11 ms·

Eliminating nicotine from tobacco products could help millions of smokers quit

31 points by ibiza 6y ago

jl6 6y ago
Has any country experimented with making cigarettes more dangerous, such as adding an impotence side-effect? Could go a long way towards de-glamorising smoking.
giuliomagnifico 6y ago
Yes, because who would smoke tobacco without nicotine? Is like eating a cake without sugar... (I think, I’m not a smoker)
- keanebean86 6y ago
  Edit: I was very wrong. Please disregard. Or breathing air without oxygen. You get the sensation of pulling it into your lungs but it doesn't fulfill that deeper desire. You try to suck in more to no avail. Your desperate gasps intensity as fear grows uncontrollable. At least with smokers they'll just be angry and uncomfortable instead of actually dead.
  - aesthesia 6y ago
    Interestingly, this isn't what happens when you breathe air without oxygen. Our sense of suffocation is tied to levels of carbon dioxide, not oxygen. When breathing an oxygen-free inert gas, you pass out and die after a few breaths without any panic at all. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
    - keanebean86 6y ago
      Thank you for correcting me. I had not idea. I assumed it worked like drowning.
yodsanklai 6y ago
> Eliminating nicotine from tobacco products could help up to 5 million adult smokers quit within a year. Just wondering, if there's suddenly less nicotine in cigarettes, could it mean that people will start smoking more cigarettes to get the amount of nicotine they need?
- mimac 6y ago
  IIRC smokers change their inhaling patterns with 'light' cigarettes - they inhale more deeply and prolong the nictoine absorbtion time. In the EU its illegal to brand cigarettes as light.
  - rndgermandude 6y ago
    I can tell you from first hand and second hand experience that this is exactly what a lot of smokers will do.
- willcipriano 6y ago
  I'd suspect so, at least at first while they have withdrawal symptoms. Frankly it might be more humane to ban it outright rather than have people desperately chain smoking.
  - rndgermandude 6y ago
    Outright banning things has a tendency to have severe side effects, look at the alcohol prohibition the US had, the marijuana prohibition and general narcotics prohibitions. This has to be considered. I'd personally ramp up non-smoker protections first in particular protections for kids (even within their own families), and then ramp up measures to prevent people from starting to smoke, like a ban on advertisements for smoking, a ban of "branding" on cigarette packs, making access to cigarettes harder. Measures and even incentirives to help people stop or at least reduce smoking will also help.
    - samizdis 6y ago
      I live in England, where smoking in workplaces, bars and restaurants was banned in 2007. I am a smoker and this cut my consumption greatly; there's little social joy in standing outside by yourself purely to satisfy a craving. In 2014 I went to Australia, where I lived and worked for nearly three years. Anti-tobacco regulations there were far stricter than in the UK. Plain packaging had been introduced, prices were astronomical, smoking bans extended to many outdoor areas. My consumption reduced further (tobacco, that is - there was lots of terrific grass in Australia at agreeable prices). After Australia, I spent a few years in central Europe (mainly based in Prague). Cigarettes were dirt cheap (a third or a quarter of the price in Australia or in the UK). Smoking in restaurants and bars was allowed, and my consumption increased. Then, while I was still based in Prague, smoking in bars and restaurants was banned - my consumption fell once again. I've seen smoking presented, societally, as something sophisticated, and I have lived long enough to see that image exposed for what it was - so now people know that it's not sophisticated and that it is damaging. In the UK and Australia, and increasingly in central Europe, even smokers (myself included) do not smoke indoors even in our own homes. My behaviour, and that of other smokers, seems to have changed. Tobacco pricing has had an effect, I think. Advertising/sponsorship bans may well be working - but I was already a smoker before they were implemented; figures on young people should be informative. Similarly with plain packaging. My guess, then, is that smoking bans in social contexts (bars, restaurants, parks etc) have the greatest effect, and price also has a strong effect. Perhaps more interesting, for me, has been to see the effects of smoking being increasingly stigmatised, via advertising bans and also in TV shows etc. Slowly but surely, acceptability has been chipped away. (And, of course, with the tobacco lobby having been caught out lying for decades; but I wouldn't overestimate the effects of that truth on society, though.) There is no need to ban smoking, in my opinion. That would give it a new life and shadier markets. It is already dying as a habit.
sigmaprimus 6y ago
First off I am anti smoking, as an ex smoker I am probably the worst kind of "anti-smoker", that being said this "Idea" is not going to work and shows a lack of understanding of why addicted smokers, smoke. Think of it this way, we could also "Cure" alcoholism by taking alcohol out of beer, wine and spirits. Maybe we could fight the opioid epidemic by taking the active ingredient out of pain killers too, and while we are at it lets make all chocolate sugar free carob to cut down on the number of fattys out there. Cigarettes are a awful product that have a huge social cost but if You think making people wear masks is difficult, just try taking nicotine out of a smokers tobacco and see what happens!
