6 ms·

I have an intense personal dislike of smoking. If more people are really moving off them, all the better. From the intrusion on others (second hand smoke) to t

by Hasz 9y ago

I have an intense personal dislike of smoking. If more people are really moving off them, all the better. From the intrusion on others (second hand smoke) to the cancer, to the litter, there is absolutely nothing positive about cigarettes. I'm no fan of vaping, but as an intermediate step to the elimination of smoking, it is a necessary evil. I would be very happy if cigarettes vanished from the world.

trevyn 9y ago
>there is absolutely nothing positive about cigarettes. This is a silly statement. People smoke for many legitimate reasons beyond having an active addiction.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Like what? I also see nothing positive about cigarettes.
  - eric_h 9y ago
    Smoking cigarettes can be an effective treatment for mild cases of Tourette's. Of course, it's just the nicotine that does it, so vaping is equally effective.
  - thatcat 9y ago
    Nicotine can act as an antidepressant/antipsychotic; cigarettes are a cheap, widely available form that requires no additional equiptment except a lighter.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      People with psychosis tend to die 20 years earlier than the general population. One of the reason is that people with some types of psychosis smoke a lot. They smoke more cigarettes, and smoke them more deeply, than they general population. If they're medicated the hydrocarbons in burnt tobacco interact with antipsychotic medication, making it less effective, meaning they need more meds. And antipsychotic meds can be pretty nasty. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg178 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg178 > In March 2014, a correction was made to the wording of recommendation 1.1.3.3 to clarify that it is the hydrocarbons in cigarette smoke that cause interactions with other drugs, rather than nicotine. What people with psychosis need is early intervention that addresses the full range of bio-psycho-social needs the person has.
      - tmnvix 9y ago
        > People with psychosis tend to die 20 years earlier than the general population. One of the reason is that people with some types of psychosis smoke a lot. Is this a significant reason relative to suicide amongst psychotics?
        DanBC 9y ago
        Yes. In England about 4,500 deaths by suicide per year. There are about 55million people in the UK, and about 1% of them have psychosis, so there are roughly 550000 people with psychosis. The deaths by suicide, while both tragic and preventable, don't change the average lifespan much. It's the heart attacks and strokes and diabetes that are the biggest effect on lifespan.
    - totalZero 9y ago
      While I would argue that it doesn't give most people (and perhaps anyone) a good reason to smoke, this is kind of interesting. A Review of the Effects of Nicotine on Schizophrenia and Antipsychotic Medications Edward R. Lyon, M.S., Ed.D. Published online: October 01, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.10.1346 https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.10.1346 (full text available) > OBJECTIVE: Research on the impact of nicotine on schizophrenia and antipsychotic medications was reviewed to determine ways to improve treatment planning for patients with schizophrenia who smoke and to evaluate smoking cessation programs for this population. > METHODS: All major research databases were searched. The review focuses on reports published since 1990. >RESULTS: Smoking improves processing of auditory stimuli (sensory gating) by patients with schizophrenia and may lessen negative symptoms by increasing dopamine in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal and frontal cortex. Use of traditional antipsychotics may result in patients' smoking more, whereas patients taking atypical antipsychotics may smoke less. Patients who smoke metabolize antipsychotics faster than nonsmoking patients. Smoking cessation programs for outpatients with schizophrenia report a success rate of about 12 percent after six months. No studies of cessation programs for chronically ill inpatients with schizophrenia have been published. Several hospitals have implemented smoking bans with equivocal results. > CONCLUSIONS: Nicotine affects both schizophrenia and antipsychotic medications. Neurobiological and psychosocial factors reinforce the high use of nicotine by patients with schizophrenia
    - zerostar07 9y ago
      wouldnt a pill or a sticker be much simpler?
- cmurf 9y ago
  Name six legitimate reasons?
  - trevyn 9y ago
    "We found significant positive effects of nicotine or smoking on six domains: fine motor, alerting attention-accuracy and response time (RT), orienting attention-RT, short-term episodic memory-accuracy, and working memory-RT." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151730/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151730/ I'm not saying it's a good idea given the risk profile, but nicotine definitely has useful cognitive effects.
