34 ms·

I quit – Peak indifference, big tobacco

285 points by Arubis 5y ago

delsarto 5y ago
John Safran has just released a book Puff Piece about the incredible way Philip Morris has rebranded as a "health enterprise" and released the "heatstick" with their "vaping" IQOS platform (quotes are intentional, because as the books shows, words mean nothing!) https://johnsafran.com/ https://johnsafran.com/ The podcast below sums it up perfectly: Three years ago, tobacco giant Philip Morris announced they were moving away from cigarettes and that they were campaigning to "unsmoke the world". They said they would offer people a better alternative to the cigarette, a device that would give you your nicotine fix from a "HeatStick". Author and documentary maker John Safran discovered the HeatStick is made primarily from tobacco, and that it still generates carcinogenic tar. John soon found that Philip Morris were financing "anti-smoking" initiatives all over the world. They look just like conventional Quit programs, but they are designed to shift people onto this new device. https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/john-safran-philip-morris-puff-piece-heatstick/13534586 https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/john-saf...
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Private advertisements that pretend to be public service health announcements seem particularly evil!
- casefields 5y ago
  >John soon found that Philip Morris were financing "anti-smoking" initiatives all over the world. They are literally obligated to fund them according to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    What's being discussed here is not real "quit smoking" campaigns but "get addicted to our shiny new thing" campaigns disguised as such. The anti vape campaigns and reporting in recent years has been heavily influenced by Philip-Morris and their iqos strategy, which is to get people to switch to non- combusted tobacco sticks instead of alternative methods of delivery. Vapes have turned out more or less ok, with a negligible impact on health and lung capacity. Chronic nicotine has its own impact, certain flavorings are problematic, but it's orders of magnitude better than smoking. There's no indication that iqos is any better, but it's certainly far more expensive. IQOS by Philip Morris is the latest cynical plot to get people hooked and extract endless streams of cash. Vape is cheaper, iqos far more expensive. It's an interesting bellwether for news organizations. If they run anti-vape, PM has their hooks in.
  - delsarto 5y ago
    In a big picture sense they've managed to reverse engineer this from a message of "quit" (i.e. do not ingest anything, which is what basically all health-based quit campaigns are about) to "stop smoking" where their IQOS system, which uses non-combustable tobacco-in-a-cylindrical-package-with-a-filter tip "HeatSticks" is "not smoking".
dbt00 5y ago
That was always my dad's pitch to me. Don't give those fuckers one thin dime. I casually smoked cigarettes in college, but never seriously and every time I bought a pack I looked at the logo on the back and reminded myself that I hated those fuckers and I wasn't going to keep doing it. I quit before my first kid was born. My grandfather had lung cancer twice. He quit smoking after the first time. His wife couldn't. She spent 10 years in long, slow COPD decline after he passed. Don't fucking do it. And don't buy fucking nicotine vapes, either. Fuck those assholes.
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  I've seen a few posts around saying vapes are about to be banned here in Australia. Have no idea if its true or not.
  - Rooki 5y ago
    Still available with a prescription: https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/vapers-told-to-head-to-the-doctor-ahead-of-new-import-rules-20210813-p58iet.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/vapers-told...
  - pvarangot 5y ago
    Get a dry herb vaporizer and vape loose leaf tobacco. Takes a while to find the combination of temperature and herb that doesn't taste like shit, and it's also not the same as a real cigarette but it does the thing. You also inhale less matter than with an ecig, so I think it may end up being healthier... but I'm like, the only person I know that does this daily so science may never know.
    - lambdaba 5y ago
      Totally with you, my intuition is loose leaf pure tobacco is much less harmful and for a while when I still smoked I couldn't stand regular cigarettes, also preferred rolling my own, both for the gesture and the taste.
  - Sophistifunk 5y ago
buescher 5y ago
Ironically, given that the data on tobacco use and COVID gives the medical establishment fits, now may not be the best time to quit. Not an argument for starting, of course.
- flerchin 5y ago
  What is this? You think smokers beat the 'rona?
  - buescher 5y ago
    Oh yes, smoking is very bad and only very bad people do it and they will die and you will live forever if you don't smoke. Is it a happy story now? Please don't accuse me of "thinking" anything I didn't say. In the meantime, there are clinical trials going on now for the use of nicotine to prevent COVID: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04583410 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04583410
    - criddell 5y ago
      There are lots of reasons to like nicotine, there are no good reasons to get it through smoking.
    - _kst_ 5y ago
      "Oh yes, smoking is very bad and only very bad people do it and they will die and you will live forever if you don't smoke. Is it a happy story now? Please don't accuse me of "thinking" anything I didn't say." Nobody accused you of any of that.
      - buescher 5y ago
        I didn't say smokers "beat the 'rona" and I'm not arguing for the virtue of smoking. I also do think the moral tone in "what is this?" is childish and inappropriately peckish.
  - 1986 5y ago
Factorium 5y ago
Smokers and the Obese save Governments money on healthcare costs, by dying earlier: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748... This study only included healthcare costs, and so the savings would thus be even greater when considering pensions. "On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived 77 years and obese people 80 years. The healthy group cost $417,000, the obese $371,000, and smokers $326,000."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- umvi 5y ago
  Using that logic, the government should be eager to keep covid around as long as possible because of money being saved by people dying early.
  - kimixa 5y ago
    The question would be how does that balance against "productive" years, where they're paying taxes, their work increases the GDP etc.
    - Factorium 5y ago
      According to this UK COVID Risk Calculator: https://qcovid.org/Calculation https://qcovid.org/Calculation An average healthy White British male of 66 years (retirement age) has a hospitalisation risk of 1 in 831; death risk of 1 in 2786. By contrast the yearly risk of death in that age bracket generally, from any cause, is 1 in 42: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html COVID is accelerating deaths from existing comorbidities or very old age; based on this data it is not felling healthy workers.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    One could argue that fighting against covid was worst thing we could have done for climate in long run...
caturopath 5y ago
Demanded I sign in to read the article, but it worked in a Private Window.
umvi 5y ago
> you disagree on whether there is such a thing as truth, and, if there is, how it can be known People will only believe information to be true if it comes from a source they trust. And when a source of information becomes politicized, then suddenly only half of the population will believe information from it, while the other half will be suspicious and distrusting of it.
- mcguire 5y ago
  The neat part is that you do not have to be part of the source of information in order to politicize the source of information.
dhosek 5y ago
I never understood how anyone under the age of 50 could take up smoking. It's been abundantly clear since I was a kid that smoking would kill you slowly and painfully and we had numerous presentations at my grade school in the 70s to that effect. And yet there was a crowd of teenagers at my high school in the designated smoking area in the outside space between D and F halls (the location seems ironic in retrospect).
- lordlic 5y ago
  I understand why people take up smoking but I don't understand why people expect credit for breaking out of it. Addiction is an ugly thing and seeing a public personality parlay their experience into an excuse to write a blog post is pretty distasteful to me. Just quietly stop; not everything has to be an event in the history of internet culture.
  - NoSorryCannot 5y ago
    Just quietly ignore it and move on; not everyone needs to hear about what you find distasteful.
  - wetmore 5y ago
