Talk:Tobacco smoking/Archive 1

Recreational drug?
So--is it a recreational drug or not? The anonymous editor who says it isn't wrote:
 * I polled a several people today and all of them agreed. Tobacco smoking does not effect cognition, reasoning, language, motor skills, etc.

I say, nicotine is a stimulant. Its article says "it has a stimulating effect, increasing activity, alertness and memory." People certainly use it recreationally. It is undoubtedly a drug. Hence, it is a recreational drug. Thoughts? Lukobe 04:55, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Looks like the editor has done this more than one place, and a discussion is underway over at Talk:Recreational_drug_use. Lukobe 05:05, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Edward G. Nilges uid spinoza1111 dit:

Tobacco is the proletarian drug in that it makes jobs that suck and blow half-way tolerable.

Perhaps the article needs me to move my contributions from Effects on Smokers to a Philosophy of Smoking, or Cultural Aspects of Smoking, section. I could include a Marxist analysis of smoking as a dialectic between production and consumption, more information from the Klein book Cigarettes are Sublime, etc. The trouble is NPOV. Actual Marxists probable regard smoking not as deep but merely one more way of exploiting the working man.

Chemicals
Could someone please produce a list of every chemical that is found in every vegetable product used, so that it could be compared with the "tobacco" list? Likewise, is this "tobacco" list valid for every single form of tobacco used? Also, could someone please direct me to the scientific study that has determined that "cigarette" is absolutely and completely, without exception, utterly identical to all forms of smoking and other tobacco use?Dogface

There is more history and discussion of this topic at Smoking, which redirects here. --LDC

I have a feeling that this list of chemicals is slightly alarmist, not least because it makes no mention of concentrations. How much radon or polonium can really be in a cigarette. I haven't yet found a list that ranks the chemicals by concentration or dan ger relative to the amount in a cigarette. Anyone have a good source. Rmhermen 12:31 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)

Quantifying concentrations might be worthwhile, but simply listing the carcinogens found in cigarettes is not "alarmist." The evidence that cigarette smoking causes cancer is enormous, and even tobacco companies themselves have conceded this point. Since the fact that smoking causes cancer is not in dispute, how can it be "alarmist" simply to list the chemicals which are likely to contribute to that result? Sheldon Rampton 04:06 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, maybe not alarmist, but it certainly is rather pointless, and it suggests that you have an agenda (as does the comment "smoking causes cancer" - smoking increases the probability of contracting cancer; if smoking "caused" cancer then every person who smoked would get cancer, and that is plainly untrue). If you've bothered to find out the numerous substances present in tobacco smoke, why omit the concentrations unless you are using the lengthy list to entice readers to make the assumption that all of these materials are present in quantities large enough to be damaging? If you've got an agenda, then fair enough, but don't waste your time tarting it up in the guise of psuedo science, because anyone with half an ounce of scientific training will see through it in 5 seconds.


 * It would be interesting to list radioactives such as radium or polonium only if their presence in tobacco has health effects above the noise level. For instance, if the amount of harmful radiation that enters one's system in smoking is on the same order as the amount that enters one's system by eating ordinary supermarket vegetables (e.g.), then it is not worth mentioning.


 * This is usually solved by saying there are "negligible amounts" or "traces" of some substance. Paranoid 07:54, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Does the tobacco plant concentrate radioactives from soil detectably more than lettuce, corn, or broccoli do? Would tobacco's carcinogenic effects be detectably less if it contained no radioactives? If so, then the radioactives are worth mentioning. If not, mentioning them is misleading -- since where there is no detectable effect, science is silent. --FOo 01:56, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Simply "mentioning" them is not misleading. Science should be silent about "effects" it cannot detect, but there is no obligation to be silent about substances that it can detect. As for the attempted comparison to lettuce, corn or broccoli, this is misleading, or at least erroneous. Lettuce, corn and broccoli "enter one's system" through the digestive tract, which extracts useful nutrients and ejects useless and harmful matter in the form of urine and bile. Smoked tobacco "enters one's system" through the lungs, not the digestive tract. The question of how a substance enters the body is significant. A carrot that "enters one's system" by being chewed and eaten is harmless; a carrot that is rammed whole down someone's throat can be deadly. Similarly, there is a difference between a plant that enters the body by being burnt and inhaled as opposed to a plant that enters the body by being cooked and eaten. User:Sheldon Rampton


 * This site list some concentrations M123 19:19, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Ah, no. Mentioning them can be misdirection if it falsely implies a greater radioactivity than the background noise. It is a fact of existence that everything contains some radioactive particles -- the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and so forth. If we detect radioactivity in apples, and tout this fact as a threat posed by eating apples, we are committing falsehood if in fact the apples are no more radioactive than any other part of our environment. In order to prove something significant, we need to prove that it stands out from the background noise.


