These links are a bit outdated but still fun to read. I don't know if any of the readers here are familiar with Joe Bob Briggs but he makes a lot of sense. Check these out.

http://www.joebobbriggs.com/jbamerica/2002/jba20020131.html
http://www.joebobbriggs.com/jbamerica/2002/jba20020927.html

Have fun and read these.

Here is the work (I believe; he does not reference the work, just the author, J. Kip Viscusi) that Mr Briggs is referencing in the second article.

http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlj/articles/dlj47p1095.htm#B97

I am extremely curiousto see documentation that breaks down the relative safety of cigarettes according to brand. Dr. Viscusi and Mr. Briggs seem to be implying that there is scientific research that shows that lower tar brands are safer than higher tar brands, but they never give specific information. Dr. Viscusi provides this info in his footnotes:

"The degree to which tar levels are correlated with the riskiness of cigarettes remains a matter of dispute. Lower-tar cigarettes appear to reduce the lung cancer risks of smoking, but not many of the other hazards. See OFFICE ON SMOKING AND HEALTH, U.S. DEP'T OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVS., REDUCING THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF SMOKING: 25 YEARS OF PROGRESS, A REPORT OF THE SURGEON GENERAL 316 (1989)"

I am not able to find the text for REDUCING THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF SMOKING: 25 YEARS OF PROGRESS, A REPORT OF THE SURGEON GENERAL, 1989 or even a place to buy it on the internet, though it is referenced many places and undoubtedly exists.

In his book For Your Own Good, Jacob Sullum mentions a 1978 study by the National Cancer Institute which shows that low tar cigarettes actually are safer (well, not as bad for you). However, given the current climate, this and any and all studies which state that smoking or ETS aren't that bad have been forgotten or suppressed in the drive to create a tobacco-free Utopia. The end result will be that once cigarettes have been banned or taxed out of existence, people will turn to the black market where the cigarettes might very well be more dangerous - containing sawdust, rat poison, and who knows what else -just like illegal drugs. Another thing, as more and more of us are forced outside to smoke, we probably take more puffs and inhale deeper to get our fix, than we did when we could smoke inside - especially when its 10 degrees outside in the middle of January in some places - wonder what the health consequences are of this?

Outside? Not only an issue of health risk/consequences, also an issue of safety for workers who may be outdoors in the dark at night (bet the folks on the payroll of the anti movement don't work those kinds of jobs or hours - just mouthing off about protecting those who do).

Also a risk for businesses as smokers coming back in from breaks are an opportunity for breakins.

Happens. In the news.

quote:

Originally posted by WinstonSmith:
I am not able to find the text for REDUCING THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF SMOKING: 25 YEARS OF PROGRESS, A REPORT OF THE SURGEON GENERAL, 1989 or even a place to buy it on the internet, though it is referenced many places and undoubtedly exists.

Try this link

Thank You kindly.

The 1989 report does not detail the comparative risks of lower tar/nicotine cigarettes but references the 1981 Surgeon General's report.

That report is available at the link below, in section 3 of the 1981 Surgeon General's report.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr_1981/SGR1981-Sect3.pdf

Perhaps, I'm not reading carefully enough, but in the typical fashion of anti-smoking, the statistics and the words seem to reflect two differing findings.

The text of the report keeps making all kinds of qualifications and says that further research needs to be done on lower tar/nicotine cigarettes. This is odd because the 1989 report doesn't give any further research data, but just references the 1981 report. There wasn't any news on the subject after eight years?

Then, every chart they display seems to indicate that lower tar/nicotine cigarettes are comparably safer than higher tar/nicotine or unfiltered cigarettes. Despite this, the text just carries on saying that there is no safety benefit in lower tar/nicotine...And this is despite the fact that they state in the introductory paragraph of the report:

"...that lower "tar" and nicotine cigarettes produce lower rates of lung cancer than do their higher "tar", higher nicotine predecessors..."

Section 3, page 79 of the 1981 Surgeon General Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking.

Now, how do you reconcile all of this with this:

http://www.data-yard.net/10n2/marijuana2.htm

I'm beginning to think that they don't have a clue. I mean, I always knew that they were just being dumb on ETS, but I'm beginning to think they don't know what they're talking about on direct smoking either. I always knew they exagerated, and I always knew there was a degree of uncertainty, but I'm beginning to believe that the degree of uncertainty is much greater than they're letting on.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: WinstonSmith,

No problem, Winston.

quote:

I always knew they exagerated, and I always knew there was a degree of uncertainty, but I'm beginning to believe that the degree of uncertainty is much greater than they're letting on.