sabellito 6y ago
This might work in the long run, and I'm all for policies to reduce the amount of people in the world that smoke. Having said that, when I only have access to light cigarettes, that come with less nicotine, I just end up smoking more cigarettes, as the craving is not satisfied.
marcrosoft 6y ago
The drug war has failed and they want to start it again with nicotine? Here comes black market cigarettes.
flint 6y ago
Eliminating tabacco products from nicotine deliver could help millions of smokers avoid the toxins and carcinogens present in tabacco.
scottlocklin 6y ago
Or you could just give them any of the number of fairly safe nicotine products available. Korean energy drinks, gum, snus, nasal snuff, etc etc. Nicotine is fine -prevents a number of diseases -maybe even the 'rona; lighting shit on fire and breathing it is obviously bad for you.
- sidpatil 6y ago
  > Korean energy drinks I wasn't aware that there existed foodstuffs containing nicotine. I tried searching for Korean energy drinks containing nicotine, but couldn't find much information. Can you please post some examples?
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    I used to drink them in Korea. Unless you speak korean I'm sure it's difficult to search for, but I can assure you they exist. They're great. Gives it a nice kick.
    - 1996 6y ago
      With the facial flush from nicotinic acid?
      - scottlocklin 6y ago
        No, while B3 is a common ingredient in such things: it was really nicotine.
bigbubba 6y ago
Uh huh, and taking the alcohol out of beer will make alcoholics stop drinking it...
- Tomminn 6y ago
  I guarantee you if you take the alcohol out of beer, alcoholics will stop drinking beer. Just like if you take the nicotine out of cigarettes, nicotine addicts will stop smoking cigarettes. That's the point. The problem isn't nicotine, the problem is cigarettes.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    My point is that it's an inane observation that removing the addictive chemical from the equation will remove the incentives of addicts to purchase that product. This is "fire is hot" type stuff.
AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
Eliminating heroine from heroine could help dope fiends quit.
erehweb 6y ago
The article itself doesn't address concerns of many commenters here about black market sales or smokers compensating, but it links to a British Medical Journal article that does. https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/7/3/281?ijkey=ae6159552047baa248cf162e7fb5ce73220af722&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/7/3/281?ijkey=ae61595.... Here's summary: A range of potential concerns and barriers was addressed, including the technical feasibility of reducing cigarette nicotine content to non-addictive levels, the possibility that compensatory smoking would reduce potential health benefits, and whether such an approach would foster illicit (“black market”) tobacco sales. Education, treatment, and research needs to enable a nicotine reduction strategy were also addressed. The Council on Scientific Affairs came to the following conclusions: (a) gradually eliminating nicotine from cigarettes is technically feasible; (b) a nicotine reduction strategy holds great promise in preventing adolescent tobacco addiction and assisting the millions of current cigarette smokers in their efforts to quit using tobacco products; (c) potential problems such as compensatory over-smoking of denicotinised cigarettes and black market sales could be minimised by providing alternate forms of nicotine delivery with less or little risk to health, as part of expanded access to treatment; and (d) such a strategy would need to be accompanied by relevant research and increased efforts to educate consumers and health professionals about tobacco and health. [Edited for formatting]
sabalaba 6y ago
Why? The psychoactive effects (relaxation, stimulation, and cognitive enhancement) of Nicotine is the reason that people enjoy tobacco products. Not everybody who smokes tobacco is an addict. Why ruin the fun for everybody else? While we’re at it, let’s replace all sugar with saccharin, only sell non alcoholic beer, and ban recreational intercourse. Truly a proposal from a sexless bureaucrat building a teetotalist snoozetown.
monkeypizza 6y ago
Nicotine is not harmful. It's a stimulant, like caffeine. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine I propose an alternative - a charity should just give nicotine gum or patches to smokers to help them quit. For many smokers this is enough (it's how I quit) and would improve their lives. Nicotine gum is cheaper than cigarettes, too. There seems like a market opportunity here for insurance companies who are paying for smoking-related treatments; why aren't they offering free gum to their clients? Even a percentage uptake should save them money if their incentives are aligned.
- orev 6y ago
  Everyone is different, so it’s worth exploring different options. It’s widely recognized that a big part of smoking is not the nicotine addiction itself, but also the social aspect. Reduced nicotine cigarettes would enable people to still smoke and participate in the social part, while reducing the nicotine addiction. It’s better to address one thing at a time than to try to go cold turkey on everything at once.
- yodsanklai 6y ago