    I find your perception of this blog post bizarre. Who is asking for credit for quitting? Who is making this an event in the history of internet culture?
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    I've made a habit of putting myself through nicotine withdrawal (I like the on-edge feeling, yes I'm weird), and smokers who quit deserve a lot of credit. It's hard, and I don't think anyone who hasn't been through it would understand how hard it is.
    - lordlic 5y ago
      If you're assuming I haven't gone through nicotine withdrawal myself then that's mistaken.
chiph 5y ago
Those smokers that live to 85 or 90? They're the edge cases. Most do not make it that far, like my grandfather. He smoked Chesterfields, just like the ad with Ronald Reagan in Cory's article, only the unfiltered kind.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  unfiltered may be safer because smokers do not inhale as deep
  - chiph 5y ago
    In the general case, maybe. Not in his specific case. There is probably a mortality study of filtered vs. unfiltered smoker preferences.
mcguire 5y ago
I do have to admit, he has a way with words. "It’s how homeopaths, anti-vaxers, eugenicists, raw milk pushers and other members of the Paltrow-Industrial Complex played the BBC and other sober-sided media outlets, demanding that they be given airtime to rebut scientists’ careful, empirical claims with junk they made up on the spot."
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  "but I also know that keeping an open mind doesn’t require that you open so wide that your brains fall out."
andrewstuart 5y ago
I "gave up smoking" by not giving up. I just deferred the decision to have one cigarette. When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes. And crucially, the rules allowed me to have one if I really wanted. At first there was lots of deferring and then deciding to have one. Eventually I just deferred the decision five minutes then five minutes more and on and on forever. The reasoning is that your subconscious mind does not like "giving up" anything. "Giving up" implies you are losing something you value for nothing in return. When you defer the decision to indulge your addiction, you are not fighting against your subconscious - remember the rule is you are allowed to have the thing you crave. So in effect I never gave up smoking, I'm just a smoker who deferred the decision and never decided to do it. I "stopped smoking" about 20 years ago. I'm still a smoker but just haven't had one for a long time. "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for five minutes is easy. Off topic also, I highly recommend the podcast "The Vaping Fix". It's closely related to Silicon Valley and is compelling binge listening. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id1562884524 https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id15628...
- the_only_law 5y ago
  Is there anything you picked up instead when you had the urge. I’ve never tried quitting, but I have ceased for up to a week (visiting family, etc.) and get incredibly agitated and fidgety after a day or so.
  - hourislate 5y ago
    There is nothing, you will have to run the gauntlet of addiction. It isn't pleasant but in the end it is incredibly rewarding. You're basically given your life/freedom back. Quit a 2 pack a day habit cold turkey back in 2009. These days I get nauseous when I'm around smokers and can't believe I was once one of them.
  - andrewstuart 5y ago
    If you really want one, have one, don't fight it. Just ensure that every time the urge comes up, you say to yourself: "Do I really want this cigarette RIGHT NOW, or can I have it in five minutes?" If you cannot wait then have it. In five minutes time when. the deferral has expired, ask the same question. Don't fight yourself, agree with yourself. And don't attack yourself for making the decision to have one - just ensure that the next cigarette gets the same question. This process might happen hundreds of times but don't worry about it, just keep asking the question. It's a long series of very short term decisions. It doesn't work if you have a rule in place that you cannot have a cigarette - this approach means you can, so your subconscious can relax - you are not depriving it of what it wants.
i_am_proteus 5y ago
>there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism This part of the article seemed like a non-sequitur. I smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a year. It doesn't seem like it's an unhealthy thing to do, and I enjoy it.
paulpauper 5y ago
"denying the science" and yet ppl still smoke in spite of warnings and knowing the risks ...
erichahn 5y ago
Tabacco is a magical plant that will grant you increased alertness, stress and anxiety release, decreased hunger, ... Our problem is not smoking. Our problem is how and why we smoke. It has nothing to do with the drug itself but everything to do with us.
- ng12 5y ago
  The worst part is the carcinogenic chemical soup they add to cigarettes is to make it more palatable to smoke several times a day. Self-medicating is big business.
  - erichahn 5y ago
    Are they really doing this?
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      "According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute: "Of the more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250 are known to be harmful, including hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. Among the 250 known harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 69 can cause cancer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...
      - loeg 5y ago
        You got the right link, but the quoted excerpt is not responsive to GP's question. The short answer is, "yes." > This is the list of 599 additives in tobacco cigarettes submitted to the United States Department of Health and Human Services in April 1994.
    - loeg 5y ago
      Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...
- 5y ago
swayvil 5y ago
FTA >Denialism over masks, vaccines, opioids, problem gambling and gun proliferation all follow the same playbook, often because the same handful of profiteering firms are behind them. Before we start congratulating each other for being such smart fellows, let's all keep in mind that it works both ways.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  People who label themselves as skeptics are often the most blind to their poorly supported beliefs but that sure doesn't stop them from using the skeptic label as proof of their correctness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
a-dub 5y ago
> Importantly, it helped me overcome my fear that if I quit smoking, I wouldn’t be able to write anymore, since I’d always done the two activities together (today I tell writing students not to smoke at all, but if they must, not to smoke while writing, lest they prolong their addiction to protect their artistic production). this. psychological nicotine addiction has the uncanny ability to find the tiniest smidge of what-you-thought-was-dealt-with impostor syndrome buried deep within your soul, poke it with a stick and then chase you around with it with threats of total ruin, hoping you'll give in. there's a famous book by allan carr called "the easyway to stop smoking." it can be a little silly at times, but it did have one idea i liked that basically boiled down to anthropomorphizing your nicotine addiction, imagining refusal to smoke as a way of starving it and then basking in the schadenfreude as it dies a slow, painful death.
Animats 5y ago
Cory Doctorow is behind a paywall. How appropriate.
version_five 5y ago
I smoked for 15 years, and it's been 10 since I quit. I'm glad I did. That said, I hate it when I hear the "don't make the same mistake I did" stuff from ex smokers, especially ones who obviously enjoyed smoking and for whom it was a big part or their identity - certainly this was true for me, and it appears that way for CD. Keeping on the theme of "science denial" - it reminds me a lot of the developed world lecturing developing countries about pollution. Yes, from the hindsight of maturity and comfort it's a bad idea, but when you have other immediate concerns, the calculus is very different. Smoking is unhealthy, but people have to make their own mistakes.
- quantumBerry 5y ago
  There's a sweet spot where the risk is significant compared to not smoking, but average compared to the rest of the things in your life like riding a motorcycle. It's probably less than a few cigarettes a day but a lot more than a pipe full a month. Unfortunately the "not even once" crowd and compulsive addicts normally dominate the conversation.
lordlic 5y ago
It's kind of jarring to see Doctorow praise hypnosis in one paragraph and then excoriate tobacco companies for their science obscurationism in literally the next paragraph.
- 542458 5y ago