There is no uncertainty Winston - they are outright lying and they don't care. Especially where ETS is concerned. Its the agenda that drives the science and not only with regards to smoking - now there's obesity and global warming drinking from the same trough of BS. All they care about is the headlines - they know that most people are easily duped into believing anything that comes from the mouths of "experts" and that they won't take the time to actually read the SG or whoever's report and to research it beyond the newspaper article or TV soundbyte - that's the problem with our society and culture - ignorance.

Nick, I'm very aware of all the things you speak of. I'm not doing a very good job of trying to communicate what I want to say and that's making me sound like a newby. I'll try again.

I know that they're outright lying about ETS. I don't agree that they're outright lying about firsthand smoking, but I do think that they're exaggerating, engaging in group-think and, I'm beginning to suspect, basing their conclusions about direct smoking upon a legacy of "newspeak" and "doublespeak". I don't know to what degree and I don't know to what extent it has had an impact.

I know that Nightlight, and others, have a great deal of information about this and I welcome being referred to it, but I need alot more information before I'll reach a conclusion about direct smoking. I'm not taking anyone's word on it. I'm definitely not going to say "smoking is good for you", but I'm beginning to suspect that there are many different things that contribute to the risks
There also may be many mitigating factors that aren't being given credence because of the "all or none" attitude of the anti-smoking establishment (that Sullum emphasized in his book).

quote:

Originally posted by WinstonSmith:
I know that they're outright lying about ETS. I don't agree that they're outright lying about firsthand smoking, but I do think that they're exaggerating, engaging in group-think and, I'm beginning to suspect, basing their conclusions about direct smoking upon a legacy of "newspeak" and "doublespeak". I don't know to what degree and I don't know to what extent it has had an impact.

You should check Sir Ronald Fisher's papers from 1950s to see how they built up their castle in the air on lie upon lie (see especially his review of the controversy in "Cigarettes, Cancer and Statistics"). Ray Johnstone follows and documents the scam over decades that followed (see especially his excellent article "The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking"). Colby's book "In Defense of Smokers" presents nicely the larger picture of the anti-smoking movement.

For years I was falling increasingly under the same spell of the "experts", even tried quitting couple times on urging from my wife. Few years ago my boss at work, a former smoker who quit after having a heart attack (he is a 400+ pound, 6 ft 3 guy, CEO), became a born again anti-smoker and started greeting me with "did you get lung cancer yet?" and other similar "jokes". As mentioned before, I started smoking at the end of college after reviewing extensive medical literature in my parent's library (mostly of late 1950s to early 1960s vintage when they were in med school) . I concluded at the time based on all the medical facts and on my family history that it ought to be fine and beneficial for me (I was thinking about keeping the weight down, helping concentration and reducing the risk of senility later, as suggested in that 1950s medical literature). My boss claimed that all that was outdated. My wife and media had also shaken my confidence over years. So I went back to look it up on internet, found Colby, Johnstone, FORCES, Fisher,... and realized I was right all along, the old literature was just fine. The whole antismoking "science" is one gigantic swindle. One Friday evening I sent my boss an email with the excerpts and links to info I found. On Monday he said, 'whoa, I almost started smoking again' (he couldn't since his wife would probably kill him). Of course, the "joking" stopped from there on. The same sequence replayed with couple colleagues who would badger me about smoking at company parties.

As explained in earlier LF thread, my current best understanding is that tobacco smoke is an exercise for immune system, a mild and harmless stress which strenghtens the immune system (especially the chief internal anti-oxidant and detoxifier, glutathione), just as the periodic mild stresses during weight lifting and running strenghten the muscles and heart. The resulting strengthening of immune system is helpful in detoxifying against metals (e.g. mercury, aluminum, lead) and other environmental pollutants as well as against autoimmune & chronic inflamatory diseases (asthma, allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis,...). The alkaloids in tobacco smoke (nicotine is just one of them) have additional specialized benefits for neurons and the whole brain, such as the increase in number of nicotine receptors, which improves concentration and general mental & motoric performance, reduces risks of senile dementias (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's both of which are also reduced due to additional glutathione protection), helps against depression, schizophrenia,... etc.