  > nicotine gum or patches to smokers to help them quit A friend of mine is now addicted to nicotine gum (and still smokes). I'm glad it worked for you but I think there's no silver bullet to fight nicotine addiction. I'm convinced the best way is to prevent people (mostly teenagers) from starting. At least the US has strong laws to prevent selling cigarettes to minors. In my country, it's still somewhat tolerated to do so. It really makes me furious against our politicians.
- smeeth 6y ago
  >Nicotine is not harmful This is simply not true, and demonstrably so. There have been numerous studies in both animal and human models showing adverse effects to the cardiovascular system and tumor promotion in particular [0]. The link you provided seems to have a dog in the fight, I encourage you to read more on this. No question it’s better than smoking, but you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s caffeine. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/#!po=0.909091 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/#!po=0....
tartoran 6y ago
Won’t help. Raising prices helped somewhat. E-Cigarettes already helped many quit smoking. The main problems with cigarettes was the carcinogenic cocktail that smokers and those around inhale when a cigarette is being smoked. The nicotine in E-Cigarettes is addictive, yes, but not as harmful and one can easily taper off with diy kit - put less and less nicotine in the mix. Plus, the main addiciton is psychological not physical - one can’t help wanting a puff with coffee, in social settings, etc That pleasant habit dies hard
- igetspam 6y ago
  I quit that way. I made a decision to stop smoking and switched to using a vaporizer. That satisfied the oral fixation and I felt better, physically, rather quickly. I then tapered off the nicotine (pretty quickly, compared to most people). Within a few months I was using zero nicotine mixes. After that, the next step was to limit it to home and bars, still with no nicotine. That was seven or eight years ago. I've had two cigarettes since and both tasted abysmal. No interest any more. My vaporizer hasn't left my desk in years. Occasionally I'll puff on it when I'm really stressed but it's a placebo and a habit of over decade of smoking. Changing rituals and eventually getting rid of all the nicotine was my path to success.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    As an ex smoker I confirm that cigarettes taste and smell 10x worse after one quits. Congrats for beating the worst habit of the xx century. How are you feeling after all these years off cigarettes? Did you pick up any other bad habit? Im still on e-cigs but dilluted the nicotine concentration and am ready to stop altigether. Ive been e-ciggng for 3 years and didnt gave a regular cigarette since and am already feeling much better
    - igetspam 6y ago
      No new bad habits but no fewer, other than the one. I'm probably less winded when doing rigorous activities but I moved to Texas and it turns out I'm allergic to everything here, so I'm still coughing up a morning lung. It's definitely allergies and not the terror I saw when smoking. My life has more time in it now because I don't have to deal with smoke breaks. That's a double edged sword though. I forget to take mental breaks... Smoking is great and terrible. I loved smoking but I don't miss being a "smoker." Good luck on your journey.
morninglight 6y ago
You REALLY want to get rid of smoking? 1. Outlaw tobacco production and importation. 2. Pay smokers to stop - with regular drug testing. Of course this plan is politically impossible in a country that cannot even agree on face masks during a pandemic. And that is why smoking will be here for a very long time.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > 2. Pay smokers to stop - with regular drug testing. Or charge them more for health insurance. It's effectively the same thing, but more politically palatable.
  - aerotwelve 6y ago
    A consequence of this is to encourage smokers to lie to their doctors about their addiction so their insurance company won't find out that they smoke. I don't think this is desirable from a public health aspect - smokers need more preventative care, not less. I know that we already do this with the ACA in America, and this is the exact result I've found amongst old colleagues and friends who smoked regularly. They were terrified of their doctors finding out that they smoked (for fear that they'd be permanently priced out of private health insurance for the rest of their lives), so they weren't able to ask for prescription drugs that could have helped them quit.
ksaj 6y ago
One method I came up with, which a friend tried successfully (she doesn't smoke anymore) is to distinguish and separate the trigger from the habitual reaction. So for example, if you always have a cigarette the moment you get off the bus, force yourself to wait 10 minutes before sparking up. Do that for ALL your triggers. And always go outside to smoke, regardless of the weather - no comfy couch or office desk. You want to separate that bit of comfort, too. As a side-effect, your home will smell less like a disgusting ashtray even before you finally do quit. Sometimes 10 minutes after the trigger and initial urge passes, you might not feel like smoking at that moment, or you are onto something else that needs to be done. Too bad - spark up. This is to make the physical act of smoking a bit of a nuisance instead of an instant reward. If it gets in the way of something, great. If you REALLY don't feel like smoking at that moment, definitely force yourself to finish it. The more unpleasant or unwanted that smoke is for you, the better. After you get used to the 10 minute delays, make it 15 minutes. Then 20. Once you can last 20 minutes from the urge or trigger moment, you can decide to skip the cigarette. You probably don't really want it anyway, and if you can last 20 minutes from the onset of an urge, you're well on your way to quitting, and can now start to focus on having fewer cigs per day. Anyway, it took her a couple of months, but now it's been a couple of years since she's smoked. She only had excessive urges for the first few weeks, and didn't experience actual withdrawal. She just got to the point where she didn't care about it anymore, and then stopped. The hardest part for her was breaks at work, but she compensated by only having a single cigarette timed to coincide with the end of her break.