  Why? Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of woo practitioners around hypnotism, but hypnotherapy does seem to have some scientific support (even if there’s ongoing debate). It’s not like he was having his auras aligned or anything. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2752362/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2752362/ https://www.thegutcentre.com/pdf/research/hypnotherapy-for-ibs.pdf https://www.thegutcentre.com/pdf/research/hypnotherapy-for-i...
- makeworld 5y ago
  He didn't make the claim that hypnosis was scientifically sound and better than other forms of medicine. He just said that he tried it and it worked for him. It seems entirely different from what tabacco companies do to me.
rawoke083600 5y ago
I'm ready to be judge and called an idiot (Not even going to disagree) :/ I use to smoked for little over 10 years. I also quit smoking about 11 years ago. Recently I started pipe smoking again. Man do I love it :) The *hunt* for the next perfect blend is fascinating and lol I dare say addictive. Cracking open that new "tin" (yes pipe tobacco comes in tins, like big shoe-polish-tins). Nothing like the expectation of waiting in the mail for that new batch of tinned pipe tobaccos you bought after spending days reading their reviews and comparing notes. Of course we don't inhale ! (like that is really going to save us). PS. Not suggesting its anyway healthier nor better for you that *yukky* cigarettes, I kinda wish someone can just make it less of a health risk :( I can say smoking 1-2 pipes (yes the bowls are bigger than your avg cigarette) a day is way wayyy more enjoyable than 20+ cigarettes a day. Oh well, time to load up some "SeattlePipeClub - Plum Pudding" (it's been called the nirvana of pipe tobacco) in my ole'reliable-but-not-fancy Lorenzo pipe :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rpmisms 5y ago
  Yesss. Pipe tobacco is an art form, and even if it does shorten your life (certainly less than cigarettes!), the pleasure derived from it is immense. Plum Pudding is a great blend, too. I'd give Captain Black — Dark a try if I were you. One of the best blends I've had the pleasure of trying, and my wife swears by it.
  - rawoke083600 5y ago
    ahhh thanks :) Will do !
Causality1 5y ago
That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason not to smoke. Smokers truly are oblivious to how godawful they smell to everyone else. I'd rather sit next to someone actively shitting his pants than someone who's smoked in the last three hours.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Marijuana smokers too. Wish more of them would switch to edibles but apparently it's a different type of high that some simply don't like as much as what they get from smoking it.
  - mmmpop 5y ago
    As a former day-blazer, I can tell you that you don't want to take an edible before bedtime else... it's bedtime.
  - fknorangesite 5y ago
    > apparently it's a different type of high that some simply don't like as much as what they get from smoking it. The main downside (upside?) of edibles is that the high lasts much, much longer. I like them, but I'm not gonna take one during the day unless I definitely don't have anything important to do for the rest of the day.
jerhewet 5y ago
I'm 65, and started smoking when I was 14. I will not quit smoking. Ever. I enjoy my cigarettes (10 a day), and I'm careful not to smoke around anyone that will take offense. I honestly don't give a shit if your prejudices and bigotry make it hard for you to accept my decision to keep smoking. If your world view is that narrow I won't lose even a minute of sleep over it.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  You consider belief in peer reviewed science and universally accepted empirically tested medical research "prejudices and bigotry", so you play the victim of science and medicine, yet you don't consider yourself the victim of corporate sponsored tobacco addiction and self-inflicted lung cancer and heart disease, who will lose a hell of a lot more than a minute of life over it. Ok, boomer.
throwaway-Dkd4 5y ago
Will we eventually end up with this same sentiment but for cannabis? Something which is gaining widespread acceptance and becoming a regular part of every-day life, at least in some parts of the world. Is it "smoking" that's bad or "smoking cigarettes" I started smoking occasionally before the pandemic. Since the pandemic my usage as increased to nightly. It has without question helped me manage my anxiety levels (and isn't the only tool I've used along the way) but I'm not sure which is the lesser evil. At this point I teeter between wanting to stop and really appreciating the help. I convince myself I'm at least a little safer by using a vaporizer (flower, not oil based) and keeping the temps below 400.
skybrian 5y ago
This is a terrible argument. It starts with something we have high confidence about (yes, smoking is proven to be bad), and the fact that there were companies that profited from it, and then extends that to say that doubt and epistemic uncertainty are bad. And therefore you should believe the author’s other hobby-horses, because if you doubt it you’re the enemy, or a sucker. Being able to recognize what you don’t know isn’t going to help you quit smoking, but it helps you from falling for conspiracy theories, and that’s important too. (A good way to learn to live with doubt is to collect questions you don’t have good answers to yet.)
gumby 5y ago
Wow, I had not known this: > As Tim Harford documents in his brilliant 2021 book The Data Detective, the 1954 classic “How to Lie With Statistics” was authored by a payrolled shill for Big Tobacco, Darrell Huff, whose planned (and never realized) followup was to be called “How to Lie With Smoking Statistics.” Huff’s work wasn’t just about debunking bad stats: it was also about casting doubt upon the statistical evidence linking tobacco with cancer.
- dmurray 5y ago
  It's a great book that's still relevant today. I'd love to read the follow-up, and see a modern criticism of it.
gumby 5y ago
How soon until someone can write the same article about the oil companies? Whenever that it it's not soon enough.
clircle 5y ago
I quit smoking in 2014 after having done it for ~8 years. I replaced it with nicotine gum, which worked, but I became more addicted to the nicotine gum than cigarettes. I got up to chewing the equivalent of two packs a day. Then one day this year I woke up and felt sick. I didn't have any gum, and I didn't purchase anymore either, because I felt sick for one day. Now I'm finally nicotine free.
golemiprague 5y ago
I find quitting smoking much easier than quitting sugar and snacks. The thing is that with smoking you just stop so it is not that tempting but with food you must eat and when you do it is much easier to continue doing more of it.
blunte 5y ago
Dear Cory Doctorow. > You have 2 free member-only stories left this month. Sign up for Medium and get an extra one Why write something if a good many of your readers will not be able to read it? Do these writers realize they're standing behind someone else's gate? This is the internet! You can publish your own blog with absolutely minimal effort. For free even! I just do not get it. Why do people give their content to Medium!?
- acover 5y ago
  They get paid
  - blunte 5y ago
    Can it really be enough money to matter? If you're someone worth following, is this really the best way to make money?
    - JanisL 5y ago
      It seems like blogging is a hard thing for people to monetize, especially for some topics that aren't so "sponsor friendly"
    - acover 5y ago
      I expect it's like all other power law pursuits - if you get to that 0.1% it's totally worth it.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
No paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20210607151632/https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99 https://web.archive.org/web/20210607151632/https://doctorow.... Acompanying podcast https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_391/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_391_-_I_Quit.mp3 https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_391/Cory_...
mshron 5y ago
Note that this explains _why_ Cory Doctorow gets a new laptop every year... which was one of the central mysteries of the article currently at #1 on HN, "The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've ever used."[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962
- hi41 5y ago
  Are authors of the article the same?
  - mshron 5y ago
    Yes, they're both Cory Doctorow
    - hi41 5y ago
      Thx. The laptop article does not display the author’s name. That’s why I asked.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rpmisms 5y ago
I really like tobacco/nicotine. I have a cigar collection, I love my pipes, I'll have an occasional (10 this year, so far) cigarette, and I vape on-and-off. I despise big tobacco. They remove the craft from the product. A well-made cigar or a masterfully blended pipe tobacco is akin to a fine whiskey: meant to be enjoyed in moderation and with a mind for the experience that went into making it. Even a hand-rolled cigarette using locally-grown tobacco has a degree of craft involved. Vapes are just a convenient, relatively harmless delivery mechanism, but they're removed so far from the tobacco plant that I can't bring myself to consider them in the same category. They're a separate vice. Point is, tobacco is a wonderful plant that lends itself to being cultivated and artfully made into fine products. Marlboros are little cancer sticks, and I wish Big Tobacco all my worst. Thanks for ruining it.
