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Drugs that require manufacturing infrastructure to be to a massive scale to meet demand are really easy to target. Cigarettes aren't really something you can ma

Drugs that require manufacturing infrastructure to be to a massive scale to meet demand are really easy to target. Cigarettes aren't really something you can make yourself to the quality that people expect from automated processes at the capacity they demand them.

benj111 8y ago
Isn't that just a result of the current (legal) industry? 150+ years ago people were smoking tobacco from pipes. Cigarettes aren't required for a tobacco habit. In an alternate universe some one could be making the same point about single use auto heroin injectors.
- loeg 8y ago
  > 150+ years ago people were smoking tobacco from pipes. Cigarettes aren't required for a tobacco habit. They really help. Machine-made cigarettes dramatically increased the ease and popularity of smoking (beginning in the late 1800s). > The widespread smoking of cigarettes in the Western world is largely a 20th-century phenomenon. At the start of the 20th century, the per capita annual consumption in the U.S. was 54 cigarettes (with less than 0.5% of the population smoking more than 100 cigarettes per year), and consumption there peaked at 4,259 per capita in 1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#History
  - benj111 8y ago
    Perhaps, it's hard to disentangle all that from increasing wealth, industrialisation and globalisation though. My house and garden are in what were fields until the 1950s. I'm digging up huge amounts of pipe remains. I don't make any claims to the size of the industry from that, but it certainly wasn't niche.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      > I don't make any claims to the size of the industry from that, but it certainly wasn't niche. FWIW, the second part of the sentence is a direct contradiction of the first part.
      - benj111 8y ago
        Yes I could have worded it better :) How about: I don't want to make any claims about the upper bounds of smoking in the mid 19th century and earlier, but the lower bound is at least above what a layman would describe as 'niche'. Or is that too wordy?
        majewsky 8y ago
        Quite. :) The initial wording is alright, but I couldn't help but notice the ironic internal contradiction.
loeg 8y ago
Early cigarette rollers were hand operated by a single person. It may not be practical from a labor perspective vs just smuggling in legal cigs from out of state, but it's easily something that could be done in small scale.

benj111 8y ago

Isn't that just a result of the current (legal) industry? 150+ years ago people were smoking tobacco from pipes. Cigarettes aren't required for a tobacco habit. In an alternate universe some one could be making the same point about single use auto heroin injectors.

loeg 8y ago
> 150+ years ago people were smoking tobacco from pipes. Cigarettes aren't required for a tobacco habit. They really help. Machine-made cigarettes dramatically increased the ease and popularity of smoking (beginning in the late 1800s). > The widespread smoking of cigarettes in the Western world is largely a 20th-century phenomenon. At the start of the 20th century, the per capita annual consumption in the U.S. was 54 cigarettes (with less than 0.5% of the population smoking more than 100 cigarettes per year), and consumption there peaked at 4,259 per capita in 1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#History
- benj111 8y ago
  Perhaps, it's hard to disentangle all that from increasing wealth, industrialisation and globalisation though. My house and garden are in what were fields until the 1950s. I'm digging up huge amounts of pipe remains. I don't make any claims to the size of the industry from that, but it certainly wasn't niche.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > I don't make any claims to the size of the industry from that, but it certainly wasn't niche. FWIW, the second part of the sentence is a direct contradiction of the first part.
    - benj111 8y ago
      Yes I could have worded it better :) How about: I don't want to make any claims about the upper bounds of smoking in the mid 19th century and earlier, but the lower bound is at least above what a layman would describe as 'niche'. Or is that too wordy?
      - majewsky 8y ago
        Quite. :) The initial wording is alright, but I couldn't help but notice the ironic internal contradiction.

loeg 8y ago

Early cigarette rollers were hand operated by a single person. It may not be practical from a labor perspective vs just smuggling in legal cigs from out of state, but it's easily something that could be done in small scale.