nix23 6y ago
Eliminating caffeine from coffee products could help millions of coffee drinkers quit. What a stupid title.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Tobacco products would be ‘illegal’ now had they been invented after we knew the health effects. Will be interesting to see the public health discussion around this in the context of legalizing marijuana. Humans clearly like to make decisions that may harm them quite a bit, let them?
Tomminn 6y ago
As someone who is addicted to nicotine gum, I think this is a genius policy. Nicotine is an intensely habit forming drug. You smoke for the nicotine, whether you realize it or not. Take it out, and you've lost the primary reason you smoke: the true sweetness of all cigarettes is due to one flavor, just like the true sweetness of all wine is due to one flavor. If you eliminate nicotine from legal cigarettes, the vast majority of smokers will stop smoking. Sure, maybe after a few binge sessions where they desperately and fruitlessly seek that hit. I think the fraction of smokers who will sustain a smoking addiction via black market cigarettes is less than 10%. To maintain a smoking addiction, you need to buy a lot of cigarettes. Few have sufficiently frequent access to black markets to sustain it. And yes, I'm chewing that damn gum as I write this;) To clarify, I don't advocate banning nicotine. I advocate banning nicotine delivered via toxic trash-heap. The same way I'd advocate banning alcohol mixed with methanol, if that was a super popular drink.
RhysU 6y ago
The easiest way to reduce smoking is simple: each cigarette, by law, should be hot pink.
- odomojuli 6y ago
  Making cigarettes even more conspicuous I think will backfire on teenagers
  - RhysU 6y ago
    (Adolescent) males want to project some level of cool. Hot pink cigarettes interfere with that desire. Also, if pink cigarettes would sell the industry would have already made some pink ones.
    - odomojuli 6y ago
      There's already Pink Elephants which are cool
odomojuli 6y ago
A few observations and anecdotes from a lifetime smoker. 1) A lot of my friends smoked Juuls. Once those became hard to find, they switched to cigarettes. 2) I hate smoking lights or menthols because I need to smoke more of them to get the same satisfaction as a 100. 3) A lot of people don't know you can at least write-off smoking cessation aids on your taxes. 4) There are medications such as Wellbutrin that help reduce cravings. I've taken one, and it basically makes it so you get nauseous from smoking or dampens your ability to taste it at all. 5) It's annoying to get cessation aids. There are plenty of neighborhoods without even a basic pharmacy and no dearth of liquor stores. 6) There's campaigns to prevent people from smoking and there's campaigns to help people quit. There's one way to moralize and there's another way towards harm reduction. Telling people they will die or get sick only makes them feel more cool. Smoking is cool. Especially when you're a teenager who feels invincible. 6a) I like this campaign they did in Japan produced by Japan Tobacco. http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_tobaccos_delightfully_dist_9553 http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_tobaccos_delightfully... 7) Encourage smokers to carry an ashtray. Muji sells one for $5. It is my favorite accessory, because I use it to pick up other people's cigarettes. https://www.muji.us/store/d-aluminium-portable-ashtray.html https://www.muji.us/store/d-aluminium-portable-ashtray.html 8) Cigarettes are incredibly valuable as currency and shifting their value towards the black market will backfire. The illegal cigarette trade has all sorts of geopolitical ramifications and even selling a loosie here in USA will get you killed. 9) Nicotine by itself is not sufficient for me. I smoke cigarettes BECAUSE they are dirty. There is something more than just nicotine that is addictive about the flavor. Substituting or replacing nicotine intake does nothing to change my addiction to the habit itself. 10) People smoke literally just to talk to other smokers. This is basically a science in nightlife culture and even a tradition in some places. In conclusion: this smells like ethics washing. The only "better" cigarette, is no cigarette. The argument for a "safer" cigarette is old. And it's marketing. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/ There are substantial measures we can take actions towards to reduce harm. Reduction of pesticides. Polonium. Regulation in cultivation and curing. Did you know that tomatoes can get mosaic virus from smoke or ash? Things like 'natural', 'organic', 'less-additive' create false perceptions of 'healthiness'. Legalize cigarettes. Ban smoking. Aside: The title is 'easy-way-to-quit-smoking' The headline is 'The Easy Way for Joe Biden to Save Lives' The submission is 'Eliminating nicotine from tobacco products could help up to 5 million adult smokers quit within a year.' I find the wording to be a bit odd.