- oAlbe 9y ago
  Could you list some examples of those legitimate reasons? I fail to see any, and I've lived with smokers my whole life. I'm genuinely interested.
  - cgag 9y ago
    Feels good, relieves stress, is social, is an excuse to step outside, and also with the social aspect there's a selection effect for a certain type of person. Also someone mentioned the antipsychotic treatment, irrelevant to most but pretty interesting: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoking-gun/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smokin... edit: good list of nootropic-style benefits of nicotine from gwern (https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine) Improved reaction time, IQ test scores on the RAPM, pilots performanced enhanced, driving performance enhanced, overnight performance on memory and attention tasks improved, improved prospective memory, helps with ADHD, may help depression, found to help with mild cognitive imparement in the elderly
    - ckarmann 9y ago
      Yes, nicotine at low dose has a stimulant effect who explains most of that. But its tolerance builds up very quickly and most habitual smokers don't really feel this effect anymore and have to smoke more. At high dosage its effect turns from stimulant to sedative and reduce neuronal activity. On the anecdata side, I have a few smoker friends who explained to me they only really feel the first cigarette in the morning. All the others cigarettes they smoke are due to habit/withdrawal. In the end, there are a lot of stimulant drugs who do not have as much side effects as nicotine, especially when it comes in the form of tobacco, so it does not appear like smoking is a possible rational choice.
      - cgag 9y ago
        Like what? Cigarettes may have lots of side effects but nicotine seems very mild in terms of side effects. Like caffeine level. Even the addictiveness seems to be heavily influenced by the other ingredients in tobacco/cigarettes.
- yesenadam 9y ago
  Wow. You are getting downvoted for stating the obvious. Reason 1. People enjoy smoking. I'm not sure how people can manage to say stuff like absolutely nothing positive. It's like those lists of the effects of marijuana that list no positive effects whatsoever. Fairly obviously, no-one would smoke if it had no positive effects. There's a kind of moral crusade blindness common to phenomena like this. People can say evidently false things like 'There is absolutely nothing positive about cigarettes'. Because the end message is one they approve of, thinking is somehow blocked in the absolutist zeal.
  - Hasz 9y ago
    Easily, although maybe I should clarify. I probably should have written "objectively positive". People's enjoyment is entirely subjective. What I enjoy and what you enjoy are probably different sets.
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      Well, I don't think that's clarifying so much as saying something different. So you don't include pleasure in your list of positive things? That's..odd. "Apart from it feeling good, there's nothing good about experience X" can probably be applied to most things in life. Sex. Music. Art. Ice cream. etc. The question is, why would you want to exclude pleasure? "What I enjoy and what you enjoy are probably different sets." Well, of course people each enjoy different things, but how that's relevant to your point I'm not sure. I recently heard Doug Crockford saying a similar thing, that smoking has nothing positive about it, with evident pleasure, in his talk on programming, the brain and the gut; "Programming Style and Your Brain", I think it was. It was startling - an obviously intelligent guy suddenly saying something entirely baseless and evidently false. edit: Downvoters, could you explain why? Thanks.
      - Hasz 9y ago
        I don't include pleasure in my list of objective positive things. "What I enjoy and what you enjoy are probably different sets." is relevant insofar as pleasure is subjective, which is the opposite of objective. When I wrote the original comment, I was not specific enough too include objective, which I should have. Didn't downvote you by the way.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
yakitori 9y ago
> I have an intense personal dislike of smoking. If you ever lived in an apartment with a neighbor who smokes, it turns from intense personal dislike to pure hate. I will never understand how people can smoke in their homes. It literally turns your house into an ashtray. > I'm no fan of vaping, but as an intermediate step to the elimination of smoking, it is a necessary evil. Unless it turns out to be more toxic. The problem I see is that society seems to turning away from cigarettes and more towards weed and other type of obnoxious drug use.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
  Stench is the big problem. Same with marijuana and some cooking. Other than that I wouldn’t care about others doing it at all.
  - brokenmachine 9y ago
    The stench is completely infuriating but I am concerned with toxic gases leeching into my living space as well.

