Nicotine In Cigarettes
I meant to comment on this when it came out, but with one thing and another it slipped my mind. So. Apparently all the major cigarette manufacturers have been slyly raising the nicotine levels in their cigarettes. And we only just found this out, because our nicotine-testing apparatuses have a hard time approximating humans. But Massachussets developed a robot that mimics human smoking habits (that could be so much more fun than it is), and now the jig is up.
Everyone says this is a bad thing. I don't see it. Sure, the average nicotine per dose is up 10%, and someone who has smoked say ten cigarettes a day, religiously, for the last ten years might as well be smoking 11. But all this means is that people are going to have to smoke fewer cigarettes to get their nicotine fix. I know that nicotine is itself bad for you, but the free radicals in smoke are bad for you too. A smoker from the nineties, transported to the present day, would actually be healthier now that the tobacco companies have taken this step.
Some people say, no, this isn't about that. This is about luring new smokers. An innocent child smoking one cigarette will get more nicotine than before, and be ten percent more addicted at the end of the cigarette. After his first hundred cigarettes, he will be a hardened 110-cigarette smoker in 1998 terms. Am I the only one who thinks this description of addiction is a little facile? Has anyone noticed that this is an exact repeat (politically inverted) of the government's "marijuana is far stronger than in the 70's" line that gives now-authoritarian hippy parents a rhetorical way out?
Marlboro may have high levels of nicotine per cigarette, but what about nicotine patches? They have infinite levels of nicotine per cigarette. Hasn't exactly sparked an addiction crisis, as far as I can tell. There is more to the addictiveness (I said I wanted to retire that word, right? "Habit-forming-ness") of cigarettes than the crude nicotine levels. E.g:
On another note, this kind of highlights how silly our tobacco laws are. Where is Philip Morris getting the nicotine to add to their cigarettes? Why, they're extracting it from tobacco. Why don't they just make weaker cigarettes and sell more of them, cheaper? That's what we would seem to prefer that they did, after all. Well they can't. We have reverse price controls in place. They have to sell them at a minimum price per cigarette, so the only way to keep up with the market is to make stronger cigarettes, and sort of bypass the laws. I don't want to sound like a libertarian here, but come on.
Everyone says this is a bad thing. I don't see it. Sure, the average nicotine per dose is up 10%, and someone who has smoked say ten cigarettes a day, religiously, for the last ten years might as well be smoking 11. But all this means is that people are going to have to smoke fewer cigarettes to get their nicotine fix. I know that nicotine is itself bad for you, but the free radicals in smoke are bad for you too. A smoker from the nineties, transported to the present day, would actually be healthier now that the tobacco companies have taken this step.
Some people say, no, this isn't about that. This is about luring new smokers. An innocent child smoking one cigarette will get more nicotine than before, and be ten percent more addicted at the end of the cigarette. After his first hundred cigarettes, he will be a hardened 110-cigarette smoker in 1998 terms. Am I the only one who thinks this description of addiction is a little facile? Has anyone noticed that this is an exact repeat (politically inverted) of the government's "marijuana is far stronger than in the 70's" line that gives now-authoritarian hippy parents a rhetorical way out?
Marlboro may have high levels of nicotine per cigarette, but what about nicotine patches? They have infinite levels of nicotine per cigarette. Hasn't exactly sparked an addiction crisis, as far as I can tell. There is more to the addictiveness (I said I wanted to retire that word, right? "Habit-forming-ness") of cigarettes than the crude nicotine levels. E.g:
- People like to put something in their mouths.
- People like to look cool
- People like the way cigarettes smell
- People like to be transgressive
On another note, this kind of highlights how silly our tobacco laws are. Where is Philip Morris getting the nicotine to add to their cigarettes? Why, they're extracting it from tobacco. Why don't they just make weaker cigarettes and sell more of them, cheaper? That's what we would seem to prefer that they did, after all. Well they can't. We have reverse price controls in place. They have to sell them at a minimum price per cigarette, so the only way to keep up with the market is to make stronger cigarettes, and sort of bypass the laws. I don't want to sound like a libertarian here, but come on.
posted by apk01004 at 2:30 PM
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