cdrini 5y ago
This article is a little frustrating; like a lot of Doctorow's writing it kinda comes from a place of superiority. How are we supposed to know the difference between healthy skepticism and "epistemological chaos" (literally the most ridiculous way of saying that)? It seems like the article's suggestion is "just trust the people who are right". Mmhmm. It also implies that anyone arguing against "what's correct" is doing it knowing they are wrong, or because they have been misled by someone who knew _they_ were wrong -- like the tobacco companies promoting smoking. I don't think that's the case? That's a pretty bleak perspective, but I mean I guess it could be true. The piece that most resonated with me was "The pandemic revealed the high price [...] of *replacing informed debate with cynical doubt*". Informed debate feels like an absolute lost art thanks to the internet. You can't fit informed debate into a tweet. Or into a Facebook post. And when everyone speaks with absolute confidence on their opinion, how can people distinguish informed opinions from uninformed opinions? This is I believe one of the core problems of the internet today. Regardless, congrats on the many laptop-full and cigarette-free years :)
- phnofive 5y ago
  Lumping anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, eugenicists, and drinkers of raw milk is a pretty clear example of this. I get that Smug is his brand, but it's just overly reductive; you've got three categories of people here: the anti-establishment-science (let's not leave chiropractors out, here), the morally bankrupt, and the risk-takers. Then again, this is a slightly behind the trend article about losing patience with disagreeable people, so I guess it's on message.
- patja 5y ago
  He is a snappy writer, but everything he writes is pushing his personal agenda around his pet issues.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Is there a healthy alternative to smoking?
- Torwald 5y ago
  Breathing techniques, meditation, that sort of thing. Try autogenic training for starters.
otikik 5y ago
> the mere existence of the tobacco companies today is a blazing signal that corporate evil attracts no penalties, emboldening the sociopaths and criminals who will kill us all to make a buck That resonated with me.
- bserge 5y ago
  It's not just corporate, it's human nature. Many people will steal your wallet if you leave it unattended. Some will steal it out of your own pocket and others will actually stab and kill you for it.
  - otikik 5y ago
    > Many people That's true in absolute numbers, because there's billions of people. But in percentage? Are we talking about 80% of the population, or is it closer to 1%? If it's 1%, or close, then it isn't "human nature", it's an aberration. I believe that's the case. I also believe that corporations attract that kind of people in particular.
dgan 5y ago
How do I make my parent stop? She says she enjoys it.. I have smoked socially myself here and there, but never became addicted.
ulisesrmzroche 5y ago
If you have a history of struggling with your weight or are shy in social settings, pick up cigarettes. Obesity and loneliness are far more dangerous.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
The war on smoking is so interesting to me. It has been over a lifetime that the war has been occurring. The percentage of people smoking is a fraction of what it was. So you would assume lung cancer has been reduced similarly? It hasn't reduced for 30 years. Worse yet, the correlation between lung cancer and smoking inverted in around the 1980s-1990s. So antismoking 'evidences' are now split around that time. For some reason and I don't know why, the data actually says you should start smoking to prevent lung cancer. Which sounds absolutely batshit crazy to me. Which is why it's so interesting. We misidentified what is causing the cancer and none of the obvious other possibilities are explaining it. Though the good news is stuff like radon or asbestos being eliminated has been a good thing.
- jbotz 5y ago
  This is interesting, but can you provide some references for it? Data sources?
  - sleepysysadmin 5y ago
    >This is interesting, but can you provide some references for it? Data sources? I may have confusion over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidence_(epidemiology)#Incidence_vs._prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidence_(epidemiology)#Incid... but so does the data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smoking_lung_cancer.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smoking_lung_cancer.png Notice the clear dip. Yes there's a delay, but you don't develop lung cancer and die the next year. It often can take over a decade for lung cancer to kill you; but it does. If you get lung cancer, you will die. You virtually never survive. This also measures deaths, but right about the peaks there is when chemotherapy(methotrexate) and many other treatments for cancer started. So in fact, this graph is quite biased because it doesnt show tobbaco vs lung cancer. It shows chemotherapy working. Surely this graph should have been updated beyond 2000-2005? Why did they cut off there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer#/media/File:Cumulative_risk_of_death_from_lung_cancer_1990.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer#/media/File:Cumula... Why then does this one only go about 1990? Also who is smoking 25 cigarettes/day? And while getting lung cancer is practically certain death. At 25/day it only increases your risk by 25%? At only a couple cigarettes/day it's around only 5% increase risk? That's actually very bad correlation. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lung-cancer-deaths-per-100000-by-sex-1950-2002 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lung-cancer-deaths-per-10... Why the cut off around 2002? What about 2002 makes these data? Wait why do spanish women basically not get lung cancer? In fact, despite all the antismoking advertisements and efforts. ~20% of spanish women still smoke today. https://www.statista.com/statistics/750687/proportion-of-daily-smokers-in-spain-by-gender-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/750687/proportion-of-dai... In fact, yes there's a delay but there's clearly no improvement on US females despite drastically decrease smoking rates and significant increases medical science on how to fight cancer. How about second hand smoke? https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/15/18/5646 https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/15/18/5646 ~50% of lung cancer is from people who never smoked. I know here in Canada it's rather difficult to find places to smoke and you virtually never get second hand smoke anymore. They used to assert it was second hand smoke like waitresses in smokey bars. However that can't be the explanation anymore. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Genetics-of-lung-cancer-susceptibility.-Brennan-Hainaut/70b7fbecda81e1a4e7f69bc802f9f25bc42a4ad5/figure/1 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Genetics-of-lung-cance... There's virtually no risk until 50s? How's it going in Canada? https://www.lungcancercanada.ca/Lung-Cancer/Causes/Smoking.aspx https://www.lungcancercanada.ca/Lung-Cancer/Causes/Smoking.a... We avoided some deaths relative to expectations but lung cancer deaths are actually going up since the 1980s? Up every year? Now we know why so many graphs havent been updated since the 2000s. We have something like 500% tax on smoking and smoking 25 cigarettes/day can only be done by very wealthy people. You might jump back and say, but surely tobacco smoke with 69 confirmed carcinogens/poisons is causing cancer to some amount? But what is chemo? It's a poison that kills cancer because cancer tends to split dna more often and is vulnerable to being killed by poisons. Virtually any poison can be used, but the trick is finding something that won't kill you or do more harm. Anthrax can even be used to treat cancer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12370003/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12370003/ It seems what we discovered is that lung cancer was actually being killed by the toxic cigarette smoke. That the cause of lung cancer is something else and toxic tobacco smoke was actually helping some amount as a shitty chemotherapy. The antismoking folks know this and that's why all the graphs are cherry picked. Also note; I'm not recommending to smoke lol. The somewhat recent discovery is that it's something else and we either don't know or aren't allowed to know for political reason.