 * (Also, if these apples are genuinely dangerous because of the pesticides they contain, we would be misdirecting people from the real threat. Tobacco smoke is harmful and carcinogenic chiefly for its nicotine, CO, and other easily demonstrable substances -- if radiation is found to be a bogeyman, it would be a distraction indeed!)


 * Your U. Manitoba link indicates the polonium radioactivity in one cigarette's-worth of smoke, to the smoker, as 0.5 picocuries. That is 0.018 becquerels, or about one disintegration per minute. I don't know enough about the radioactive properties of polonium to derive exposure units (sieverts or rem) from this ... do you? In order to figure the smoker's exposure to radiation -- and thus, whether the amount is greater than the background radiation -- we'd need to know how much is exhaled, e.g., and the quality factor of polonium radiation.


 * In other words, there's more science that needs to be done before it is acceptable to describe radioactive polonium as a harmful component of tobacco smoke. --FOo 04:34, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * This site says the following about radioactive polonium-210 in tobacco smoke: "Conservative estimates put the level of radiation absorbed by a pack-and-a-half a day smoker at the equivalent of 300 chest X-rays every year (8). The Office of Radiation, Chemical & Biological Safety at Michigan State University state in their newsletter that the radiation equivalent was as high as 800 chest X-rays per year(9). The National Institute of Health published a radiation exposure chart which shows that smoking 30 cigarettes per day is the equivalent of 2,000 chest x-rays per year.(10)". It provides sources for those figures. I think one of the differences between eating an apple with polonium-210 containing pesticide is different than smoke leaves covered in that pesticide. In the latter case the atom can become trapped in the lungs emitting harmful alpha radiation (like radon gas). Eating that apple, while not good, is won't be as harmful. Most of the information I've seen has indicated it was significant, but I'll admit that in my search I turned up numerous 'scare' sights overtouting the harm of the chemicals contained in cigarettes.M123 04:56, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I'm going to give the radioactivity bit a shot, wish me luck. Gzuckier 18:05, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I second the idea to trim down or remove the list of "carcinogens". Apple juice has 137 volatile chemicals, but you wouldn't expect an article on apples to list them all. Almost all substances on Earth are chemicals, probably half of which are carcinogenic at some dose.
 * Well, that's not really true. Actually, the list of even suspect carcinogens isn't that large, and the ones on the list which are proved is even smaller. It's just that these chemicals are often of great industrial utility, because of the same properties that make them carcinogenic in many cases. Bruce Ames has for years, however, been pushing the notion of naturally occurring carcinogens in food. Contaminants from fungi, for instance, are among the most carcinogenic stuff around. Gzuckier 18:05, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's useless to list reams of chemical consituents of tobacco. The list should be reduced to only chemicals whose specific dose in tobacco is known to be carcinogenic. Otherwise the article risks making an accepted point look like a straw man.


 * The difference is that, while the apple was made by a process understood by all (plant a tree, fertilize the tree, pluck the apple) the chemical composition of cigarettes is extremely altered by the tobacco companies after the leaves are grown and picked. If I were writing an article on vodka-injected apples, I would be negligent not to mention that there's alcohol inside them.Matt gies 06:53, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Actually, the whole tone of this article seems non-NPOV. You wouldn't expect an article on "basketball playing" to be ninety percent about microfracture injuries to knees, ankle sprains, and jammed shoulder sockets. Unless, maybe the article was entitled "risks of basketball playing". Rolofft 23:47, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Legal issues
Just created this section with some Australian specific examples, maybe others from around the world could fill in facts about their own countries?

chemical composition
Concentrations are likely to vary by brand, or even between batches of the same brand. Perhaps median concentrations on nicotine and the other most serious chemical components is in order.

User is smijer - sorry for the clumsy post, I'm not accustomed to the discussion page editing system.