31 points by ibiza 6y ago

jl6 6y ago

Has any country experimented with making cigarettes more dangerous, such as adding an impotence side-effect? Could go a long way towards de-glamorising smoking.

giuliomagnifico 6y ago

Yes, because who would smoke tobacco without nicotine? Is like eating a cake without sugar... (I think, I’m not a smoker)

keanebean86 6y ago
Edit: I was very wrong. Please disregard. Or breathing air without oxygen. You get the sensation of pulling it into your lungs but it doesn't fulfill that deeper desire. You try to suck in more to no avail. Your desperate gasps intensity as fear grows uncontrollable. At least with smokers they'll just be angry and uncomfortable instead of actually dead.
- aesthesia 6y ago
  Interestingly, this isn't what happens when you breathe air without oxygen. Our sense of suffocation is tied to levels of carbon dioxide, not oxygen. When breathing an oxygen-free inert gas, you pass out and die after a few breaths without any panic at all. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
  - keanebean86 6y ago
    Thank you for correcting me. I had not idea. I assumed it worked like drowning.

yodsanklai 6y ago

> Eliminating nicotine from tobacco products could help up to 5 million adult smokers quit within a year. Just wondering, if there's suddenly less nicotine in cigarettes, could it mean that people will start smoking more cigarettes to get the amount of nicotine they need?

mimac 6y ago
IIRC smokers change their inhaling patterns with 'light' cigarettes - they inhale more deeply and prolong the nictoine absorbtion time. In the EU its illegal to brand cigarettes as light.
- rndgermandude 6y ago
  I can tell you from first hand and second hand experience that this is exactly what a lot of smokers will do.
willcipriano 6y ago
I'd suspect so, at least at first while they have withdrawal symptoms. Frankly it might be more humane to ban it outright rather than have people desperately chain smoking.
- rndgermandude 6y ago
  Outright banning things has a tendency to have severe side effects, look at the alcohol prohibition the US had, the marijuana prohibition and general narcotics prohibitions. This has to be considered. I'd personally ramp up non-smoker protections first in particular protections for kids (even within their own families), and then ramp up measures to prevent people from starting to smoke, like a ban on advertisements for smoking, a ban of "branding" on cigarette packs, making access to cigarettes harder. Measures and even incentirives to help people stop or at least reduce smoking will also help.
  - samizdis 6y ago
    I live in England, where smoking in workplaces, bars and restaurants was banned in 2007. I am a smoker and this cut my consumption greatly; there's little social joy in standing outside by yourself purely to satisfy a craving. In 2014 I went to Australia, where I lived and worked for nearly three years. Anti-tobacco regulations there were far stricter than in the UK. Plain packaging had been introduced, prices were astronomical, smoking bans extended to many outdoor areas. My consumption reduced further (tobacco, that is - there was lots of terrific grass in Australia at agreeable prices). After Australia, I spent a few years in central Europe (mainly based in Prague). Cigarettes were dirt cheap (a third or a quarter of the price in Australia or in the UK). Smoking in restaurants and bars was allowed, and my consumption increased. Then, while I was still based in Prague, smoking in bars and restaurants was banned - my consumption fell once again. I've seen smoking presented, societally, as something sophisticated, and I have lived long enough to see that image exposed for what it was - so now people know that it's not sophisticated and that it is damaging. In the UK and Australia, and increasingly in central Europe, even smokers (myself included) do not smoke indoors even in our own homes. My behaviour, and that of other smokers, seems to have changed. Tobacco pricing has had an effect, I think. Advertising/sponsorship bans may well be working - but I was already a smoker before they were implemented; figures on young people should be informative. Similarly with plain packaging. My guess, then, is that smoking bans in social contexts (bars, restaurants, parks etc) have the greatest effect, and price also has a strong effect. Perhaps more interesting, for me, has been to see the effects of smoking being increasingly stigmatised, via advertising bans and also in TV shows etc. Slowly but surely, acceptability has been chipped away. (And, of course, with the tobacco lobby having been caught out lying for decades; but I wouldn't overestimate the effects of that truth on society, though.) There is no need to ban smoking, in my opinion. That would give it a new life and shadier markets. It is already dying as a habit.

sigmaprimus 6y ago

First off I am anti smoking, as an ex smoker I am probably the worst kind of "anti-smoker", that being said this "Idea" is not going to work and shows a lack of understanding of why addicted smokers, smoke. Think of it this way, we could also "Cure" alcoholism by taking alcohol out of beer, wine and spirits. Maybe we could fight the opioid epidemic by taking the active ingredient out of pain killers too, and while we are at it lets make all chocolate sugar free carob to cut down on the number of fattys out there. Cigarettes are a awful product that have a huge social cost but if You think making people wear masks is difficult, just try taking nicotine out of a smokers tobacco and see what happens!