I think that, as with dogs and cats who will seek some plants when sick or as pregnant women who get strange food cravings, our internal biochemal networks (which know more about our health and medicine than the whole medical & biological sciences in the world put together) have built-in numerous subtle mechanisms which direct you to seek substances which are good for you in given curcumstances and health conditions. The craving is a low level signalling mechanism, just as thirst or hunger are. Its presence all by itself doesn't mean that the substance being craved is good or bad for you. It only means that your biochemical network is signalling at the very low level (hardware level, as it were) that it wishes you to seek the substance, be it air, water, food,... or tobacco smoke. Whether a craving is good or bad is determined 'by its fruits' not by the form of the signalling mechanism. For example, having craving to drink water or inhale air is certainly not bad for you.

Smoking tobacco is one of such spontaneous, instinctive self-therapies, a folk remedy with thousands of years of tradition and cultivation for that exact purpose. Hence, exactly as one can find positive correlation between aspirin (which was also a folk remedy for thousands of years, naturally occurring in willow bark) use and headaches, or chicken noodle soups and colds, or walking canes and arthritis, there will be correlations between smoking and various ailments, the strongest ones precisely for those in which the tobacco smoke is therapeutic or protective. Depending on how effective is its therapeutic/protective power vs any particular pathogen, exposure to toxins or other causes of ailments, and on what kind of statistical sample is used, one may find smoking positively correlating, not correlating or negatively correlating with various diseases. As explained nicely by Fisher, none of such correlations by itself means that tobacco smoke is cause of those diseases.

To determine the causal relations, one needs experiments where one can randomly assign smoking/non-smoking factor to test subjects. And in such tests so far, smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, emphysema, heart attacks, strokes,... or any other among the smoking-related diseases. As pointed out by Johnstone, not many such experiments were done over decades (for obvious reason) and the few that were done, if they ever show anything statistically significant, it is the therapeutic effects of tobacco smoke, despite the best efforts of the "scientists" who carefully designed the experiments to be "safe" from finding any effects of the "wrong" kind.

If smoking were actually causing all those diseases they blame it for, it would be trivial to take a bunch of lab animals and have them get lung cancers (as one can do with radiation or genuine chemical cancerogens), emphysemas, strokes, heart attacks,... by exposing them to tobacco smoke. Yet, all the "studies" they peddle are of the soft kind, epidemiology and highly pliable statistics (which is largely blind in clarifying the causal relations). The studies using hard scientific methods which are able to uncover the causes & effects fail to show that tobacco smoke causes any of those 'smoking related' diseases (if anything it helps for some), even when animals are made to smoke equivalents of many hundreds cigarettes a day. SImilarly, human studies of the hard kind show no benefit of quitting when smokers are randomly assigned to quit/no-quit group (I don't think there are any studies where they randomly make non-smokers take up smoking). If anything statistically significant gets found it is a harm from quitting, sometimes even very dramatic harm (such as tenfold increase in the risk for Alzheimer's).

My conclusion regarding the anti-smoking "science" is that we are dealing with a monumental fraud perpetrated for their own financial gains by the unholey trio of Big Pharma, Big Med and the "health" bureaucracies (FDA, EPA, CDC,...). They are all benefiting great deal from this fraud. They also fight not just tobacco, but all other traditional and folk remedies. Such traditional remedies are all seen as competitors by the unholey "trio" claiming the monopoly on our health. Hence, they instinctively go after all of such traditional remedies, be it by constantly peddling their own "studies" how this or that popular remedy is ineffective or placebo (yeah sure), or by FDA viciously cracking down on them at the flimsiest pretext (such as an anecdotal report of an odd side-effect), while turning a blind eye to hundreds thousands of Americans killed and crippled for life every year by their buddies, the Big Pharma and Big Med.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

Thank you for your thorough research and well thought out report. I agreee wholeheartedly and smoke for it's benefits to me.

When you read this, I want you to know that I've sat here for about three hours, typing a polite refute to Nightlight's reasoning.

I thought, typed, stopped, typed some more. Erased what I typed. Thought. Typed some more.

I typed a long refute. Longer than Nightlight's post. I found a fault in my own thinking. I couldn't find an approach to defeat Nightlight's reasoning.

I had a post even much longer than Nightlight's trying to punch some holes in his thinking. I have not read Nightlight's links, though I did take a look at one.

I tried to find a position where I could posit the dangers of smoking against the unacknowledged, though readily understandable, argument that Nightlight makes regarding humans taking cues from their environment and seeking among those cues for therapeutic effects, through instinctual responses.

