6 ms·

Smoking is magnitudes more addictive than alcohol. Regardless, a lot of people do ask why anyone would drink alcohol, given that it offers up an enormous array

Smoking is magnitudes more addictive than alcohol. Regardless, a lot of people do ask why anyone would drink alcohol, given that it offers up an enormous array of detrimental health effects, the possibility of addiction and social troubles (DUI, violence, etc), and as a mental "holiday" altered state is an incredibly poor mechanism. Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism.

strken 5y ago
That's already been tried before, and it resulted in the US government deliberately poisoning people, widespread organised crime, and a lot of methanol poisoning. Turns out it's really hard to ban something you can make in a 20 gallon drum from yeast and sugar.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  We wouldn't have to ban it any more than we had to ban cigarettes
  - alethiophile 5y ago
    The decline in smoking has absolutely been accompanied and/or caused by a massive array of state coercion, from requiring all their advertising to prominently state "THIS WILL KILL YOU" to limiting who's allowed to sell it to banning it in almost all public spaces. (Which isn't even mentioning the "softer" approaches of massive state-funded PR campaigns against it.) It seems quite likely that absent all of these, smoking would still be as popular as it ever was.
    - throwaway1777 5y ago
      Not to mention the incredibly high taxes on cigarettes.
rkk3 5y ago
> Smoking is magnitudes more addictive than alcohol. No it is not magnitudes more addictive. Alcohol is extremely addictive, 1 in 12 Adults in the US has an alcohol problem [1] and withdrawal can literally kill you, unlike nicotine. 1. https://www.ncadd.org/about-addiction/alcohol https://www.ncadd.org/about-addiction/alcohol
- defaultname 5y ago
  Your stats in absolutely no way counters my claim about addiction. Almost everyone who smokes to any degree becomes addicted and a regular user. Tens (100 million+) of millions of Americans drink occasionally with no addiction. Alcohol is a dangerous drug in every dimension, and I specifically said that. But their addiction profiles are dramatically different.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    > Your stats in absolutely no way counters my claim about addiction. There is no standardized addiction metric. The product, the dosage, age of user, and social habits matter significantly. Alcohol is extremely addictive and habit forming it kills 95,000 people a year in the US. I think it is disingenuous to dismiss it is as orders of magnitude less addictive than nicotine. Most people can smoke a Cigar without becoming addicted to nicotine and a regular user. In the same way most people who are exposed to alcohol in the US don't get addicted.
  - strken 5y ago
    This is an absolutely ridiculous claim given the number of people I know who've had a first cigarette and not touched a second. Business Insider claims 76% of the population have smoked and 24% have become addicted, while 92% have consumed alcohol and 14% have become addicted[0]. That's nowhere near "almost everyone", it's 31%, and 15% for alcohol. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-addictive-substances-2016-5 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-addictive-substances...
    - girvo 5y ago
      Addiction rates are lower than people think; heroin, even, is lower than you'd assume (the rate I remember seeing was about 25%, in-line with nicotine). Of course, 1/4 is still a HUGE amount of people, and an absolute health crisis.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted and almost all do so enough to substantially effect their health and longevity whether they know it or not. Most of the people who consume alcohol do so casually and not to excess. Essentially the chance of dying in a given year due to alcohol if this were anything like a random chance is around 1 in 2000 whereas the chance of dying from smoking is around 1 in 77. This is something like the difference in danger in riding a motorcycle 100 miles and base jumping. Of course its not random at all whereas taking up smoking is extremely likely to result in becoming a life long smoker and suffering the average ill effects its perfectly possible for most people to enjoy a sane amount of alcohol infrequently. Consumption of intoxicants of some variety seems to have been a feature of humanity for the entirety of human history. The expulsion of smoker from reasonable things to be in human society has only happened after we realized its predictable massive effect on human health. There just will never be the same impetus with alcohol.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  >Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted and almost all do so enough to substantially effect their health and longevity whether they know it or not. This sounds right enough, but can you cite your sources for it?
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    I don't think that really needs a cite in 2021 but let me give it a go https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180109214939.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180109214939.h... > At least 61 per cent of people who try their first cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, suggests an analysis of survey data by Queen Mary University of London. This is actually stronger than the original statement. A substantial minority who even try smoking become smokers.I think it ought to be considered a given that people who smoke are physiologically addicted to nicotine. Having many relatives who smoke currently or have in the past. Smoking in America has been so pervasive that most of us likely have direct knowledge of smoking by either smoking having family members who smoke.
RobertKerans 5y ago
> Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism Why do you think this? It seems an extremely puritan outlook, I'm a bit sceptical that puritanism is saleable without enforcement of society-wide religious norms. Smoking, sure, but smoking is not at all like alcohol consumption.
- defaultname 5y ago
  Given that I think cannabis, MDMA, pyslocybin and other drugs are far superior to alcohol, I don't think most people would categorize my beliefs as puritanical. If anything it's puritanical "old ways" beliefs that keeps alcohol as the primary drug despite an enormous array of extreme negatives.
  - RobertKerans 5y ago
    I understand where you're coming from, but I feel like this ignores practicality and, coupled to that, social use. You can go on numbers related to health, or raw effectiveness, but those numbers don't measure practicality. MD, mushrooms (and acid et al) are far too powerful (yes, you can take very small doses, but in general). To look at it coldly, they're just not at all practical, regardless of them having, I would say, far fewer direct negative health effects. Indirectly though, things that immediately change people's mental state to such a degree are I would say more dangerous than alcohol. With alcohol, I can go and have a small amount with family or friends or colleagues, for a short period of time. I can do it home, with a meal. And the actual drinking of it is core. It's not like taking one the above drugs: I take the drug then I am mentally altered to a large degree, possibly for a long period of time. In the case of a selfish drug, like cocaine or an amphetamine, I can function, and the effects a shorter, but there's no social aspect. The actual sitting down with others to spend time imbibing is central. Cannabis obviously has this in common, so I think that's a very fair comparison. And just to stay on topic, so does tobacco. It's not just the effect of the drug that's attractive, it's [what I think is fair to say is] the social ritual associated with it. It helps that taking those isn't quick (it's not just slipping a pill), that's a feature.
hattmall 5y ago
Alcohol has enormous benefits over smoking and has pretty much been in hand for the entirety of civilization. If people drink like a normal smoker smokes its considered a problem. If your having a couple morning drinks and taking shot breaks at work people would view that as extreme, yet that was/is a norm for smokers. The thing is that its not so much explicitly smoking, but cigarettes that are the major problem. Cigarettes have so many additives and distort the natural tobacco to enhance the addiction that they themselves create the bulk of the smoking related issues. Using a natural tobacco product at the same frequency as normal / social drinking wouldn't have nearly the terrible health impacts as what happens to typical cigarette smokers and would likely be seen in a similar vein were it not for the negative attention brought on by cigarettes.

