Talking about nicotine and cigarette rules in 2020 and not mentioning e-cigs/vaping seems like it's missing a major part of the puzzle.
The article, for example, notes with a link that only 6% of high school students have smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days, and that that's way down from what it used to be. But follow the link and that statistic is 27% for e-cigs.
It's really depressing how that's arisen to fill the void of what had been a longtime positive trend.
But to augment the OP then, is the quick fix to just ban nicotine altogether? Or is that a can of worms?
Basically nobody will willingly buy the low-nicotine things like True because you may as well smoke lawn clippings. Nicotine is a great painkiller, I think this policy would cause a response like prohibition did.
From https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/7/3/281
The value proposed by Benowitz and Henningfield (in which a maximum of 0.17 mg nicotine could be absorbed into the body of the smoker per cigarette) probably represents the highest level that should be considered.
That's about a 90% reduction.
I actually have not paid attention to how harmful e-cigs are. From very quick googling, Cancer risks are much lower, harm seems to depend on how hot the propylene glycol vaporizing element is and the presence of formaldehyde in the vapor, and of course heart trouble if lots of nicotine. So maybe still COPD later in life, heart problems from nicotine, but much much less cancer. IMO not the same health risk at all, certainly not the same public health finance risk. Aggressive position is then that society already has an effective harm-reducing solution. I look forward to being corrected if there's evidence that this is not so.
FWIW, former light smoker here, stopped in 2014, still kind of miss it. Never vaped.
Leaving aside the surreal discussion of menthol, but I sure hope someone else picks that up.
Yeah, if this is equivalent, to smokers, to a ban, then it seems counterproductive.
Keep raising the tax, that's tried and true.
I do have a vague vision of keeping down tobacco-company bad behavior by allowing legal production and sale only via inefficient, separately owned small businesses, maybe co-ops - but I don't see a path to that for now.
There's emerging evidence that nicotine addiction propensity varies a lot from one individual to another, much like alcohol. Unlike alcohol, there's a pretty short list of candidates.
eccentric and interesting:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741107/
nitty gritty:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33144568/
inefficient, separately owned small businesses
Not tobacco, but Oklahoma has gotten interesting:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/27/toke-lahoma-cannabis-market-oklahoma-red-state-weed-legalization-437782
4: e- cigs seemed to be quite acutely dangerous for a while, less because inhaled nicotine is a problem (they make a smoking cessation nicotine inhaler) and more because of the additives. That can be mitigated.
Low: also, tobacco cessation is so important for everyone, but cigarettes ere so meaningful to all of the clients I had with schizophrenia. I believe there's some evidence that it helps with their psychotic symptoms, and that's attributable to the nicotine. As it is, the6 take deeper, longer puffs. That would just get worse if you cut out the nicotine.
Our city council just banned flavored vaping but left unflavored untouched. The vape shops are going to sue, but they'll get what they want faster by having our new red legislature deprive cities of the power to do things like this.
9: I always think about vets with PTSD in that kind of thing, too. There's definitely a point where one's mental health issues are big enough that the self-medicating from cigarettes helps more than it hurts.
I do have a vague vision of keeping down tobacco-company bad behavior by allowing legal production and sale only via inefficient, separately owned small businesses, maybe co-ops - but I don't see a path to that for now.
I was hoping the weed industry would emerge like that, but the powers that be seem to want to shape the market as to benefit Big Dope.
As an on-again/off-again smoker tge option of a low(er) nicotine product sounds great. There's definitely a self-medicating element to the nicotine (ADHD), but sometimes it's just a nice way to take a break for a few minutes. (Yes, I coukd get up and go outside for a few minutes without a cigarette, but what am I going to do? Just stand there and do nothing?)
I've always thought I could have been a champion smoker. I love to fidget. I love short breaks. I love tiny rituals. I love a thing that would substitute for awkward smalltalk. I would have found the appetite-suppressing part enticing.