As animals, on an unconscious level, we look around us for cues to find what can cure our ills. Nightlight's assertion that tobacco was inevitably inserted into the human environment because of its therapeutic effects and for the positive effects it would have on the human environment seems, against my own determined thinking and a great deal of work, to be emminently reasonable.

It was an epiphany. Though the 440,000 Americans dying every year from tobacco related illness is an exageration, let's suppose for a moment that it's actually an underestimation, let's say it's 2,000,000 to make it five times greater. The news is that it's irrelevant.

Nature created us to take certain cues from our environment. For example, we all know the effect of coughing in a crowded room; others will cough, though completely unconscious of the reason they are doing it. Yawning has a similar contagious effect. You may have yawned or coughed just from my writing that.

In this same way, people seek tobacco and are made aware of its medicinal properties through the aroma it offers. People who have psychological difficulties, like depression and anxiety, become drawn to it because they unconsciously register a curative effect, and ultimately seek it.

Those who start smoking to participate in its communal atmosphere are likely to quit, even if they enjoy smoking, because they are not getting a therapeutic benefit from tobacco. Those people don't need it. The rest of us are caught as "monkeys in the middle" who enjoy the therapeutic benefits of tobacco, but have been so convinced that tobacco is "bad" that we are forever in conflict over justifying our behavior.

Tobacco, after all, did introduce itself to the human environment. We're not smoking poison ivy, we're smoking tobacco. The use of tobacco has become so ubiquitous among humans that it can't be accounted for simply by "addictiveness" or advertising. If it was about advertising, we'd use floor cleaner 20-40 times a day.

Regarding "addictiveness", society considers alcohol and tobacco societally acceptable, legal drugs. Marijuana is illegal in the U.S., but its use is so widespread that its illegality in considered by many to be ridiculous. (I've tried marijuana, but I've never regularly used it. I've never bought it. I haven't tried it in years, mostly because I found that my very unpleasant experiences outnumbered my very pleasant experiences 10 to 1.) I consider the illegality of marijuana to be ridiculous and I find myself a bit angered and frightened when, for example, I see people being arrested for possesion on shows like "Cops".

My point here is that tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and even the coca leaf are produced by nature or very natural processes. It seems reasonable to assume that people will seek them out for their natural benefits.

It also seems reasonable to assume that ill effects are easily outweighed by positive effects, given one consideration; that they aren't chemically or otherwise altered to cause an effect that may result in something undesirable.

Other drugs are usually some kind of chemical alteration. I don't have a great deal of knowledge on this and I'll concede to correction, but it occurs to me that other drugs always involve some kind of lab experiment before ingestion.

It appears relevant to say, for example, if I smoke natural tobacco and die at 65 of lung cancer, that I smoked and therefore, got lung cancer. What it never takes into account, though, is the fact that I may have been quite miserable throughout my whole life otherwise. It's an issue of Quality that nature is giving us, not quantity or length.

We're all mortal. One hundred years from now, none of us will be here, smoker or non-smoker. Though I'm constantly interested by the question, I don't have any grand unifying answers for life, the universe and everything. This I know, though: whatever force put us here, into the inexplicable situation of life, did it with the condition that we are mortal. I don't know what that force is, but it is, well, everything, it knows more than I do or anyone else who has ever lived. We all were kind of "punched out" into life, we weren't layed upon it. I don't know what put us here, but whatever it was said we have to die someday. I choose to trust the fact that it knows what it is doing much better than I do, since I am a product of whatever it is that grand power is pursuing.

So was a tobacco leaf. It can be smoked. It has benefits. It might contribute to killing you. So might your car or your electric outlet, cheeseburgers or cheesecake.

So, I've been sitting here for many hours, typing away. Three hours trying to politely argue Nightlight's point and then over an hour typing this response agreeing with it. It has been very enlightening.

Smoking is probably good for those who are still smoking in the face of the anti-smoking measures that have been taken.

The people who would not benefit from smoking have probably already quit.

Anti-smoking is a real evil.

God Help Me. I think I agree with Nightlight.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: WinstonSmith,

Having typed part of my response, I discovered you have in the meantime thought some more and moved on beyond your initial objections. I will address just one bit from your earlier draft that I think deserves a comment, anyway.

There are many Ph.Ds who believe in Intelligent Design.

Well, I happen to post occasionally on the site Uncommon Descent hosted by Bill Dembski, a mathematician and one of the chief architects of ID perspective, with whom I agree great deal. As someone with background in hard science (theoretical physics), I have learned that science knows far less about nature than what outsiders might imagine based on the picture scientists paint to the society.