sabellito 6y ago

This might work in the long run, and I'm all for policies to reduce the amount of people in the world that smoke. Having said that, when I only have access to light cigarettes, that come with less nicotine, I just end up smoking more cigarettes, as the craving is not satisfied.

marcrosoft 6y ago

The drug war has failed and they want to start it again with nicotine? Here comes black market cigarettes.

flint 6y ago

Eliminating tabacco products from nicotine deliver could help millions of smokers avoid the toxins and carcinogens present in tabacco.

scottlocklin 6y ago

Or you could just give them any of the number of fairly safe nicotine products available. Korean energy drinks, gum, snus, nasal snuff, etc etc. Nicotine is fine -prevents a number of diseases -maybe even the 'rona; lighting shit on fire and breathing it is obviously bad for you.

sidpatil 6y ago
> Korean energy drinks I wasn't aware that there existed foodstuffs containing nicotine. I tried searching for Korean energy drinks containing nicotine, but couldn't find much information. Can you please post some examples?
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  I used to drink them in Korea. Unless you speak korean I'm sure it's difficult to search for, but I can assure you they exist. They're great. Gives it a nice kick.
  - 1996 6y ago
    With the facial flush from nicotinic acid?
    - scottlocklin 6y ago
      No, while B3 is a common ingredient in such things: it was really nicotine.

bigbubba 6y ago

Uh huh, and taking the alcohol out of beer will make alcoholics stop drinking it...

Tomminn 6y ago
I guarantee you if you take the alcohol out of beer, alcoholics will stop drinking beer. Just like if you take the nicotine out of cigarettes, nicotine addicts will stop smoking cigarettes. That's the point. The problem isn't nicotine, the problem is cigarettes.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  My point is that it's an inane observation that removing the addictive chemical from the equation will remove the incentives of addicts to purchase that product. This is "fire is hot" type stuff.

AlgorithmicTime 6y ago

Eliminating heroine from heroine could help dope fiends quit.

erehweb 6y ago

The article itself doesn't address concerns of many commenters here about black market sales or smokers compensating, but it links to a British Medical Journal article that does. https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/7/3/281?ijkey=ae6159552047baa248cf162e7fb5ce73220af722&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/7/3/281?ijkey=ae61595.... Here's summary: A range of potential concerns and barriers was addressed, including the technical feasibility of reducing cigarette nicotine content to non-addictive levels, the possibility that compensatory smoking would reduce potential health benefits, and whether such an approach would foster illicit (“black market”) tobacco sales. Education, treatment, and research needs to enable a nicotine reduction strategy were also addressed. The Council on Scientific Affairs came to the following conclusions: (a) gradually eliminating nicotine from cigarettes is technically feasible; (b) a nicotine reduction strategy holds great promise in preventing adolescent tobacco addiction and assisting the millions of current cigarette smokers in their efforts to quit using tobacco products; (c) potential problems such as compensatory over-smoking of denicotinised cigarettes and black market sales could be minimised by providing alternate forms of nicotine delivery with less or little risk to health, as part of expanded access to treatment; and (d) such a strategy would need to be accompanied by relevant research and increased efforts to educate consumers and health professionals about tobacco and health. [Edited for formatting]

sabalaba 6y ago

Why? The psychoactive effects (relaxation, stimulation, and cognitive enhancement) of Nicotine is the reason that people enjoy tobacco products. Not everybody who smokes tobacco is an addict. Why ruin the fun for everybody else? While we’re at it, let’s replace all sugar with saccharin, only sell non alcoholic beer, and ban recreational intercourse. Truly a proposal from a sexless bureaucrat building a teetotalist snoozetown.

monkeypizza 6y ago

Nicotine is not harmful. It's a stimulant, like caffeine. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine I propose an alternative - a charity should just give nicotine gum or patches to smokers to help them quit. For many smokers this is enough (it's how I quit) and would improve their lives. Nicotine gum is cheaper than cigarettes, too. There seems like a market opportunity here for insurance companies who are paying for smoking-related treatments; why aren't they offering free gum to their clients? Even a percentage uptake should save them money if their incentives are aligned.