by Hasz 9y ago

trevyn 9y ago

>there is absolutely nothing positive about cigarettes. This is a silly statement. People smoke for many legitimate reasons beyond having an active addiction.

matte_black 9y ago
Like what? I also see nothing positive about cigarettes.
- eric_h 9y ago
  Smoking cigarettes can be an effective treatment for mild cases of Tourette's. Of course, it's just the nicotine that does it, so vaping is equally effective.
- thatcat 9y ago
  Nicotine can act as an antidepressant/antipsychotic; cigarettes are a cheap, widely available form that requires no additional equiptment except a lighter.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    People with psychosis tend to die 20 years earlier than the general population. One of the reason is that people with some types of psychosis smoke a lot. They smoke more cigarettes, and smoke them more deeply, than they general population. If they're medicated the hydrocarbons in burnt tobacco interact with antipsychotic medication, making it less effective, meaning they need more meds. And antipsychotic meds can be pretty nasty. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg178 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg178 > In March 2014, a correction was made to the wording of recommendation 1.1.3.3 to clarify that it is the hydrocarbons in cigarette smoke that cause interactions with other drugs, rather than nicotine. What people with psychosis need is early intervention that addresses the full range of bio-psycho-social needs the person has.
    - tmnvix 9y ago
      > People with psychosis tend to die 20 years earlier than the general population. One of the reason is that people with some types of psychosis smoke a lot. Is this a significant reason relative to suicide amongst psychotics?
      - DanBC 9y ago
        Yes. In England about 4,500 deaths by suicide per year. There are about 55million people in the UK, and about 1% of them have psychosis, so there are roughly 550000 people with psychosis. The deaths by suicide, while both tragic and preventable, don't change the average lifespan much. It's the heart attacks and strokes and diabetes that are the biggest effect on lifespan.
  - totalZero 9y ago
    While I would argue that it doesn't give most people (and perhaps anyone) a good reason to smoke, this is kind of interesting. A Review of the Effects of Nicotine on Schizophrenia and Antipsychotic Medications Edward R. Lyon, M.S., Ed.D. Published online: October 01, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.10.1346 https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.10.1346 (full text available) > OBJECTIVE: Research on the impact of nicotine on schizophrenia and antipsychotic medications was reviewed to determine ways to improve treatment planning for patients with schizophrenia who smoke and to evaluate smoking cessation programs for this population. > METHODS: All major research databases were searched. The review focuses on reports published since 1990. >RESULTS: Smoking improves processing of auditory stimuli (sensory gating) by patients with schizophrenia and may lessen negative symptoms by increasing dopamine in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal and frontal cortex. Use of traditional antipsychotics may result in patients' smoking more, whereas patients taking atypical antipsychotics may smoke less. Patients who smoke metabolize antipsychotics faster than nonsmoking patients. Smoking cessation programs for outpatients with schizophrenia report a success rate of about 12 percent after six months. No studies of cessation programs for chronically ill inpatients with schizophrenia have been published. Several hospitals have implemented smoking bans with equivocal results. > CONCLUSIONS: Nicotine affects both schizophrenia and antipsychotic medications. Neurobiological and psychosocial factors reinforce the high use of nicotine by patients with schizophrenia
  - zerostar07 9y ago
    wouldnt a pill or a sticker be much simpler?
cmurf 9y ago
Name six legitimate reasons?
- trevyn 9y ago
  "We found significant positive effects of nicotine or smoking on six domains: fine motor, alerting attention-accuracy and response time (RT), orienting attention-RT, short-term episodic memory-accuracy, and working memory-RT." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151730/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151730/ I'm not saying it's a good idea given the risk profile, but nicotine definitely has useful cognitive effects.
oAlbe 9y ago
Could you list some examples of those legitimate reasons? I fail to see any, and I've lived with smokers my whole life. I'm genuinely interested.
- cgag 9y ago