285 points by Arubis 5y ago

John Safran has just released a book Puff Piece about the incredible way Philip Morris has rebranded as a "health enterprise" and released the "heatstick" with their "vaping" IQOS platform (quotes are intentional, because as the books shows, words mean nothing!) https://johnsafran.com/ https://johnsafran.com/ The podcast below sums it up perfectly: Three years ago, tobacco giant Philip Morris announced they were moving away from cigarettes and that they were campaigning to "unsmoke the world". They said they would offer people a better alternative to the cigarette, a device that would give you your nicotine fix from a "HeatStick". Author and documentary maker John Safran discovered the HeatStick is made primarily from tobacco, and that it still generates carcinogenic tar. John soon found that Philip Morris were financing "anti-smoking" initiatives all over the world. They look just like conventional Quit programs, but they are designed to shift people onto this new device. https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/john-safran-philip-morris-puff-piece-heatstick/13534586 https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/john-saf...

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Private advertisements that pretend to be public service health announcements seem particularly evil!
casefields 5y ago
>John soon found that Philip Morris were financing "anti-smoking" initiatives all over the world. They are literally obligated to fund them according to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  What's being discussed here is not real "quit smoking" campaigns but "get addicted to our shiny new thing" campaigns disguised as such. The anti vape campaigns and reporting in recent years has been heavily influenced by Philip-Morris and their iqos strategy, which is to get people to switch to non- combusted tobacco sticks instead of alternative methods of delivery. Vapes have turned out more or less ok, with a negligible impact on health and lung capacity. Chronic nicotine has its own impact, certain flavorings are problematic, but it's orders of magnitude better than smoking. There's no indication that iqos is any better, but it's certainly far more expensive. IQOS by Philip Morris is the latest cynical plot to get people hooked and extract endless streams of cash. Vape is cheaper, iqos far more expensive. It's an interesting bellwether for news organizations. If they run anti-vape, PM has their hooks in.
- delsarto 5y ago
  In a big picture sense they've managed to reverse engineer this from a message of "quit" (i.e. do not ingest anything, which is what basically all health-based quit campaigns are about) to "stop smoking" where their IQOS system, which uses non-combustable tobacco-in-a-cylindrical-package-with-a-filter tip "HeatSticks" is "not smoking".

dbt00 5y ago

That was always my dad's pitch to me. Don't give those fuckers one thin dime. I casually smoked cigarettes in college, but never seriously and every time I bought a pack I looked at the logo on the back and reminded myself that I hated those fuckers and I wasn't going to keep doing it. I quit before my first kid was born. My grandfather had lung cancer twice. He quit smoking after the first time. His wife couldn't. She spent 10 years in long, slow COPD decline after he passed. Don't fucking do it. And don't buy fucking nicotine vapes, either. Fuck those assholes.

jay_kyburz 5y ago
I've seen a few posts around saying vapes are about to be banned here in Australia. Have no idea if its true or not.
- Rooki 5y ago
  Still available with a prescription: https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/vapers-told-to-head-to-the-doctor-ahead-of-new-import-rules-20210813-p58iet.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/vapers-told...
- pvarangot 5y ago
  Get a dry herb vaporizer and vape loose leaf tobacco. Takes a while to find the combination of temperature and herb that doesn't taste like shit, and it's also not the same as a real cigarette but it does the thing. You also inhale less matter than with an ecig, so I think it may end up being healthier... but I'm like, the only person I know that does this daily so science may never know.
  - lambdaba 5y ago
    Totally with you, my intuition is loose leaf pure tobacco is much less harmful and for a while when I still smoked I couldn't stand regular cigarettes, also preferred rolling my own, both for the gesture and the taste.
- Sophistifunk 5y ago

buescher 5y ago

Ironically, given that the data on tobacco use and COVID gives the medical establishment fits, now may not be the best time to quit. Not an argument for starting, of course.

flerchin 5y ago
What is this? You think smokers beat the 'rona?
- buescher 5y ago
  Oh yes, smoking is very bad and only very bad people do it and they will die and you will live forever if you don't smoke. Is it a happy story now? Please don't accuse me of "thinking" anything I didn't say. In the meantime, there are clinical trials going on now for the use of nicotine to prevent COVID: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04583410 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04583410
  - criddell 5y ago
    There are lots of reasons to like nicotine, there are no good reasons to get it through smoking.
  - _kst_ 5y ago
    "Oh yes, smoking is very bad and only very bad people do it and they will die and you will live forever if you don't smoke. Is it a happy story now? Please don't accuse me of "thinking" anything I didn't say." Nobody accused you of any of that.
    - buescher 5y ago
      I didn't say smokers "beat the 'rona" and I'm not arguing for the virtue of smoking. I also do think the moral tone in "what is this?" is childish and inappropriately peckish.
- 1986 5y ago

Factorium 5y ago

Smokers and the Obese save Governments money on healthcare costs, by dying earlier: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748... This study only included healthcare costs, and so the savings would thus be even greater when considering pensions. "On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived 77 years and obese people 80 years. The healthy group cost $417,000, the obese $371,000, and smokers $326,000."

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
umvi 5y ago
Using that logic, the government should be eager to keep covid around as long as possible because of money being saved by people dying early.
- kimixa 5y ago
  The question would be how does that balance against "productive" years, where they're paying taxes, their work increases the GDP etc.
  - Factorium 5y ago
    According to this UK COVID Risk Calculator: https://qcovid.org/Calculation https://qcovid.org/Calculation An average healthy White British male of 66 years (retirement age) has a hospitalisation risk of 1 in 831; death risk of 1 in 2786. By contrast the yearly risk of death in that age bracket generally, from any cause, is 1 in 42: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html COVID is accelerating deaths from existing comorbidities or very old age; based on this data it is not felling healthy workers.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  One could argue that fighting against covid was worst thing we could have done for climate in long run...

caturopath 5y ago

Demanded I sign in to read the article, but it worked in a Private Window.

umvi 5y ago

> you disagree on whether there is such a thing as truth, and, if there is, how it can be known People will only believe information to be true if it comes from a source they trust. And when a source of information becomes politicized, then suddenly only half of the population will believe information from it, while the other half will be suspicious and distrusting of it.

mcguire 5y ago
The neat part is that you do not have to be part of the source of information in order to politicize the source of information.

dhosek 5y ago

I never understood how anyone under the age of 50 could take up smoking. It's been abundantly clear since I was a kid that smoking would kill you slowly and painfully and we had numerous presentations at my grade school in the 70s to that effect. And yet there was a crowd of teenagers at my high school in the designated smoking area in the outside space between D and F halls (the location seems ironic in retrospect).

lordlic 5y ago
I understand why people take up smoking but I don't understand why people expect credit for breaking out of it. Addiction is an ugly thing and seeing a public personality parlay their experience into an excuse to write a blog post is pretty distasteful to me. Just quietly stop; not everything has to be an event in the history of internet culture.
- NoSorryCannot 5y ago
  Just quietly ignore it and move on; not everyone needs to hear about what you find distasteful.
- wetmore 5y ago
  I find your perception of this blog post bizarre. Who is asking for credit for quitting? Who is making this an event in the history of internet culture?
- rpmisms 5y ago
  I've made a habit of putting myself through nicotine withdrawal (I like the on-edge feeling, yes I'm weird), and smokers who quit deserve a lot of credit. It's hard, and I don't think anyone who hasn't been through it would understand how hard it is.
  - lordlic 5y ago
    If you're assuming I haven't gone through nicotine withdrawal myself then that's mistaken.

