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rwyinusetoday at 6:35 PM4 repliesview on HN

If you inhale the smoke, it's quite irrelevant whether smoking an industrial cigarette, pipe or a hand-crafted cigar without additives. You'll probably get lung cancer anyway if you continue it long enough. Smoke is always carcinogenic.

I don't really get the point when there are many ways of getting nicotine without the smoke.


Replies

compass_copiumtoday at 7:42 PM

You're not wrong about smoke always being bad--there's a reason American Spirits have to have a disclaimer about "additive-free" not meaning healthier. Tobacco takes up alpha emitters from the soil and leaves them in your body--never good.

Pipe and cigar smokers are much less likely to smoke a pack's worth of tobacco a day. You also don't inhale them into your lungs, you hold the smoke in your mouth.

Smoking cigarettes is less about getting nicotine and more about having something to do when you are stressed etc.

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SoftTalkertoday at 6:45 PM

I don't smoke, but when I've talked to smokers a lot of it is about the ritual. Filling the pipe, cutting and smelling the cigar, or removing the cigarette from the pack, tapping it, lighting it up, the taste and smell of the smoke, it's all part of it not just the nicotine.

d1sxeyestoday at 7:09 PM

That’s not true. The lifetime risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is about 10-20%, not “probably” (somewhere between 15 and 30 times higher risk than a non-smoker).

In fact, only about half of smokers die prematurely from their smoking.

I mean, I’m not saying start smoking, but also let’s at least have accurate facts.

jimbob45today at 8:12 PM

It’s true and smoking marijuana is arguably as harmful as cigarettes but the pro-weed crowd throws a fit any time anyone points that out.