strken 5y ago

That's already been tried before, and it resulted in the US government deliberately poisoning people, widespread organised crime, and a lot of methanol poisoning. Turns out it's really hard to ban something you can make in a 20 gallon drum from yeast and sugar.

TchoBeer 5y ago
We wouldn't have to ban it any more than we had to ban cigarettes
- alethiophile 5y ago
  The decline in smoking has absolutely been accompanied and/or caused by a massive array of state coercion, from requiring all their advertising to prominently state "THIS WILL KILL YOU" to limiting who's allowed to sell it to banning it in almost all public spaces. (Which isn't even mentioning the "softer" approaches of massive state-funded PR campaigns against it.) It seems quite likely that absent all of these, smoking would still be as popular as it ever was.
  - throwaway1777 5y ago
    Not to mention the incredibly high taxes on cigarettes.

rkk3 5y ago

> Smoking is magnitudes more addictive than alcohol. No it is not magnitudes more addictive. Alcohol is extremely addictive, 1 in 12 Adults in the US has an alcohol problem [1] and withdrawal can literally kill you, unlike nicotine. 1. https://www.ncadd.org/about-addiction/alcohol https://www.ncadd.org/about-addiction/alcohol

defaultname 5y ago
Your stats in absolutely no way counters my claim about addiction. Almost everyone who smokes to any degree becomes addicted and a regular user. Tens (100 million+) of millions of Americans drink occasionally with no addiction. Alcohol is a dangerous drug in every dimension, and I specifically said that. But their addiction profiles are dramatically different.
- rkk3 5y ago
  > Your stats in absolutely no way counters my claim about addiction. There is no standardized addiction metric. The product, the dosage, age of user, and social habits matter significantly. Alcohol is extremely addictive and habit forming it kills 95,000 people a year in the US. I think it is disingenuous to dismiss it is as orders of magnitude less addictive than nicotine. Most people can smoke a Cigar without becoming addicted to nicotine and a regular user. In the same way most people who are exposed to alcohol in the US don't get addicted.
- strken 5y ago
  This is an absolutely ridiculous claim given the number of people I know who've had a first cigarette and not touched a second. Business Insider claims 76% of the population have smoked and 24% have become addicted, while 92% have consumed alcohol and 14% have become addicted[0]. That's nowhere near "almost everyone", it's 31%, and 15% for alcohol. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-addictive-substances-2016-5 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-addictive-substances...
  - girvo 5y ago
    Addiction rates are lower than people think; heroin, even, is lower than you'd assume (the rate I remember seeing was about 25%, in-line with nicotine). Of course, 1/4 is still a HUGE amount of people, and an absolute health crisis.