chiph 5y ago

Those smokers that live to 85 or 90? They're the edge cases. Most do not make it that far, like my grandfather. He smoked Chesterfields, just like the ad with Ronald Reagan in Cory's article, only the unfiltered kind.

paulpauper 5y ago
unfiltered may be safer because smokers do not inhale as deep
- chiph 5y ago
  In the general case, maybe. Not in his specific case. There is probably a mortality study of filtered vs. unfiltered smoker preferences.

mcguire 5y ago

I do have to admit, he has a way with words. "It’s how homeopaths, anti-vaxers, eugenicists, raw milk pushers and other members of the Paltrow-Industrial Complex played the BBC and other sober-sided media outlets, demanding that they be given airtime to rebut scientists’ careful, empirical claims with junk they made up on the spot."

SavantIdiot 5y ago
"but I also know that keeping an open mind doesn’t require that you open so wide that your brains fall out."

andrewstuart 5y ago

I "gave up smoking" by not giving up. I just deferred the decision to have one cigarette. When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes. And crucially, the rules allowed me to have one if I really wanted. At first there was lots of deferring and then deciding to have one. Eventually I just deferred the decision five minutes then five minutes more and on and on forever. The reasoning is that your subconscious mind does not like "giving up" anything. "Giving up" implies you are losing something you value for nothing in return. When you defer the decision to indulge your addiction, you are not fighting against your subconscious - remember the rule is you are allowed to have the thing you crave. So in effect I never gave up smoking, I'm just a smoker who deferred the decision and never decided to do it. I "stopped smoking" about 20 years ago. I'm still a smoker but just haven't had one for a long time. "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for five minutes is easy. Off topic also, I highly recommend the podcast "The Vaping Fix". It's closely related to Silicon Valley and is compelling binge listening. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id1562884524 https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id15628...

the_only_law 5y ago
Is there anything you picked up instead when you had the urge. I’ve never tried quitting, but I have ceased for up to a week (visiting family, etc.) and get incredibly agitated and fidgety after a day or so.
- hourislate 5y ago
  There is nothing, you will have to run the gauntlet of addiction. It isn't pleasant but in the end it is incredibly rewarding. You're basically given your life/freedom back. Quit a 2 pack a day habit cold turkey back in 2009. These days I get nauseous when I'm around smokers and can't believe I was once one of them.
- andrewstuart 5y ago
  If you really want one, have one, don't fight it. Just ensure that every time the urge comes up, you say to yourself: "Do I really want this cigarette RIGHT NOW, or can I have it in five minutes?" If you cannot wait then have it. In five minutes time when. the deferral has expired, ask the same question. Don't fight yourself, agree with yourself. And don't attack yourself for making the decision to have one - just ensure that the next cigarette gets the same question. This process might happen hundreds of times but don't worry about it, just keep asking the question. It's a long series of very short term decisions. It doesn't work if you have a rule in place that you cannot have a cigarette - this approach means you can, so your subconscious can relax - you are not depriving it of what it wants.

i_am_proteus 5y ago

>there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism This part of the article seemed like a non-sequitur. I smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a year. It doesn't seem like it's an unhealthy thing to do, and I enjoy it.

paulpauper 5y ago

"denying the science" and yet ppl still smoke in spite of warnings and knowing the risks ...

erichahn 5y ago

Tabacco is a magical plant that will grant you increased alertness, stress and anxiety release, decreased hunger, ... Our problem is not smoking. Our problem is how and why we smoke. It has nothing to do with the drug itself but everything to do with us.

ng12 5y ago
The worst part is the carcinogenic chemical soup they add to cigarettes is to make it more palatable to smoke several times a day. Self-medicating is big business.
- erichahn 5y ago
  Are they really doing this?
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    "According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute: "Of the more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250 are known to be harmful, including hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. Among the 250 known harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 69 can cause cancer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...
    - loeg 5y ago
      You got the right link, but the quoted excerpt is not responsive to GP's question. The short answer is, "yes." > This is the list of 599 additives in tobacco cigarettes submitted to the United States Department of Health and Human Services in April 1994.
  - loeg 5y ago
    Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...
5y ago

swayvil 5y ago

FTA >Denialism over masks, vaccines, opioids, problem gambling and gun proliferation all follow the same playbook, often because the same handful of profiteering firms are behind them. Before we start congratulating each other for being such smart fellows, let's all keep in mind that it works both ways.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
People who label themselves as skeptics are often the most blind to their poorly supported beliefs but that sure doesn't stop them from using the skeptic label as proof of their correctness.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

a-dub 5y ago

> Importantly, it helped me overcome my fear that if I quit smoking, I wouldn’t be able to write anymore, since I’d always done the two activities together (today I tell writing students not to smoke at all, but if they must, not to smoke while writing, lest they prolong their addiction to protect their artistic production). this. psychological nicotine addiction has the uncanny ability to find the tiniest smidge of what-you-thought-was-dealt-with impostor syndrome buried deep within your soul, poke it with a stick and then chase you around with it with threats of total ruin, hoping you'll give in. there's a famous book by allan carr called "the easyway to stop smoking." it can be a little silly at times, but it did have one idea i liked that basically boiled down to anthropomorphizing your nicotine addiction, imagining refusal to smoke as a way of starving it and then basking in the schadenfreude as it dies a slow, painful death.

Animats 5y ago

Cory Doctorow is behind a paywall. How appropriate.

version_five 5y ago

I smoked for 15 years, and it's been 10 since I quit. I'm glad I did. That said, I hate it when I hear the "don't make the same mistake I did" stuff from ex smokers, especially ones who obviously enjoyed smoking and for whom it was a big part or their identity - certainly this was true for me, and it appears that way for CD. Keeping on the theme of "science denial" - it reminds me a lot of the developed world lecturing developing countries about pollution. Yes, from the hindsight of maturity and comfort it's a bad idea, but when you have other immediate concerns, the calculus is very different. Smoking is unhealthy, but people have to make their own mistakes.

quantumBerry 5y ago
There's a sweet spot where the risk is significant compared to not smoking, but average compared to the rest of the things in your life like riding a motorcycle. It's probably less than a few cigarettes a day but a lot more than a pipe full a month. Unfortunately the "not even once" crowd and compulsive addicts normally dominate the conversation.

lordlic 5y ago

It's kind of jarring to see Doctorow praise hypnosis in one paragraph and then excoriate tobacco companies for their science obscurationism in literally the next paragraph.