Disputed studies
I deleted "It should be noted that many of the studies used to determine how dangerous tobacco is are disputed.". I have no problem with discussing the disputes, but just stating this boldly without support is useless. Please add some supporting information. RickK 02:55, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Junk Science
On Friday, July 17, 1998 the U.S. District Court in North Carolina, acting on a lawsuit filed by the tobacco industry, struck down a 1993 finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that so-called second-hand smoke causes lung cancer. According to the Associated Press, the EPA's controversial report concluded that second-hand tobacco smoke should be classified as a Class A carcinogen and was responsible for more than 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year. That report has since been cited widely in decisions by state and local officials to restrict smoking in public places, including bars, restaurants, airliners, and offices.

But the court ruled that the EPA had based its report on inadequate science and failed to demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between second-hand smoke and lung cancer. It further stated that the EPA followed improper procedure by not including industry experts in its deliberations, as required by law, and further criticized the EPA for having aggressively utilized the report's findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme intended to restrict plaintiffs' products and to influence public opinion.

Said the court: EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun...[and] adjusted established procedures and scientific norms to validate the agency's public conclusions.


 * It's true that the U.S. District Judge William Osteen made that statement in his ruling, but judges are not scientists, and their statements about science carry no more weight within the scientific community than the statements of journalists, priests or plumbers. The tobacco industry aggressively litigates and has won lots of courtroom verdicts in the past that were inconsistent with science and justice, some of which have later been reversed in subsequent court decisions. (The industry used to brag that they had never lost a liability lawsuit.) Judges are politically appointed, and increasingly they have been packed with conservatives. Moreover, there are reports that Osteen used to work as a tobacco lobbyist. And as the article currently states, EPA's assessment has been supported by a number of subsequent scientific studies from the World Health Organization and other leading scientific and health agencies. The term "junk science" in this context is mere name-calling, a common rhetorical technique tht should be greeted with skepticism.


 * For an anti-tobacco group's take on Osteen's ruling, try this URL:
 * http://www.no-smoke.org/epaback.html


 * I think that the article should include information about the specific findings that Osteen disputed in the EPA study so that readers could determine for themselves whether they believe his ruling to be sound or not. The two biggest problems that Osteen noted were that the EPA released its opinion on the dangers of environmental tobacco smoke before its own studies had been completed, and that the EPA disregarded its own internal scientific guidelines for confidence intervals and statistical significance in order to classify ETS as a carcinogen.  Can we add those specific critiques of the EPA data and let readers make their own judgements about the validity of the EPA study?

Re: "Many of the health and moral effects can be avoided through Smoking cessation" - I have never heard of "moral effects" of smoking, not even in Christian theology or mythology. I have doubts that it can be NPOV alluded to as fact that smoking causes moral effects. Jesus Blows Goats 07:24, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Religious Claptrap
I'm removing the sections on Methodist and Mormon moral considerations of smoking. They're not NPOV, and the section on mormonism is a thinly-veiled attempt to garner interest or sympathy for their (extremely) minority religion. If someone wants to write a section on consideration of smoking by major religions, that would be fine, but it's not likely to be very interesting since, particularly among American Christian churches, smoking is regarded as a very minor vice and not worth losing a convert over.

As always, a comparison of the ideas of the major world religions might be interesting and/or enlightening, as well as the historic acceptability of tobacco smoking in Europe, Asia, etc.


 * Having read the section you took out, I would've thought that, if anything, the Mormonism section just made them look bad, especially since the same attitude applies to coffee and tea (but not THEIR tea), but I guess that's just my way of thinking. I do think a comparison of religious attitudes would be worth doing; not sure I'm qualified, but this sort of thing stood out to me having just read "Saying Yes" by Jacob Sullum.  He does a pretty good job of looking at religous attitudes (particularly Mormon and Islamic) toward stimulants in general. -TimeLord mbw 23:52, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting point, actually. However, much as the mormons would like to think otherwise, they remain a tiny, tiny fraction of the global population and should not be held up as any kind of significant group. I'm looking into the views of major religions and cultures for future addition, though.