orev 6y ago
Everyone is different, so it’s worth exploring different options. It’s widely recognized that a big part of smoking is not the nicotine addiction itself, but also the social aspect. Reduced nicotine cigarettes would enable people to still smoke and participate in the social part, while reducing the nicotine addiction. It’s better to address one thing at a time than to try to go cold turkey on everything at once.
yodsanklai 6y ago
> nicotine gum or patches to smokers to help them quit A friend of mine is now addicted to nicotine gum (and still smokes). I'm glad it worked for you but I think there's no silver bullet to fight nicotine addiction. I'm convinced the best way is to prevent people (mostly teenagers) from starting. At least the US has strong laws to prevent selling cigarettes to minors. In my country, it's still somewhat tolerated to do so. It really makes me furious against our politicians.
smeeth 6y ago
>Nicotine is not harmful This is simply not true, and demonstrably so. There have been numerous studies in both animal and human models showing adverse effects to the cardiovascular system and tumor promotion in particular [0]. The link you provided seems to have a dog in the fight, I encourage you to read more on this. No question it’s better than smoking, but you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s caffeine. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/#!po=0.909091 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/#!po=0....

tartoran 6y ago

Won’t help. Raising prices helped somewhat. E-Cigarettes already helped many quit smoking. The main problems with cigarettes was the carcinogenic cocktail that smokers and those around inhale when a cigarette is being smoked. The nicotine in E-Cigarettes is addictive, yes, but not as harmful and one can easily taper off with diy kit - put less and less nicotine in the mix. Plus, the main addiciton is psychological not physical - one can’t help wanting a puff with coffee, in social settings, etc That pleasant habit dies hard

igetspam 6y ago
I quit that way. I made a decision to stop smoking and switched to using a vaporizer. That satisfied the oral fixation and I felt better, physically, rather quickly. I then tapered off the nicotine (pretty quickly, compared to most people). Within a few months I was using zero nicotine mixes. After that, the next step was to limit it to home and bars, still with no nicotine. That was seven or eight years ago. I've had two cigarettes since and both tasted abysmal. No interest any more. My vaporizer hasn't left my desk in years. Occasionally I'll puff on it when I'm really stressed but it's a placebo and a habit of over decade of smoking. Changing rituals and eventually getting rid of all the nicotine was my path to success.
- tartoran 6y ago
  As an ex smoker I confirm that cigarettes taste and smell 10x worse after one quits. Congrats for beating the worst habit of the xx century. How are you feeling after all these years off cigarettes? Did you pick up any other bad habit? Im still on e-cigs but dilluted the nicotine concentration and am ready to stop altigether. Ive been e-ciggng for 3 years and didnt gave a regular cigarette since and am already feeling much better
  - igetspam 6y ago
    No new bad habits but no fewer, other than the one. I'm probably less winded when doing rigorous activities but I moved to Texas and it turns out I'm allergic to everything here, so I'm still coughing up a morning lung. It's definitely allergies and not the terror I saw when smoking. My life has more time in it now because I don't have to deal with smoke breaks. That's a double edged sword though. I forget to take mental breaks... Smoking is great and terrible. I loved smoking but I don't miss being a "smoker." Good luck on your journey.

morninglight 6y ago

You REALLY want to get rid of smoking? 1. Outlaw tobacco production and importation. 2. Pay smokers to stop - with regular drug testing. Of course this plan is politically impossible in a country that cannot even agree on face masks during a pandemic. And that is why smoking will be here for a very long time.

dehrmann 6y ago
> 2. Pay smokers to stop - with regular drug testing. Or charge them more for health insurance. It's effectively the same thing, but more politically palatable.
- aerotwelve 6y ago
  A consequence of this is to encourage smokers to lie to their doctors about their addiction so their insurance company won't find out that they smoke. I don't think this is desirable from a public health aspect - smokers need more preventative care, not less. I know that we already do this with the ACA in America, and this is the exact result I've found amongst old colleagues and friends who smoked regularly. They were terrified of their doctors finding out that they smoked (for fear that they'd be permanently priced out of private health insurance for the rest of their lives), so they weren't able to ask for prescription drugs that could have helped them quit.

ksaj 6y ago

One method I came up with, which a friend tried successfully (she doesn't smoke anymore) is to distinguish and separate the trigger from the habitual reaction. So for example, if you always have a cigarette the moment you get off the bus, force yourself to wait 10 minutes before sparking up. Do that for ALL your triggers. And always go outside to smoke, regardless of the weather - no comfy couch or office desk. You want to separate that bit of comfort, too. As a side-effect, your home will smell less like a disgusting ashtray even before you finally do quit. Sometimes 10 minutes after the trigger and initial urge passes, you might not feel like smoking at that moment, or you are onto something else that needs to be done. Too bad - spark up. This is to make the physical act of smoking a bit of a nuisance instead of an instant reward. If it gets in the way of something, great. If you REALLY don't feel like smoking at that moment, definitely force yourself to finish it. The more unpleasant or unwanted that smoke is for you, the better. After you get used to the 10 minute delays, make it 15 minutes. Then 20. Once you can last 20 minutes from the urge or trigger moment, you can decide to skip the cigarette. You probably don't really want it anyway, and if you can last 20 minutes from the onset of an urge, you're well on your way to quitting, and can now start to focus on having fewer cigs per day. Anyway, it took her a couple of months, but now it's been a couple of years since she's smoked. She only had excessive urges for the first few weeks, and didn't experience actual withdrawal. She just got to the point where she didn't care about it anymore, and then stopped. The hardest part for her was breaks at work, but she compensated by only having a single cigarette timed to coincide with the end of her break.