542458 5y ago
Why? Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of woo practitioners around hypnotism, but hypnotherapy does seem to have some scientific support (even if there’s ongoing debate). It’s not like he was having his auras aligned or anything. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2752362/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2752362/ https://www.thegutcentre.com/pdf/research/hypnotherapy-for-ibs.pdf https://www.thegutcentre.com/pdf/research/hypnotherapy-for-i...
makeworld 5y ago
He didn't make the claim that hypnosis was scientifically sound and better than other forms of medicine. He just said that he tried it and it worked for him. It seems entirely different from what tabacco companies do to me.

rawoke083600 5y ago

I'm ready to be judge and called an idiot (Not even going to disagree) :/ I use to smoked for little over 10 years. I also quit smoking about 11 years ago. Recently I started pipe smoking again. Man do I love it :) The *hunt* for the next perfect blend is fascinating and lol I dare say addictive. Cracking open that new "tin" (yes pipe tobacco comes in tins, like big shoe-polish-tins). Nothing like the expectation of waiting in the mail for that new batch of tinned pipe tobaccos you bought after spending days reading their reviews and comparing notes. Of course we don't inhale ! (like that is really going to save us). PS. Not suggesting its anyway healthier nor better for you that *yukky* cigarettes, I kinda wish someone can just make it less of a health risk :( I can say smoking 1-2 pipes (yes the bowls are bigger than your avg cigarette) a day is way wayyy more enjoyable than 20+ cigarettes a day. Oh well, time to load up some "SeattlePipeClub - Plum Pudding" (it's been called the nirvana of pipe tobacco) in my ole'reliable-but-not-fancy Lorenzo pipe :)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rpmisms 5y ago
Yesss. Pipe tobacco is an art form, and even if it does shorten your life (certainly less than cigarettes!), the pleasure derived from it is immense. Plum Pudding is a great blend, too. I'd give Captain Black — Dark a try if I were you. One of the best blends I've had the pleasure of trying, and my wife swears by it.
- rawoke083600 5y ago
  ahhh thanks :) Will do !

Causality1 5y ago

That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason not to smoke. Smokers truly are oblivious to how godawful they smell to everyone else. I'd rather sit next to someone actively shitting his pants than someone who's smoked in the last three hours.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Marijuana smokers too. Wish more of them would switch to edibles but apparently it's a different type of high that some simply don't like as much as what they get from smoking it.
- mmmpop 5y ago
  As a former day-blazer, I can tell you that you don't want to take an edible before bedtime else... it's bedtime.
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  > apparently it's a different type of high that some simply don't like as much as what they get from smoking it. The main downside (upside?) of edibles is that the high lasts much, much longer. I like them, but I'm not gonna take one during the day unless I definitely don't have anything important to do for the rest of the day.

jerhewet 5y ago

I'm 65, and started smoking when I was 14. I will not quit smoking. Ever. I enjoy my cigarettes (10 a day), and I'm careful not to smoke around anyone that will take offense. I honestly don't give a shit if your prejudices and bigotry make it hard for you to accept my decision to keep smoking. If your world view is that narrow I won't lose even a minute of sleep over it.

DonHopkins 5y ago
You consider belief in peer reviewed science and universally accepted empirically tested medical research "prejudices and bigotry", so you play the victim of science and medicine, yet you don't consider yourself the victim of corporate sponsored tobacco addiction and self-inflicted lung cancer and heart disease, who will lose a hell of a lot more than a minute of life over it. Ok, boomer.

throwaway-Dkd4 5y ago

Will we eventually end up with this same sentiment but for cannabis? Something which is gaining widespread acceptance and becoming a regular part of every-day life, at least in some parts of the world. Is it "smoking" that's bad or "smoking cigarettes" I started smoking occasionally before the pandemic. Since the pandemic my usage as increased to nightly. It has without question helped me manage my anxiety levels (and isn't the only tool I've used along the way) but I'm not sure which is the lesser evil. At this point I teeter between wanting to stop and really appreciating the help. I convince myself I'm at least a little safer by using a vaporizer (flower, not oil based) and keeping the temps below 400.

skybrian 5y ago

This is a terrible argument. It starts with something we have high confidence about (yes, smoking is proven to be bad), and the fact that there were companies that profited from it, and then extends that to say that doubt and epistemic uncertainty are bad. And therefore you should believe the author’s other hobby-horses, because if you doubt it you’re the enemy, or a sucker. Being able to recognize what you don’t know isn’t going to help you quit smoking, but it helps you from falling for conspiracy theories, and that’s important too. (A good way to learn to live with doubt is to collect questions you don’t have good answers to yet.)

gumby 5y ago

Wow, I had not known this: > As Tim Harford documents in his brilliant 2021 book The Data Detective, the 1954 classic “How to Lie With Statistics” was authored by a payrolled shill for Big Tobacco, Darrell Huff, whose planned (and never realized) followup was to be called “How to Lie With Smoking Statistics.” Huff’s work wasn’t just about debunking bad stats: it was also about casting doubt upon the statistical evidence linking tobacco with cancer.

dmurray 5y ago
It's a great book that's still relevant today. I'd love to read the follow-up, and see a modern criticism of it.

gumby 5y ago

How soon until someone can write the same article about the oil companies? Whenever that it it's not soon enough.

clircle 5y ago

I quit smoking in 2014 after having done it for ~8 years. I replaced it with nicotine gum, which worked, but I became more addicted to the nicotine gum than cigarettes. I got up to chewing the equivalent of two packs a day. Then one day this year I woke up and felt sick. I didn't have any gum, and I didn't purchase anymore either, because I felt sick for one day. Now I'm finally nicotine free.

golemiprague 5y ago

I find quitting smoking much easier than quitting sugar and snacks. The thing is that with smoking you just stop so it is not that tempting but with food you must eat and when you do it is much easier to continue doing more of it.

blunte 5y ago

Dear Cory Doctorow. > You have 2 free member-only stories left this month. Sign up for Medium and get an extra one Why write something if a good many of your readers will not be able to read it? Do these writers realize they're standing behind someone else's gate? This is the internet! You can publish your own blog with absolutely minimal effort. For free even! I just do not get it. Why do people give their content to Medium!?

acover 5y ago
They get paid
- blunte 5y ago
  Can it really be enough money to matter? If you're someone worth following, is this really the best way to make money?
  - JanisL 5y ago
    It seems like blogging is a hard thing for people to monetize, especially for some topics that aren't so "sponsor friendly"
  - acover 5y ago
    I expect it's like all other power law pursuits - if you get to that 0.1% it's totally worth it.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

No paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20210607151632/https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99 https://web.archive.org/web/20210607151632/https://doctorow.... Acompanying podcast https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_391/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_391_-_I_Quit.mp3 https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_391/Cory_...

mshron 5y ago

Note that this explains _why_ Cory Doctorow gets a new laptop every year... which was one of the central mysteries of the article currently at #1 on HN, "The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've ever used."[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962

hi41 5y ago
Are authors of the article the same?
- mshron 5y ago
  Yes, they're both Cory Doctorow
  - hi41 5y ago
    Thx. The laptop article does not display the author’s name. That’s why I asked.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rpmisms 5y ago