Interesting comment: "However, much as the mormons would like to think otherwise, they remain a tiny, tiny fraction of the global population and should not be held up as any kind of significant group." --TimeLord mbw 23:52, 24 Mar 2004


 * I noticed the Jewish perspective on tobacco remains on the main page, while the Mormon perspective has been removed. Jews, numbering only around 13 million, worldwide seem to be classified as a significant group by this community, while Mormons (world population: 10,000,000) have been marginalized.  What is the reasoning behind this? Ix 21:05, 4 May 2004


 * Judaism has a large amount of history associated with it and has played a major role in the politics of many nations and of course in the critical Middle East. While this article has nothing to do with the Middle East, Judaism may be worth mentioning on account of that group's historical significance. The same cannot be said of the mormons, which are a uniquely American group. I'm very familiar with the mormons (beliefs, politics, history), and I don't want to get into a word-mincing contest, so please take my word for it for now if you're not also an expert on them = ). All of this becomes moot, of course, if someone feels it is worthwhile to set up a separate article for collecting the positions of all religions on tobacco smoking. Jeeves 03:07, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In addition, A methodist position is mentioned.. This from a church with only 8,000,000 members worldwide? I'd hate to contradict you, but it seems the Mormon religion's membership numbers fit within your classification schema for inclusion as a "significant group." Ix 21:10, 4 May 2004


 * There is a difference. The Methodists can be lumped in with the mainstream Protestant denominations, the mormons cannot. The doctrine of, say, the Methodist and Lutheran denominations, can be directly compared, whereas any of the Protestant denominations cannot be directly compared with the mormon religion. Jeeves 02:02, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, the Methodist reference is simply a representative example of an early American Protestant view, and I believe it reflects a general Christian opinion of the times, so I left it in. I don't believe it holds that group up as exemplary in the modern sense. I have no particular sympathy or antipathy towards the Methodists or Protestants. Jeeves 03:07, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I included Rabbi Kagan's views, which were quite novel at the time. If you feel this is stretching the scope of the article, just remove it. It's probably more important that smoking rates amongst orthodox jews in israel have dropped substantially since Ovadia Yosef (former chief rabbi) denounced smoking.... JFW | T@lk

Amusing error
British entertainer Roy Castle attributed his death from lung cancer entirely to passive smoking. I'm just about to re-phrase this, but thought it should be left here for the comedy value :) Tjwood 15:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * and there's about a 1 in 6 chance that he was right, whether he made this pronouncement from beyond the grave or not :o) --EmmetCaulfield 17:32, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Secondhand smoke
I'm wondering if the "passive smoking" section shouldn't be broken out into a separate article? I notice references to "secondhand smoke" and "passive smoking" in other articles. Or should those phrases just be directed to the subsection of this article?

-Lukobe 17:28, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

not ONE picture?
on such an important topic? Lockeownzj00 22:52, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Done, adding a picture of my hand holding a lit cigarette. No artistic value here, just a placeholder until someone comes up with a better, free, picture. -=vyruss=- 03:50, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Various revisions
Some problematic passages have crept in since the last time I looked at this article. Here are the changes I made and the reasons.

History:


 * Most smoking restrictions and anti-smoking programs today focus largely on reducing cigarette use.

This statement may be true (since cigarettes are the most commonly smoked form of tobacco in modern times), but it really isn't part of the "history" of tobacco per se.

Health effects

I restored a list of chemical constituents of tobacco smoke that are known or suspected to cause cancer. This list appeared in earlier versions of the article and was deleted by someone who also committed a number of other vandalisms. The other deletions were restored, but this passage got left out somehow.

Pipe and cigar smoking

This POV passage was inserted originally by someone who was clearly passionate about trying to defend pipe and cigar smoking. It stated that "it is important to note that" risks "are far, far lower for pipe and cigar smokers." Although "far, far lower" has been toned down to "far lower," this is still not the language of science or objective fact. There is no quantitative meaning to the phrase "far lower." Likewise, saying that it is "important" to note this claim is merely an intensifier. Most importantly, the claim as stated is misleading. It is not true, for example, to say that cigar and pipe smokers "generally do not inhale the smoke into the lungs and typically smoke tobacco which is in a more natural state than that usually found in commercially produced cigarettes." They do inhale smoke into the lungs, and pipe and cigar tobacco is just as "commercially produced" as cigarettes. Here's what the American Cancer Society has to say about pipe and cigar smoking:


 * Smoking cigars or pipes is not a safe alternative to smoking cigarettes.


 * Most of the same cancer-causing substances found in cigarettes are found in cigars. Most cigars have as much nicotine as several cigarettes. When cigar smokers inhale, nicotine is absorbed as rapidly as it is with cigarettes. For those who do not inhale, it is absorbed more slowly through the lining of the mouth. Both inhaled and non-inhaled nicotine are highly addictive.


 * Smoking cigars causes cancers of the lung, oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, and probably cancers of the bladder and pancreas. Cigar smokers have a greater risk of dying from cancer of the oral cavity, larynx (voice box), or esophagus compared with nonsmokers. The risk of death from lung cancer is not as high as it is for cigarette smokers, but is still several times higher than the risk for nonsmokers.


 * Cigar smokers who inhale deeply and smoke several cigars a day are also at increased risk for heart disease and chronic lung disease.


 * Pipe smokers are at increased risk of dying from cancers of the lung, esophagus, larynx, pancreas, and colon and rectum. They are also at increased risk of dying of heart disease, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The level of these risks seems to be about the same as that for cigar smokers.

I have dealt with this passage by moving it into the "health effects" section

Alleged health benefits

Another couple of paragraphs have been deleted that discuss alleged health benefits from smoking (notably the claim that Alzheimers Disease is more common among nonsmokers than among smokers). I restored those paragraphs, because they provide a scientific reference and analysis of a claim that is sometimes heard from tobacco industry defenders.

Passive smoking

I deleted the following passage:


 * The main area of uncertainty remaining is in the strength of the dose-response relationship, relative to the intermediate biochemical mechanism involved. For individuals who smoke, the amount of tobacco smoked, the measured concentration of toxic compounds in the bloodstream, and the epidemiologically observed health risks all correlate in a reasonable fashion, strongly confirming the now almost universally held theory that smoking exposes the smoker to these toxic compounds, which cause disease. However, with respect to second-hand smoke, the epidemiological evidence of disease is consistently much greater than the biochemical measurements of exposure to toxic chemicals would predict. While the consistency of these results through various studies might cause them to just be accepted at face value, that secondhand smoke is somehow more toxic than direct smoke, this would force the conclusion that the nonsmoker is more at risk from a certain amount of smoke than the smoker is; and therefore would become safer by actually smoking a small amount than by just being in the presence of second-hand smoke. Although this would be hard to test on humans, it seems unlikely; so the question of the actual degree of risk from second-hand smoke remains open.

The problem with this passage is that it is unsourced and is in fact contrary to current science. To begin with, it states that several variables relative to the risks from smoking "all correlate in a reasonable fashion." However, there is no scientific meaning to the phrase, "correlate in a reasonable fashion." The passage then goes on to state that epidemiological evidence of disease is "greater than biochemical measurements ... would predict." Again, there is no meaning to this passage. "Biochemical measurements" don't "predict" things. To the contrary, the purpose of research is to discover the relationship between different variables, such as exposure to chemicals and disease. The only sense that I can make of this passage is that its author must think there is a strict linear dose-response relationship between exposure to toxic chemicals and incidence of disease. In fact, however, considerable evidence suggests that the dose-response relationship is a curve rather than a straight line. Moreover, the shape of the curve varies. It's not the same for every chemical.

Finally, the passage above makes a tortured argument to the effect that "various studies" suggest that secondhand smoke is more toxic than direct smoke, only to conclude that this idea flies in the face of logic and should therefore be dismissed. In fact, however, there are no published studies suggesting that secondhand smoke is more toxic than direct smoke, so the whole passage is nonsense.

--Sheldon Rampton 17:37, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rewrite of passive smoking section
I just realized in reviewing this article that the passive smoking section referred almost exclusively to the relationship between passive smoking and lung cancer, when in fact lung cancer is only one of the health risks associated with passive smoking, and in fact is one of the lesser risks. Most of the controversy about health risks due to passive smoking has focused specifically on the risk of lung cancer, but there has been very little controversy regarding the other, larger risks. For example, passive smoking is estimated to cause approximately 10 times as many deaths due to heart disease as it causes due to lung cancer. I therefore put a paragraph at the beginning that discusses heart disease and other health risks before getting into the discussion of lung cancer. --Sheldon Rampton 04:21, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * This is a great rewrite. I also like that you have put the science before the politics. --FOo 04:38, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Relative and Unconfounded Risks
It would, IMHO, be very helpful if someone with familiarity and/or easy access to the epidemiological literature would dig out, and reference, typical or range (top & bottom) figures (complete with CIs, etc.) for baseline risks and RRs of lung cancer, COPD, heart disease, and overally mortality for (say) 20-a-day active smoking (as exemplar) and ETS. I'd be happy to do it myself, but I don't have access to the sources. Anyone in a university with a significant medical or allied dept. should, though.

IMHO, this would be much more informative than "X bazillion Americans died of Y" type figures, which really belong in health promotion pamphlets rather than NPOV encyclopaediae.

IMHO, the long list of constituent compounds are, at best, of dubious value. That tobacco smoke contains N-Nitrosomethylethylamine seems a rather useless piece of information unless one knows something about N-Nitrosomethylethylamine. I would suggest that if one does, one already knows that it is a constituent of tobacco smoke since there appears to be no other reason for knowing what N-Nitrosomethylethylamine is.

IIRC, the US-EPA's (admittedly somewhat controversial) original ETS study states that the relative risk of lung cancer (spousal ETS exposure) is 1.19. Lung cancer RRs for pack-a-day smoking are between 13 and 20 (IIRC). If memory serves, the IARC report came in a little lower for ETS and lung cancer, about 1.17 or thereabouts. I read recently that the unconfounded baseline risk of lung cancer is about 1:10,000, making the risk for a pack-a-day smoker 1:600 or so (which seems low to me). It would be nice to have references to primary sources for this kind of information and data for CPOD and IHD/MI to remove the doubt.

Apologies to the statisticians for cruelty to numbers!

EmmetCaulfield 01:59, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nilges edits
Edward G. Nilges, who can't quit nicotine, but continues to try, has added humanistic information to the section Effects on Smokers. Have at it. My uid is spinoza1111 and my email is spinoza1111@yahoo.com

5-20-2005: added information with NPOV to section on moral aspects from David Krogh's book

Took out 9/11 reference
I took out the reference to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the sentence that previously read as follows (deleted passage highlighted with italics):
 * But to the extent that since this era, metropolitan and developed countries had (until September 11, 2001) almost complete immunity from the immediacy of wartime conditions, smoking has probably fulfilled less of a socially necessary function in metropolitan societies...while in marginalized war zones it continues to enjoy positive approval.

I think the reference to 9/11 makes two assumptions that are POV: (1) It assumes "metropolitan and developed countries" enjoyed almost complete immunity from wartime conditions prior to 9/11. This may have been true for the U.S., but it wasn't necessarily true in Israel, Beirut or for that matter parts of Europe. (2) It assumes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a moment of such significance that they have put the entire "metropolitan and developed" world into a daily state of warlike "immediacy." This isn't true even in the United States or New York City where the 9/11 attacks occurred. Heinous as 9/11 was, the attacks were dealt with and life on the streets of New York today goes on pretty much the same as before. There was much more of a feeling of "the immediacy of wartime conditions" in Beirut in the 1980s than there is in New York City or Washington, DC today.

As a general observation, I think the article in its current state devotes too much space to a discussion of David Krogh's book and his ideas about tobacco as a tool for social pacification. Krogh's ideas are interesting and may well be valid, but I don't see them being widely echoed in the peer-reviewed scientific literature or even in nonscientific media discussions of tobacco. Right now the discussion of Krogh's ideas gets six paragraphs in this article, which is too much in my view. If we're going to give that much space just to Krogh, then we'd probably need to give about 20 paragraphs just to Stanton Glantz, a medical professor and anti-tobacco crusader who has written numerous books and peer-reviewed articles in medical journals. And then once we've added Glantz, there are dozens if not hundreds of other writers and researchers who would also need to be added.

--Sheldon Rampton 07:37, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Lights versus Regular cigarettes
The article noted that cigarettes are tested by machines which determine the ammount tar present in a cigarette. The article correctly noted that, when smoked by persons as opposed to the machine, the level of tar is the same regardless of what the machine's analysis. I removed a portion which speculated that a smoker unconsciously smokes in a manner that gives him/her the nicotine used to. I have never heard nor read anything which confirms this. In fact, to the contrary, I have read that the reason for this discrepancy is because of small holes put in the filter, which, when left uncovered, mix fresh air with the smoke and thus lower both the nicotine and tar. When used in the machine, these holes work as designed, but when smoked by a person, the fingers usually cover up these holes (as a longtime smoker, I can vouch for the holes, which appear as perforation on light and ultra-light cigarettes). I did not include this information in the actual article simply because I do not have any source that can verify this at hand (though were I to allot the appropriate time to research, I'm sure I could come up with something).