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This is a nitpick and an aside, but this sentence: When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isola
by mechanical_fish 16y ago
This is a nitpick and an aside, but this sentence:
When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population.
...is not literally true. Cigarettes are hundreds of years old. They were apparently being manufactured in Europe in the 1830s.
Of course, this doesn't affect PG's point in the slightest; he's remarking on how the smoking boom stopped, not how it started.
I wonder why cigarettes went through such a huge boom in the mid-20th century. Perhaps it's simply a matter of better manufacturing techniques leading to a decline in costs.
- jleader 16y agoBetter (more efficient/effective) manufacturing techniques? Or more efficient/effective marketing techniques? (I had a little trouble there with the adjective "better" applied to Madison Avenue's promotion of cigarettes).
- DenisM 16y agoI vaguely remember that potassium nitrate speeds up the absorption, giving cigarettes more of a "kick", thus making them more addictive. When I used to smoke (5 years since I kicked the habit, yay!) chemical-free tobacco felt less addictive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate