OFF: smoking etc.

Doug Pearson ceres at SIRIUS.COM
Fri Feb 18 17:42:52 EST 2000


On Fri, 18 Feb 2000 16:45:55 -0500, Eric Siegerman <erics at TELEPRES.COM> wrote:
>On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 03:37:51PM -0500, flossbac wrote:
>> If heroin or cocaine were available at every corner gas station,
>> just like cigarettes, we would have just as large a problem with those
drugs
>> as with smoking.
>
>Strictly in terms of health, are these as nasty as tobacco?  Or
>are the risks more related to their illegality and the resulting
>market distortions, than intrinsic to the substances themselves?

It depends on how you define "nasty".  If a pack-a-day smoker smokes 10
packs of cigarettes in a sitting, it may make his lungs ache, but it most
likely won't kill him right then and there (unless he already has, say,
some sort of heart arrhythmia).  However, if a junkie shoots up 10 times in
a sitting, she's gonna be permanently blue-in-the-face.  No question.  On
the other hand, a person who injects heroin once a day is extremely
unlikely to die of any complications cause by the drug, but the pack-a-day
smoker will be, statistically, very likely to die of lung cancer,
emphesyma, or other lung complications.  It comes down to long-term vs.
short-term effects and differences in toxic-to-effective dose ratios.

Again, comparisons in "addictiveness" are difficult.  Nicotine is
considered "more addictive" or a "harder habit to break" than any other
drug, but the withdrawal symptoms of nicotine, while very unpleasant, are
not as incapacitating as the withdrawal symptoms of heroin.  And some
people can "maintain" an addiction without continually escalating the
dosage, while others

And then there's the whole question of which is worse: having tobacco smoke
blown in your face?  listening to a babbling ego-tripping moron?  or
staring at a listless zombie?  At least you don't have to worry about
having your stereo ripped off by a cigarette smoker (at least not until
they're outlawed).  Or, which is worse: watching your 60-year-old aunt die
slowly of lung cancer, or suddenly seeing your 30-year-old friend turn blue
while sitting at your kitchen table (the drummer in one of my bands got to
see the latter last year, but at least the idiot survived)?

        -Doug
         ceres at sirius.com



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