For example, there is absolutely nothing in natural science that gives any hint as to 'what is it like to be such and such arrangement of atoms' that make up you. The natural science lacks even a way (language & model) to ask such question, let alone answer it or explain, say, what role does the inner feel of 'redness' have. Yet, if anyone knows anything at all with certainty, it is the answer to 'what is it like to be' that particular arrangement of atoms. Hence, the most certain facts any of us knows, such as what is 'redness' like (which is not the same thing as the wavelength figure of red photons), cannot be expressed even as question within the natural science. The problem of explaining the nature and role of the 'mind stuff' is known as the 'hard problem of consciousness'.

Dembski and many ID proponents believe that consciousness is one manifestation of the 'intelligent agency' behind phenomena of life and its evolution. The orthodox theory, neo-Darwinism, holds that pure physical laws and blind chance are sufficient to explain emergence and evolution of life. Not that they have explained it (no one can even remotely calculate chances of different processes, thus establish that blind chance can account for life & evolution in time & space given), but as a matter of principle, they believe it can be done without any other ingredient. As a physicist, I am aware that the problem goes far beyond question of emergence of life. The very laws of physics are finely tuned to extraordinary precision (to 1 part per billions of billions), as if optimized for constructing the complex systems, from atoms and molecules to life. Even the tiniest change in physical constants would yield a very dull universe (e.g. no heavier atoms could form, let alone planets and life on them). In other words, even at the much more basic level than life and evolution, at the level of fundamental physical laws themselves, there is a signature of something very special taking place behind the curtain of unknown.

There is no reason to assume that this kind of amazingly fine tuning abruptly ends after the creation of heavy atoms and that somehow no further finer tuning is required for construction of complex molecules and life. While computations needed to prove or disprove such requirements are beyond the present capabilities of science, the question is at the very least an open one. Hence, ID perspective, which holds that blind chance and physical laws, even as finely tuned as they are known to be, are not enough to account for life & evolution, is a perfectly legitimate alternative conjecture to the neo-Darwinist conjecture (that we already have all the needed ingredients to explain life). Although I don't subscribe to everything Dembski, Behe and other pro-ID scientists hold, my views are much closer to theirs than to the strained neo-Darwinian omniscience dogma. Anyway, I have discussed these questions in more detail in a recent thread on talk.origins, so I'll stop here at the comments above.


Now to our main topic. I am pleased to see our positions converging and that my posts here weren't in vain. Your essential conclusion:

quote:

Smoking is probably good for those who are still smoking in the face of the anti-smoking measures that have been taken.

The people who would not benefit from smoking have probably already quit.

Anti-smoking is a real evil.

is precisely what I had in mind. Thanks for formulating it in such a crisp and concise way (I tend to go off elaborating and bury the key points in piles of detail). As to what precisely is the range of these benefits, I think we all agree that it has positive effect on mental performance (especially when one is tired but needs to go on), concentration, depression, stress,... in short the benefits for the nervous system are fairly immediate and thus self-evident without much science needed to confirm it. Any smoker knows it. Even anti-smokers science acknowledges such benefits, albeit it attributes them to nicotine alone. Having used nicotine inhalers, gums & patches, I am certain that is not correct. There is much more to the sacred plant than just one ingredient the Big Pharma has figured out how to replicate.


But, as argued in the Liberty Forum thread and sketched in several posts here, the beneficial effects on nervous system are still not all there is to it. There is an equally beneficial and stimulating effect of tobacco smoke on immune system, which in turn manifests itself in its therapeutic properties for, among others, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's diseases, asthma, allergies, rheumatoid arthritis,... or generally for variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Another facet of this immune system branch of tobacco smoke effects is the strengthening of body's detoxifying/cleansing capacities (via the increased production of glutathione and other internal antioxidants). One of the clearly recognized examples of this effect in scientific literature (strong enough to make it into publications even amid the present anti-smoking hysteria) is the protective effect of smoking against asbestos exposure, including asbestos related lung cancers.