michaelmrose 5y ago

Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted and almost all do so enough to substantially effect their health and longevity whether they know it or not. Most of the people who consume alcohol do so casually and not to excess. Essentially the chance of dying in a given year due to alcohol if this were anything like a random chance is around 1 in 2000 whereas the chance of dying from smoking is around 1 in 77. This is something like the difference in danger in riding a motorcycle 100 miles and base jumping. Of course its not random at all whereas taking up smoking is extremely likely to result in becoming a life long smoker and suffering the average ill effects its perfectly possible for most people to enjoy a sane amount of alcohol infrequently. Consumption of intoxicants of some variety seems to have been a feature of humanity for the entirety of human history. The expulsion of smoker from reasonable things to be in human society has only happened after we realized its predictable massive effect on human health. There just will never be the same impetus with alcohol.

TchoBeer 5y ago
>Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted and almost all do so enough to substantially effect their health and longevity whether they know it or not. This sounds right enough, but can you cite your sources for it?
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  I don't think that really needs a cite in 2021 but let me give it a go https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180109214939.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180109214939.h... > At least 61 per cent of people who try their first cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, suggests an analysis of survey data by Queen Mary University of London. This is actually stronger than the original statement. A substantial minority who even try smoking become smokers.I think it ought to be considered a given that people who smoke are physiologically addicted to nicotine. Having many relatives who smoke currently or have in the past. Smoking in America has been so pervasive that most of us likely have direct knowledge of smoking by either smoking having family members who smoke.

RobertKerans 5y ago

> Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism Why do you think this? It seems an extremely puritan outlook, I'm a bit sceptical that puritanism is saleable without enforcement of society-wide religious norms. Smoking, sure, but smoking is not at all like alcohol consumption.

defaultname 5y ago
Given that I think cannabis, MDMA, pyslocybin and other drugs are far superior to alcohol, I don't think most people would categorize my beliefs as puritanical. If anything it's puritanical "old ways" beliefs that keeps alcohol as the primary drug despite an enormous array of extreme negatives.
- RobertKerans 5y ago
  I understand where you're coming from, but I feel like this ignores practicality and, coupled to that, social use. You can go on numbers related to health, or raw effectiveness, but those numbers don't measure practicality. MD, mushrooms (and acid et al) are far too powerful (yes, you can take very small doses, but in general). To look at it coldly, they're just not at all practical, regardless of them having, I would say, far fewer direct negative health effects. Indirectly though, things that immediately change people's mental state to such a degree are I would say more dangerous than alcohol. With alcohol, I can go and have a small amount with family or friends or colleagues, for a short period of time. I can do it home, with a meal. And the actual drinking of it is core. It's not like taking one the above drugs: I take the drug then I am mentally altered to a large degree, possibly for a long period of time. In the case of a selfish drug, like cocaine or an amphetamine, I can function, and the effects a shorter, but there's no social aspect. The actual sitting down with others to spend time imbibing is central. Cannabis obviously has this in common, so I think that's a very fair comparison. And just to stay on topic, so does tobacco. It's not just the effect of the drug that's attractive, it's [what I think is fair to say is] the social ritual associated with it. It helps that taking those isn't quick (it's not just slipping a pill), that's a feature.

hattmall 5y ago

Alcohol has enormous benefits over smoking and has pretty much been in hand for the entirety of civilization. If people drink like a normal smoker smokes its considered a problem. If your having a couple morning drinks and taking shot breaks at work people would view that as extreme, yet that was/is a norm for smokers. The thing is that its not so much explicitly smoking, but cigarettes that are the major problem. Cigarettes have so many additives and distort the natural tobacco to enhance the addiction that they themselves create the bulk of the smoking related issues. Using a natural tobacco product at the same frequency as normal / social drinking wouldn't have nearly the terrible health impacts as what happens to typical cigarette smokers and would likely be seen in a similar vein were it not for the negative attention brought on by cigarettes.