I am not a smoker. Never have been, never will. But if for some godforsaken reason I was forced to start, you can bet I'd stay away from the Marlboro man and his ilk. There are organic, natural products available the average smoker isn't aware of - products that will take far longer to rot your lungs out. In the United States, there are up to 409 chemical additives used in commercial cigarettes, including formeldihide. In the Europeon Union, over 600. What I find intersting is that prior to 1970, little if none of these additives were used. Since the advent of chemical additives, lung cancer has done nothing but increase.

Specific additives are used to provide high levels of "free" nicotine, increading the addictive factor. Some additives are toxic or addictive in their own right or in combination. When additives are burned, new products of combustion are formed and these may be toxic or pharmacologically active. In short, your average smoker is just as addicted to the additives as he is to the tobacco itself.

If you're thinking about quitting, it might behoove you to switch over to a natural brand for awhile. Here you can wean yourself off all those horrible additives and your fight to quit will be all the easier. Or maybe you want to keep smoking, and in a free society, you should have that right. Either way, tell the Marlboro man to kiss-off!

Perhaps this natural tabacco might be a good substitute when someone is trying to quit. But the best solution is never starting it from the beginning. Anything that releases CO and/or CO2 as a result of combustion is carcinogen.

Although chemical additives make cigarette addictive to many people, some people are naturally prone to addiction. This is one of the reasons why these chemicals were added--to induce the addictiveness. The biochemistry of certain gene present in the central nervous system, mainly in the brain, craves for these additives when exposed to certain level. So the longer these people exposed to additive chemicals the harder to quit because the body craves it like hunger.

Well, im a smoker, but im not addicted to it, i dont feel the need for smoking, i can stay weeks without touching a cigarette, but i do it when i go with my friends.
Anyway, i heard that those ''natural'' products are as bad for our health as the regular cigarettes, even the chewing tobacco, the smoke its what causes lung diseases and deterior, but yes, what you say about the additived used nowadays on cigarettes is true, those are toxic and has a big inpact in our health.
Natural products may be less dangereous, but generally those products are more expensive, and dont taste as the cigarettes (obvious) and are harder to find, so average smokers dont take care of them.

Anyway i guess i wont be so addicted to tobacco, dont know why but it hasn't never made me feel like having need for it.
Thanks for sharing the information.

I think your comments, BuffaloHELP, really help cement my point. That is, the additives create a stronger dependancy than plain tabacco would on it's own. And as you elude to, it's really all mental in the end. Too bad the industry would study man's biology, then attempt (very sucessfuly) to use man's weakness against him. But then again, that seems to be the modus operandi of big business in general!



It's cool that you're able to smoke every now and then without becoming addicted, but I fear you're in the minority.

I think what bothers me most about the chemical additives is that they trick people into feeling better about the whole smoking thing than they would if it were just pure tobacco. This may be a poor analogy, but I would liken it to Chinese food. Many an American won't bother preparing Chinese food from scratch because it doesn't taste all that good to the western palate. Chinese resturantuers are smart enough to realize this, so they lace their food with a brain altering chemical called, "MSG." Monosodium glutimate tricks the brain into thinking the food tastes good, or better than it actually does. And it's not just Chinese food. My understanding is that this crap is used pervasivly in fast food too. People get "addicted" to the feeling they get while eating out, and wonder why their home-cooked doesn't taste as good. But that's a whole other subject.

My personal opinion about smoking is that it is easy to quit but hard not to start again. I have quit a few times myself and the last time I didn't smoke for two years until I bought a pack of cigarettes at the gas station totally unaware.

I do see the herb cigarettes may be helpful if you want to quit smoking, but nicotine chewing gum or smokeless tobacco is equally as good and more healthier (with a few exceptions regarding the types of the smokeless tobacco you can get in the shop).

It is better to throw away the cigarettes, buy lots of salty pringles and work yourself through the first week by physical training until the body gets used to the lack of nicotine.

This post has been edited by xtender: Jan 12 2007, 12:38 PM

xtender! You may be on to something with the salty pringles. I have to admit they're one of my favorite junk foods. Suprisingly, they're one of the few potato chip brands that don't contain hydrogenated oil (but that's a topic for another time....).

Just to clarify, the tobacco I'm referring to is not an "herb" cigarette, but simply a cigarette as it was meant to be - in it's pure, unadulterated form. There are several brands and that's something folks can look into on their own time. At any rate, a pure tabacco cigarette is a far cry from the chemical ridden garbage most people become addicted to. And it is my belief smokers (and downwinders) would be much better off without the chemicals.

Ironically, you have to pay MORE for a cigarette that doesn not contain these added chemicals. I've always found that fact very curious, and it applies accross the board of ingestible products, not just cigarettes.

Hmm, in Nepal, Tibet and India, you do get chewing tobacco and cigarettes in their pure unadulterated form. These cigarettes (and chewing tobacco) contain only leaf tobacco, and are usually hand-rolled, either by the farmer himself, or by small cottage-industries attached to the land. They even have an outer covering of leaves and not of paper. They are even far CHEAPER than other cigarettes. And I must say they are AS addictive and AS deadly as any other types of cigarettes. My gran-dad died smoking them, which is why I won't touch 'em (learning from elders is a tradition in the east, heh).

Basically, it's the nicotine in the tobacco that's the real addictive substance - it is more addictive that almost any other substance other than hard drugs.

This post has been edited by Yratorm, LightMage: Jan 13 2007, 10:28 PM

That's right. Nicotine is the most addictive substance that can be found in mainstream cigarettes. Nicotine is found in the tobacco plant and is the reason for the popularity of ingesting the tobacco leaves. Funny thing about nicotine is it's really not as addictive by itself as it is along side with other choice poisons, many of them addictive too, which are commonly added to commercial cigarettes. Some cigarettes are "stepped on" so heavily with additives there's hardly any tobacco left, thus little nicotine, so the makers have to actually add nicotine to make sure they're still addictive as hell as well as deadly poisons. I, personally, smoke cigarettes that contain more nicotine than most any other brand for two reasons: First, they're American Spirits Medium and they've got more tobacco crammed in those paper tubes than other cigarettes and since tobacco is the main (in this case the only) source of nicotine, it follows that this brand would contain more. Second, since they've got one ingredient, all natural 100% Virginia tobacco (and paper compromising the tube and filter) and nothing else, there's more room for good old-fashioned nicotine.

How many packs a day, you might be wondering, does Watermonkey smoke? Well, I actually don't go through a pack a day. Alright, how many packs a week does he smoke, you might be wondering... Actually I really don't smoke that quantity either. Well, how many cigarettes does he smoke in a month? I average between 30 and 35 cigarettes a month when I'm unemployed, which I've been since October. When I was employed, I was going through a pack or more a week. I currently smoke one cigarette at night before bed each day with the occasional mid-day smoke. In January, I smoked two cigarettes a day three days. The other days were one-cigarette days. I've grown use to this routine. Am I addicted? No. I am not. I believe I was once addicted when I was smoking Camels in my early 20's, but I over-consumed those and had to quit. A good educational web site regarding mainstream cigarettes can be found here: http://www.quitsmokingsupport.com/whatsinit.htm It's not the worst thing in the world if you do it moderately after becoming informed. Know that many corporations really don't care about your health, but some smaller ones do. Common sense applies here as it always does. If you know there are "natural" cigarettes that contain one ingredient, it should follow that that product will be far less damaging to you then another product that has numerous poisons including cyanide and formaldehyde. It doesn't take a chemist to figure that one out.