A less well known example of this type is the protective effect against the low level chronic mercury exposure, such as that from dental amalgams (euphemistically called "silver" fillings even though they're 50% mercury and 25% silver), power plants (from coal), pollution from chlorine manufacturing,... etc. The harmful effects of such chronic low level mercury exposure depend on genetic profile of individual. People with ApoE4 allele (which, among Europeans, increases in frequency from south to north Europe) have very inefficient mercury elimination from brain, those with ApoE2 allele have very efficient elimination, while those with ApoE3 allele (which increases from north to south Europe) fall in between. Since a child receives one ApoE allele from its father, another from its mother, there are 6 combinations, thus 6 levels of sensitivity: ApoE4+E4, E4+E3, E4+E2, E3+E3, E3+E2, E2+E2, the last one being the most resistant to the mercury caused brain damage. If you happen to be E4+E4 type and also have a mouthful of "silver" fillings, you will instinctively be drawn to smoking since you will find it helpful (since some symptoms of Hg toxicity, such as hand tremors, facial ticks, mental focus, are alleviated within seconds of lighting up). Of course, how much smoking will help that person, depends on many other factors (genetic & environmental), so the result may be a lower brain toxicity than for non-smoker with lower mercury exposure (e.g. fewer dental amalgams or less polluted neighborhood) or non-smoker with more favorable ApoE combination and same mercury exposure. Or the benefit may not be enough to overcome the difference vs some non-smoker who may have other factors on his side.

Hence, depending on how you select your statistical sample, smoking will be correlated in some way with the symptoms of mercury toxicity, but the correlation may be negative or positive. As noted in another post, when you compare people with similar genetic profiles, in similar environments & similar socioeconomic status (which affects many other factors, such as pollution in the neighborhood and at work, dental health,...), the protective effect of smoking against one manifestation of mercury toxicity (early onset dementia) is dramatic -- smoking reduces the risk for such dementia tenfold. But if you pick your sample ignoring all other factors, then you may be largely comparing people from an impoverished, high pollution neighborhood, with bad dental health... hence who will be smoking often and heavily (to detox and to alleviate life stresses), with better off folks living and working in clean suburban neighborhoods, cleaner workplaces, better dental health,... who will thus need to smoke much less (and who will also tend to follow the fashionable trends, such as anti-smoking zeitgeist, much more than the first group). In such single-factor "study" (smoking being the sole factor, everything else ignored), you may well find that dementia is found more often among smokers (who would be largely from the first group, thus have greater exposure to mercury & other toxins), even though the smoking is outright protective against that type of dementia.

If those funding the study benefit financially from anti-smoking measures (Big Pharma, bureaucracies seeking a cut from new tobacco taxes,...), it is easy to guess how they will pick their samples.

The importance of the immune system effects of tobacco smoke, especially the detoxifying sub-branch, is that these are precisely the origin of the correlations between smoking and the diseases which are the cornerstones of the anti-smoking claims, such as lung cancers, caused by the combinations of toxic exposures (e.g. chemical pollution, radiation,...) and genetic susceptibilities. Epidemiological studies which compare the smokers with non-smokers, without matching them on all relevant cofactors for a given disease (or matching them in a biased or partial manner) will find smoking positively correlating with such diseases via the mechanism illustrated above with mercury toxicity, ApoE allele and dementia.

While the studies published in peer review journals may use a more guarded language, thus not claim explicitly that they have established a causal relation and pay lip service in the footnotes to other factors, by the time the story gets retold by the mass media, activists, lobbyists and politicians, such finer points of scientific language and logic are wishfully ignored and smoking is declared as the cause of precisely those diseases against which it is the most protective and therapeutic.

Johnstone & Finch article "The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking" and his SHS study analysis, along with Colby's book "In Defense of Smokers" provide numerous examples of this kind "big lie" studies, where the conclusions and claims are made which are precisely opposite from the actual facts.

The scarcity of honest, unbiased science in this field, leaves one wondering, what are the actual facts? What would real, honest science show about smoking?

In my view, the fact that all key anti-smoking "scientific" claims are based on the soft kind of science, the easily manipulated epidemiological studies, instead of harder kind of science, which compares randomly selected intervention group vs control group (Johnstone & Finch describe the few that were done), or uses lab animals and randomly makes some smoke, implies that the actual facts, accessible to the methods of hard science, are not favorable to the anti-smoking agenda.