nix23 6y ago

Eliminating caffeine from coffee products could help millions of coffee drinkers quit. What a stupid title.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Tobacco products would be ‘illegal’ now had they been invented after we knew the health effects. Will be interesting to see the public health discussion around this in the context of legalizing marijuana. Humans clearly like to make decisions that may harm them quite a bit, let them?

Tomminn 6y ago

As someone who is addicted to nicotine gum, I think this is a genius policy. Nicotine is an intensely habit forming drug. You smoke for the nicotine, whether you realize it or not. Take it out, and you've lost the primary reason you smoke: the true sweetness of all cigarettes is due to one flavor, just like the true sweetness of all wine is due to one flavor. If you eliminate nicotine from legal cigarettes, the vast majority of smokers will stop smoking. Sure, maybe after a few binge sessions where they desperately and fruitlessly seek that hit. I think the fraction of smokers who will sustain a smoking addiction via black market cigarettes is less than 10%. To maintain a smoking addiction, you need to buy a lot of cigarettes. Few have sufficiently frequent access to black markets to sustain it. And yes, I'm chewing that damn gum as I write this;) To clarify, I don't advocate banning nicotine. I advocate banning nicotine delivered via toxic trash-heap. The same way I'd advocate banning alcohol mixed with methanol, if that was a super popular drink.

RhysU 6y ago

The easiest way to reduce smoking is simple: each cigarette, by law, should be hot pink.

odomojuli 6y ago
Making cigarettes even more conspicuous I think will backfire on teenagers
- RhysU 6y ago
  (Adolescent) males want to project some level of cool. Hot pink cigarettes interfere with that desire. Also, if pink cigarettes would sell the industry would have already made some pink ones.
  - odomojuli 6y ago
    There's already Pink Elephants which are cool

odomojuli 6y ago

A few observations and anecdotes from a lifetime smoker. 1) A lot of my friends smoked Juuls. Once those became hard to find, they switched to cigarettes. 2) I hate smoking lights or menthols because I need to smoke more of them to get the same satisfaction as a 100. 3) A lot of people don't know you can at least write-off smoking cessation aids on your taxes. 4) There are medications such as Wellbutrin that help reduce cravings. I've taken one, and it basically makes it so you get nauseous from smoking or dampens your ability to taste it at all. 5) It's annoying to get cessation aids. There are plenty of neighborhoods without even a basic pharmacy and no dearth of liquor stores. 6) There's campaigns to prevent people from smoking and there's campaigns to help people quit. There's one way to moralize and there's another way towards harm reduction. Telling people they will die or get sick only makes them feel more cool. Smoking is cool. Especially when you're a teenager who feels invincible. 6a) I like this campaign they did in Japan produced by Japan Tobacco. http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_tobaccos_delightfully_dist_9553 http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_tobaccos_delightfully... 7) Encourage smokers to carry an ashtray. Muji sells one for $5. It is my favorite accessory, because I use it to pick up other people's cigarettes. https://www.muji.us/store/d-aluminium-portable-ashtray.html https://www.muji.us/store/d-aluminium-portable-ashtray.html 8) Cigarettes are incredibly valuable as currency and shifting their value towards the black market will backfire. The illegal cigarette trade has all sorts of geopolitical ramifications and even selling a loosie here in USA will get you killed. 9) Nicotine by itself is not sufficient for me. I smoke cigarettes BECAUSE they are dirty. There is something more than just nicotine that is addictive about the flavor. Substituting or replacing nicotine intake does nothing to change my addiction to the habit itself. 10) People smoke literally just to talk to other smokers. This is basically a science in nightlife culture and even a tradition in some places. In conclusion: this smells like ethics washing. The only "better" cigarette, is no cigarette. The argument for a "safer" cigarette is old. And it's marketing. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/ There are substantial measures we can take actions towards to reduce harm. Reduction of pesticides. Polonium. Regulation in cultivation and curing. Did you know that tomatoes can get mosaic virus from smoke or ash? Things like 'natural', 'organic', 'less-additive' create false perceptions of 'healthiness'. Legalize cigarettes. Ban smoking. Aside: The title is 'easy-way-to-quit-smoking' The headline is 'The Easy Way for Joe Biden to Save Lives' The submission is 'Eliminating nicotine from tobacco products could help up to 5 million adult smokers quit within a year.' I find the wording to be a bit odd.