I really like tobacco/nicotine. I have a cigar collection, I love my pipes, I'll have an occasional (10 this year, so far) cigarette, and I vape on-and-off. I despise big tobacco. They remove the craft from the product. A well-made cigar or a masterfully blended pipe tobacco is akin to a fine whiskey: meant to be enjoyed in moderation and with a mind for the experience that went into making it. Even a hand-rolled cigarette using locally-grown tobacco has a degree of craft involved. Vapes are just a convenient, relatively harmless delivery mechanism, but they're removed so far from the tobacco plant that I can't bring myself to consider them in the same category. They're a separate vice. Point is, tobacco is a wonderful plant that lends itself to being cultivated and artfully made into fine products. Marlboros are little cancer sticks, and I wish Big Tobacco all my worst. Thanks for ruining it.

cdrini 5y ago

This article is a little frustrating; like a lot of Doctorow's writing it kinda comes from a place of superiority. How are we supposed to know the difference between healthy skepticism and "epistemological chaos" (literally the most ridiculous way of saying that)? It seems like the article's suggestion is "just trust the people who are right". Mmhmm. It also implies that anyone arguing against "what's correct" is doing it knowing they are wrong, or because they have been misled by someone who knew _they_ were wrong -- like the tobacco companies promoting smoking. I don't think that's the case? That's a pretty bleak perspective, but I mean I guess it could be true. The piece that most resonated with me was "The pandemic revealed the high price [...] of *replacing informed debate with cynical doubt*". Informed debate feels like an absolute lost art thanks to the internet. You can't fit informed debate into a tweet. Or into a Facebook post. And when everyone speaks with absolute confidence on their opinion, how can people distinguish informed opinions from uninformed opinions? This is I believe one of the core problems of the internet today. Regardless, congrats on the many laptop-full and cigarette-free years :)

phnofive 5y ago
Lumping anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, eugenicists, and drinkers of raw milk is a pretty clear example of this. I get that Smug is his brand, but it's just overly reductive; you've got three categories of people here: the anti-establishment-science (let's not leave chiropractors out, here), the morally bankrupt, and the risk-takers. Then again, this is a slightly behind the trend article about losing patience with disagreeable people, so I guess it's on message.
patja 5y ago
He is a snappy writer, but everything he writes is pushing his personal agenda around his pet issues.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Is there a healthy alternative to smoking?

Torwald 5y ago
Breathing techniques, meditation, that sort of thing. Try autogenic training for starters.

otikik 5y ago

> the mere existence of the tobacco companies today is a blazing signal that corporate evil attracts no penalties, emboldening the sociopaths and criminals who will kill us all to make a buck That resonated with me.

bserge 5y ago
It's not just corporate, it's human nature. Many people will steal your wallet if you leave it unattended. Some will steal it out of your own pocket and others will actually stab and kill you for it.
- otikik 5y ago
  > Many people That's true in absolute numbers, because there's billions of people. But in percentage? Are we talking about 80% of the population, or is it closer to 1%? If it's 1%, or close, then it isn't "human nature", it's an aberration. I believe that's the case. I also believe that corporations attract that kind of people in particular.

dgan 5y ago

How do I make my parent stop? She says she enjoys it.. I have smoked socially myself here and there, but never became addicted.

ulisesrmzroche 5y ago

If you have a history of struggling with your weight or are shy in social settings, pick up cigarettes. Obesity and loneliness are far more dangerous.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

The war on smoking is so interesting to me. It has been over a lifetime that the war has been occurring. The percentage of people smoking is a fraction of what it was. So you would assume lung cancer has been reduced similarly? It hasn't reduced for 30 years. Worse yet, the correlation between lung cancer and smoking inverted in around the 1980s-1990s. So antismoking 'evidences' are now split around that time. For some reason and I don't know why, the data actually says you should start smoking to prevent lung cancer. Which sounds absolutely batshit crazy to me. Which is why it's so interesting. We misidentified what is causing the cancer and none of the obvious other possibilities are explaining it. Though the good news is stuff like radon or asbestos being eliminated has been a good thing.

jbotz 5y ago
This is interesting, but can you provide some references for it? Data sources?
- sleepysysadmin 5y ago
  >This is interesting, but can you provide some references for it? Data sources? I may have confusion over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidence_(epidemiology)#Incidence_vs._prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidence_(epidemiology)#Incid... but so does the data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smoking_lung_cancer.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smoking_lung_cancer.png Notice the clear dip. Yes there's a delay, but you don't develop lung cancer and die the next year. It often can take over a decade for lung cancer to kill you; but it does. If you get lung cancer, you will die. You virtually never survive. This also measures deaths, but right about the peaks there is when chemotherapy(methotrexate) and many other treatments for cancer started. So in fact, this graph is quite biased because it doesnt show tobbaco vs lung cancer. It shows chemotherapy working. Surely this graph should have been updated beyond 2000-2005? Why did they cut off there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer#/media/File:Cumulative_risk_of_death_from_lung_cancer_1990.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer#/media/File:Cumula... Why then does this one only go about 1990? Also who is smoking 25 cigarettes/day? And while getting lung cancer is practically certain death. At 25/day it only increases your risk by 25%? At only a couple cigarettes/day it's around only 5% increase risk? That's actually very bad correlation. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lung-cancer-deaths-per-100000-by-sex-1950-2002 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lung-cancer-deaths-per-10... Why the cut off around 2002? What about 2002 makes these data? Wait why do spanish women basically not get lung cancer? In fact, despite all the antismoking advertisements and efforts. ~20% of spanish women still smoke today. https://www.statista.com/statistics/750687/proportion-of-daily-smokers-in-spain-by-gender-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/750687/proportion-of-dai... In fact, yes there's a delay but there's clearly no improvement on US females despite drastically decrease smoking rates and significant increases medical science on how to fight cancer. How about second hand smoke? https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/15/18/5646 https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/15/18/5646 ~50% of lung cancer is from people who never smoked. I know here in Canada it's rather difficult to find places to smoke and you virtually never get second hand smoke anymore. They used to assert it was second hand smoke like waitresses in smokey bars. However that can't be the explanation anymore. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Genetics-of-lung-cancer-susceptibility.-Brennan-Hainaut/70b7fbecda81e1a4e7f69bc802f9f25bc42a4ad5/figure/1 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Genetics-of-lung-cance... There's virtually no risk until 50s? How's it going in Canada? https://www.lungcancercanada.ca/Lung-Cancer/Causes/Smoking.aspx https://www.lungcancercanada.ca/Lung-Cancer/Causes/Smoking.a... We avoided some deaths relative to expectations but lung cancer deaths are actually going up since the 1980s? Up every year? Now we know why so many graphs havent been updated since the 2000s. We have something like 500% tax on smoking and smoking 25 cigarettes/day can only be done by very wealthy people. You might jump back and say, but surely tobacco smoke with 69 confirmed carcinogens/poisons is causing cancer to some amount? But what is chemo? It's a poison that kills cancer because cancer tends to split dna more often and is vulnerable to being killed by poisons. Virtually any poison can be used, but the trick is finding something that won't kill you or do more harm. Anthrax can even be used to treat cancer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12370003/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12370003/ It seems what we discovered is that lung cancer was actually being killed by the toxic cigarette smoke. That the cause of lung cancer is something else and toxic tobacco smoke was actually helping some amount as a shitty chemotherapy. The antismoking folks know this and that's why all the graphs are cherry picked. Also note; I'm not recommending to smoke lol. The somewhat recent discovery is that it's something else and we either don't know or aren't allowed to know for political reason.