In other words, the scarcity of the hard science based studies within the anti-smoking science, is a hard scientific fact by itself, implying that the actual health effects of smoking are exactly opposite from the claims by the anti-smoking "science". Thanks to the analysis by Johnstone, Colby, Fisher (see also another recent post here and FORCES evidence pages),... we do know, of course, that a few hard science studies were done, and these indeed all went the "wrong" way for the anti-smokers (e.g. you can't induce lung cancers, emphysema and heart attacks in lab animals, even when making them smoke equivalents of hundreds cigarettes per day; or for humans, when making random subset of smokers quit, the quitters end up worse off, sometimes dramatically so), confirming thus the above conclusion. Having been burned few times early on, the anti-smoking "science" has learned to steer clear from any such hard science.


With the immune system aspect added to the nervous system effects, we arrive to the realization that even well before the present anti-smoking social engineering, there were correlations between smoking and variety of diseases and conditions. Hard scientific methods, sparse as they may have been, have shown that these correlations are result of therapeutic & protective effects of tobacco smoke (after all, tobacco plant was cultivated and honed for millennia for medicinal properties of its smoke, and it was largely seen as such until 1950s).

The result of heavy-handed social engineering against smoking in recent decades, as you observe in your conclusion, is that these correlations between smoking and diseases have become sharper, since those still smoking against all social & economic pressures, are increasingly those who genuinely need it, be it for its therapeutic & protective effects on nervous system/psyche or immune system/toxic exposures (and possibly for other therapeutic effects that we don't consciously know about as yet). Those who didn't need it, who smoked to look cool when smoking was seen as cool, or those who didn't need it very much, have submitted to the pressures and quit. The self-medicating proportion of smokers has thus become much larger fraction among smokers.

Consequently, the 'health' bureaucracies along with the Big Pharma and Big Med, who are symbiotically in therapeutic business, are increasingly competing with tobacco for smokers. They would rather you bought their expensive nicotine as mental stimulus (which is only one piece of the tobacco plant magic), their anti-depressants, their treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, asthma, allergies, immune system stimulants,... ineffective as they are, than used the ancient medicinal plant for those diseases. You can in fact see the same kind of attacks from these three 'therapy businesses' against all other natural remedies, albeit less vicious than against tobacco. Perhaps because the sacred tobacco plant is the best one, the most powerful medicine, among them all.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

This is beginning to make a great deal of sense to me. Let me try and break this down.

Many people, for various (but specific and identifiable), physical and psychological reasons, seek out smoking from their environment because they pick up the cues from their environment that it will be helpful to them. For example, the mentally ill have always been known to smoke a great deal.

Often, people who are in demading or high stress situations tend to smoke, where they may not smoke or easily give up once the stressers are removed. Soldiers in action, for example, or prison inmates. Many people find it easy to get through their work day by smoking, but have no problem not smoking at home, where they are hiding smoking from their spouse.

Other people begin to smoke because of its social reasons and don't really need to smoke.

This accounts for the social smokers who (used to) only smoke at bars and do not miss the habit otherwise.

This also accounts for why Bob, the pack a day smoker, is able to quit in the middle of the day on Tuesday and never feel the need to smoke again.

Meanwhile, Mary, the half a pack a day smoker, quits and nearly chews her fingers off wanting a cigarette for months or even years to come. (Mary walks around thinking about the "Bobs" of the world and is constantly wondering what has made her different).

Bob will be found to be a former smoker whose health has improved and he will be perceived as a victory for anti-smoking.

Mary will go on throughout her life without the tobacco she needed, will eventually get sick, and will be picked out by anti-smoking as a victim of her previous smoking.

For the "need to smoke" population, the pharmaceutical industry stands ready to treat them with smoking deterrents, anti-depressants, and other medications, but none of these will ever replace the natural benefits of tobacco, which humans instinctually sought out thousands of years ago for these very reasons. Simple aspirin, for example is regarded as the "wonder drug". It is natural and has had an enormous benefit to humans.

One possibility I would like to add is that the incidence of asthma and allergies has only increased as smoking rates have decreased. This would seem to indicate that the children of people who smoke, who may have inherited the traits from their parents that led their parents to smoking, are now not being exposed to the smoke.

Without the presence of the smoke in their environment, these children now get more asthma (as some epidemiological studies have hinted). The children who have asthma and have parents who smoke around them, don't have asthma because their parents smoke, rather, their parents smoke because they (the parents) are treating their own asthamtic symptoms (many people with asthma smoke). When these parents quit, they develop full blown asthma and, since they've aged a bit as well, they misattribute their asthma development to being a former smoker and aging.

This is not to suggest that the scenario I'm drawing above is what happens in all, or even most instances. It does suggest though that it happens in enough instances to increase overall incidence of asthma and increases the tendency to misattribute asthma to smoking.