  Feels good, relieves stress, is social, is an excuse to step outside, and also with the social aspect there's a selection effect for a certain type of person. Also someone mentioned the antipsychotic treatment, irrelevant to most but pretty interesting: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoking-gun/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smokin... edit: good list of nootropic-style benefits of nicotine from gwern (https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine) Improved reaction time, IQ test scores on the RAPM, pilots performanced enhanced, driving performance enhanced, overnight performance on memory and attention tasks improved, improved prospective memory, helps with ADHD, may help depression, found to help with mild cognitive imparement in the elderly
  - ckarmann 9y ago
    Yes, nicotine at low dose has a stimulant effect who explains most of that. But its tolerance builds up very quickly and most habitual smokers don't really feel this effect anymore and have to smoke more. At high dosage its effect turns from stimulant to sedative and reduce neuronal activity. On the anecdata side, I have a few smoker friends who explained to me they only really feel the first cigarette in the morning. All the others cigarettes they smoke are due to habit/withdrawal. In the end, there are a lot of stimulant drugs who do not have as much side effects as nicotine, especially when it comes in the form of tobacco, so it does not appear like smoking is a possible rational choice.
    - cgag 9y ago
      Like what? Cigarettes may have lots of side effects but nicotine seems very mild in terms of side effects. Like caffeine level. Even the addictiveness seems to be heavily influenced by the other ingredients in tobacco/cigarettes.
yesenadam 9y ago
Wow. You are getting downvoted for stating the obvious. Reason 1. People enjoy smoking. I'm not sure how people can manage to say stuff like absolutely nothing positive. It's like those lists of the effects of marijuana that list no positive effects whatsoever. Fairly obviously, no-one would smoke if it had no positive effects. There's a kind of moral crusade blindness common to phenomena like this. People can say evidently false things like 'There is absolutely nothing positive about cigarettes'. Because the end message is one they approve of, thinking is somehow blocked in the absolutist zeal.
- Hasz 9y ago
  Easily, although maybe I should clarify. I probably should have written "objectively positive". People's enjoyment is entirely subjective. What I enjoy and what you enjoy are probably different sets.
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    Well, I don't think that's clarifying so much as saying something different. So you don't include pleasure in your list of positive things? That's..odd. "Apart from it feeling good, there's nothing good about experience X" can probably be applied to most things in life. Sex. Music. Art. Ice cream. etc. The question is, why would you want to exclude pleasure? "What I enjoy and what you enjoy are probably different sets." Well, of course people each enjoy different things, but how that's relevant to your point I'm not sure. I recently heard Doug Crockford saying a similar thing, that smoking has nothing positive about it, with evident pleasure, in his talk on programming, the brain and the gut; "Programming Style and Your Brain", I think it was. It was startling - an obviously intelligent guy suddenly saying something entirely baseless and evidently false. edit: Downvoters, could you explain why? Thanks.
    - Hasz 9y ago
      I don't include pleasure in my list of objective positive things. "What I enjoy and what you enjoy are probably different sets." is relevant insofar as pleasure is subjective, which is the opposite of objective. When I wrote the original comment, I was not specific enough too include objective, which I should have. Didn't downvote you by the way.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

yakitori 9y ago

> I have an intense personal dislike of smoking. If you ever lived in an apartment with a neighbor who smokes, it turns from intense personal dislike to pure hate. I will never understand how people can smoke in their homes. It literally turns your house into an ashtray. > I'm no fan of vaping, but as an intermediate step to the elimination of smoking, it is a necessary evil. Unless it turns out to be more toxic. The problem I see is that society seems to turning away from cigarettes and more towards weed and other type of obnoxious drug use.

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
Stench is the big problem. Same with marijuana and some cooking. Other than that I wouldn’t care about others doing it at all.
- brokenmachine 9y ago
  The stench is completely infuriating but I am concerned with toxic gases leeching into my living space as well.