Fortunately, I've never had a cigarette.
In fact, sometimes in my dreams it's an ancillary fact, not the point of the dream whatsoever, that I'm a smoker. Just the habitual part. There's no good feeling of a nicotine hit washing over me if I light up or anything. It's just a background aspect of life. It's weird, because my parents never smoked, so the only time I lived with smokers was in college.
Now, if it's possible to simply limit the nicotine so it provides some of the same "benefits" and won't force smokers to a new black market, but also won't addict young people as hard or keep as harsh a hold on those trying to quit, that could be worthwhile.
Don't you get into the lite cigarette trap, then, where people supposedly just smoke more cigarettes to reach the level of nicotine satiation?
6
There's emerging evidence that nicotine addiction propensity varies a lot from one individual to another
I'm definitely one of those people with low nicotine addiction propensity. Smoked off and on for about 10 years. Never found it too hard to limit myself to 2 or 3 a day, or to take a month off here and there to make sure I still could. Quit when I was dating someone who was opposed to it. Once or twice when Cassandane and Atossa were traveling without me I thought about buying a pack for old times' sake, but it never seemed worth it.
Re: nicotine harm prevention, maybe if cigarettes were made like they currently are, but they required a prescription? That way schizophrenics and anyone who's currently addicted can get them, but not teenagers with a little stubble.
I'd smoke more if I knew a good place to score bidis.
legal production and sale only via inefficient, separately owned small businesses
This seems deeply tied up with restricting things to local businesses, which I don't really like. Specialty product that happens to be made in another state? Sucks to be you, there isn't even a legitimate way to import.
I'd smoke more if I knew a good place to score bidis.
Bidi bidi bom bom?
21: I wouldn't add that stipulation myself, I envision something more like Etsy, but I agree that the small-only vision often comes along with that kind of localism.
I have an extremely nicotine-addictive personality, and giving up was one of the harder things I have ever done. It'd say it took six months before the cravings subsides and six years before I could tentatively try a rollup once again. I don't miss packet cigarettes at all.
I still exclaim "Christ, I could do with a cigarette!" anything up to half a dozen times a day and it is now thirty years since I smoked seriously. But I have managed to detach the signifier from the signified, so that now I understand that what I want is not the cigarette but the relief of stress and rush of concentration that it brought. And I can smoke maybe five or ten a year without the cravings returning in full strength. Every time, though, I feel the familiar sharpening of awareness and enjoyment of the world that nicotine brings.
So it is obviously a thing to which some people are genetically vulnerable.
Nonsmoker, but the first cigarette I tried, I really enjoyed. I bet I'd be like NW in 24 had I continued. I have had a few friends over the years who took absolute joy in smoking, and although it's a killer habit, I felt like the joy derived balanced out the morbidity/mortality statistics in those cases (yes, as a public health issue, the answer is clear, but I do love seeing people blissfully happy). On one level, I'd love to see the entire industry peddling inhalable nicotine wiped out completely, but on the other hand, with our garbage social safety net and healthcare, it seems kind of cruel to take away a coping strategy.
I am incredibly susceptible to nicotine addiction. I was a longtime smoker, quit when I lived in Morocco* and maintained that until my divorce around 2004 when I started again. Quit again around 2010 and that lasted until about 3 years ago when I started going to bars here and one of my buddies would by a pack, I resisted for a bit, then smoked a few at the bar but left the pack (he would only smoke at the bar and not take it home lest the wife find out). This happened a few times until I took the pack home. First couple of times I threw the remaining cigarettes in the toilet but the third time I started smoking them at home. Then I started buying them myself. Thought to myself the whole time what the hell was I doing. So when I went back to NY for summer leave about 3 years ago I bought some vapes and a ton of refills so I'm still vaping. It's illegal here and difficult to buy and I'm down to a couple of handfuls of refills left which might last me a few weeks so I guess I will be quitting again.