Is my logic correct on all of this?

I Googled the term "asthma increase" and the first study I found was about asthma and increased use of paracetemol. In the study summary I found these words.

"The authors of that study proposed a mechanism whereby paracetamol strips reduced glutathione from the airway, shifting the balance of oxidant and antioxidant and causing inflammation."

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7313/592/c

The lack of tobacco smoke in the environment could also cause this reduction in the glutathione you speak of.

I have a question though. A quick view of the studies on the internet seems to suggest that smoking reduces glutathione. Why this discrepancy? Unfortunately, I'm not quickly able to find anywhere that there is a down to earth explanation of glutathione and smoking.

Also, in the example I gave earlier, how good are the Bobs and Marys of the world at identifying themselves as either a Bob or a Mary?

quote:

Originally posted by WinstonSmith:
I have a question though. A quick view of the studies on the internet seems to suggest that smoking reduces glutathione. Why this discrepancy? Unfortunately, I'm not quickly able to find anywhere that there is a down to earth explanation of glutathione and smoking.

Here is one scientific paper, very heavily cited (263 times), focusing specifically on the glutathione levels and smoking:
------
"Normal alveolar epithelial lining fluid contains high levels of glutathione"
A. M. Cantin, S. L. North, R. C. Hubbard and R. G. Crystal
Journal of Applied Physiology, Vol 63, Issue 1 152-157, Copyright c 1987 by American Physiological Society

ABSTRACT

The epithelial cells on the alveolar surface of the human lower respiratory tract are vulnerable to toxic oxidants derived from inhaled pollutants or inflammatory cells. Although these lung cells have intracellular antioxidants, these defenses may be insufficient to protect the epithelial surface against oxidants present at the alveolar surface. This study demonstrates that the epithelial lining fluid (ELF) of the lower respiratory tract contains large amounts of the sulfhydryl-containing antioxidant glutathione (GSH). The total glutathione (the reduced form GSH and the disulfide GSSG) concentration of normal ELF was 140-fold higher than that in plasma of the same individuals, and 96% of the glutathione in ELF was in the reduced form. Compared with nonsmokers, cigarette smokers had 80% higher levels of ELF total glutathione, 98% of which was in the reduced form. Studies of cultured lung epithelial cells and fibroblasts demonstrated that these concentrations of reduced glutathione were sufficient to protect these cells against the burden of H2O2 in the range released by alveolar macrophages removed from the lower respiratory tract of nonsmokers and smokers, respectively, suggesting that the glutathione present in the alveolar ELF of normal individuals likely contributes to the protective screen against oxidants in the extracellular milieu of the lower respiratory tract.
----


Note that smokers (they had 22+/-4 pack years) did not only have 80% more total glutathione in the mucous layer, but also had a greater concentration (98 vs 96) of the reduced glutathione (which is the active, not used up, form). Basically, smoking 20-30 cigarettes has an effect on immune system analogous to the effect on muscles of taking 20-30 exercise breaks through the day and doing pushups and situps for five minutes. Even after few weeks, the gain in the size and strength of the muscles would start showing.

You will find some papers, especially the more recent ones as the anti-smoking hysteria has intensified, spin this unambiguous strengthening of the immune system as the increase in the "inflammatory marker" or "stress marker", which while containing a tiny grain of truth, is like characterizing the stronger muscles of body builder as a larger 'mechanical stress or overload markers' or labeling a pay raise as increase in 'decadence and wastefulness markers'. When the anti-smoking "science" has to stoop to this kind of cheap verbal gimmickry to make their case, you know what the real score is.

In addition to glutathione, which is the body's master antioxidant and metal detoxifier, many other lesser antioxidants and detoxifiers are similarly strengthened (e.g. check the study list citing and extending this study).

quote:

Originally posted by WinstonSmith:
....
This is not to suggest that the scenario I'm drawing above is what happens in all, or even most instances. It does suggest though that it happens in enough instances to increase overall incidence of asthma and increases the tendency to misattribute asthma to smoking.

Is my logic correct on all of this?

It is certainly one plausible alternative which simple statistical correlations (even these claims need to be taken with a big grain of salt) are unable to distinguish from the official story line (that tobacco smoke causes asthma, lung cancers,...). That weakness of blind statistical correlations is the essence of Fisher's objections from 1950s in "Cigarettes, Cancer and Statistics". He noted that the 'mountain of evidence' in subsequent studies claiming to confirm the ori