? Tobacco is already a controlled substance in more ways than nearly anything that you can buy at a store (including guns).
Where I live it is almost impossible to buy a gun. On the other hand, I can go downstairs and buy a pack of cigarettes with the same ease that I could buy bubble gum. No questions asked, no ID needed, no records.
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And surprisingly no mass deaths from cancer of Russians or Irish were detected, with both nations famous for alcohol abuse. Yes, alcohol is harmful, but like Russians joke, it only kills weak brain cells.
Maybe a lot of people die before they get cancer from it? Like organ failure (liver, kidney, heart) way before they develop cancer (symptoms)? Or get into accidents (car, freezing to death) etc. It is like people saying smoking can prevent Alzheimer as statistically people who smoke a lot have less instances of it. Because they die from that habit before the Alzheimer shows up.
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Well sure but I'm just pointing out that the analogy isn't great. There are already plenty of things minors can't legally do and we don't try to ban them for everyone.
It's not a question of illegal or not, it's a question of whether smokers are able consent to the risks of smoking, and therefore whether the companies are absolved of damages.
How can a company be held liable for people who choose to use their product illegally? This doesn't make sense.
(It's different of course if they are directly encouraging children to smoke. In that case, they should have the book thrown at them.)
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Lung cancer is caused by smoking 85-90% of the time. Probably more if you add in secondhand smoke. I think it already meets any sort of "preponderance of evidence" sort of bar to just assume anyone with lung cancer got it from smoking.
Citation / reference needed.
A significant amount of the shredded brown innards of most modern cigarettes is a paper product called "reconstituted tobacco" or "homogenized sheet tobacco," which is made from a pulp of mashed tobacco stems and other parts of the tobacco leaf that would otherwise go to waste. Manufacturers spray and impregnate reconstituted tobacco paper with nicotine and other substances lost during the process, along with as many…
I've heard this argument before. The claim that "clean" tobacco smoke is not carcinogenic and only the additives are to blame. Well, hate to burst your bubble, but when you burn tobacco--additives or not--you are creating hydrocarbons like benzene, bezopyrene, and butane. All of which are carcinogenic and will cause mutation in human cells upon contact. You cannot remove these hydrocarbons from tobacco as they are on…
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It would be unfair to assume Prof Stratton is unaware of this model, rather than simply tailoring a technical finding to a non-technical audience.
OP's comment was succinct and digestible by a non-technical audience with basic biological knowledge. If he had known of the model, surely he could have spared 2-3 sentences like OP.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7463/full/nature1...
In addition, nonbel's snarkiness and assumptions of ignorance end up misinforming HN readers more.
Scientists do not write these articles for the BBC. The reporters pick and choose what to take from the scientist, and report that. Most of the times they probably get most of the quote correct, or the scientist said something that had many of the words in the quote. But generally these types of articles are barely intelligible to the scientists that were interviewed for them.
>'Prof Stratton said in these organs smoking seemed to be accelerating a natural mutational process, but how it did this was "mysterious and complex".' Wow, just wow. This is standard Armitage & Doll model that has been taught since the 1950s. Every time a cell divides there is some chance of a genetic error occurring. The more generations away from the zygote a cell is, the more genetic errors it will have accumulat…
'Every time a cell divides there is some chance of a genetic error occurring.' Why is that cell allowed to exist then? Isn't there a quality control mechanism or something, that can detect an error occurred and delete the cell?
However, as with anything digital, there is some error rate still. The most common type of cancer mutation will deactivate, p53, a protein that is one of the checkpoint genes.
Having an error rate is essential for evolution and variety, so its not entirely a bad thing.
Wikipedia's entry is a pretty good entry point:
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Is this, then, also true for marijuana?
It would be if marijuana were grown in open fields and fertized by crop dusters. As of right now most weed is fertilized by hand so the fertilizer doesn't get on the flowers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25254600
The next link is the first source for the Wikipedia paragraph I originally quoted. They say that somebody found about half of the polonium contained in tobacco to be inside of the leaves.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/
But then, it doesn't say much about marijuana buds because accumulation varies between plant species and parts of the same plant.
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It is not your business to decide what other people should do with their lives. Go live in North Korea or Venezuela if you desire having a dear leader who tells you what you should do with your life and leave us alone.
I guess the difficulty with this is that we're faced with groups that are actively telling us what to do by ways of advertising. They ask more nicely, and are at times much less obvious, but it's still has a great influence.
If you want to live here you either accept that you are in a society of free people who actually have a free will or you move somewhere else where you'll find like minded drones serving their dear leader who in turn takes care of them like a father figure.
We are not going to give up our freedom and turn into weak minded persons just to accommodate you.