*I had promised my ex I would quit but couldn't. Then I realized the reason why I couldn't is because I didn't want to. Now every Moroccan city and town has a founding saint, and often many more. My ex and I had just moved to Fez so we went to pay our respects to Moulay Idriss, the founding saint of Fez. I said a little prayer at the tomb along the lines of please give me the desire to quit. The next day I came down with the worst bronchitis I've ever had. I think I was able to take a few drags of a cig or two my first day sick. Impossible the following day. When I was better I had effectively quit.
I have never smoked. Since I have asthma and I'm very awkward and absent-minded, I would probably not be alive today if I did. If I somehow survived setting myself on fire, I would probably have died of emphysema a little later.
28: Despite this, I'm apparently attracted to women that smoke. Or maybe women who smoke are attracted to me.
My first wife smoked the whole time we were together. She quit because the man who became her second husband insisted on it.
My current wife is a light smoker. On a typical day she will have her first cigarette around 6-7 pm and then smokes two more before she goes to bed. Is this an unusual pattern? She's done this for the 25+ years I've known her, and the few times she's tried to quit, she would lose her mind.
I have no will-power of any sort, so it's probably just as well that I've never tried to smoke a cigarette.
14: I've always thought I could have been a champion smoker.
Oh, man. I was the champ, for all the reasons you describe. Something like 2.5-3 packs a day. Quit 35 years ago, and still have cigarette dreams every now and then.
(I fell into the trap in 17 -- my multi-pack habit was Merits.)
And may I just say: Smoking is awesome. I still miss it. Nobody should ever quit.
You were a National Merits Scholar your senior year.
Unfogged meetups are essentially the only situations where I've interacted socially with cigarette smokers in my adult life.
I love to fidget. I love short breaks. I love tiny rituals. I love a thing that would substitute for awkward smalltalk.
Me too, I specifically think I would like to smoke a pipe. With an extra little auger thingy for my pocketknife or keychain. Instead I have a fountain pen -- ticks off the costumey nerd `style' box too, sigh.
One of the stronger public interest and public health arguments, it seems to me, is making it harder for people using nicotine to dose everyone near them. Obvs smoking is terrible, but vaping seems worse than I expected (maybe I'm mostly getting additives? But I don't think I want those either. Am I around incompetent vapers? Why is there a cloud anywhere but in their lungs?) Edibles is where it's at, IMO -- does that even work for nicotine?
They have nicotine gum, so it seems like it should work just fine. Ban the carcinogens, keep the nicotine access?
34: I find it incredibly weird and anachronistic that my local circle of friends all smoke socially, to varying degrees. Aside from Jammies and me.
"They were all in love with dying, they were doing it in Texas."
I think inhaling is just a way better drug delivery system than gum. There's a hilarious Big Tobacco internal memo from maybe the 70s or 80s talking about how perfect it is -- the smoker learns to control their nicotine levels precisely to their preference by managing their inhalation. Gum just isn't as good.
I think edibles work better for pot because it's longer lasting, maybe?
I imprinted on Wong Kar Wai movies, so I can't help it, I'll never not find cigarettes kind of sexy. Also, if I learn that someone is a smoker I find that I immediately like them more. My lizard brain is a victim of 20th c. Big Tobacco marketing.
I met M at a party at school, when both of us were taking a smoking break. (How do people take breaks from parties these days?) We were both long-term, low-level, not really addicted smokers -- I smoked anywhere from 2-3 cigarettes/week to 1-2 cigarettes/day for about 15-20 years, he smoked a bit more, for a bit longer. I didn't ever consciously quit, it's just that the opportunity to smoke arose less and less often as my friends quit, and then once you get out of the habit the smell starts to bother you. Also, at my old job, my office had a lovely balcony that looked directly into the branches of an enormous oak tree; I took a lot of breaks. I left that job for my current one, where the office building shares a parking lot with a methadone clinic.
I guess plug tobacco is technically an edible. Did bearded hipsters bring it back, or is the jaw cancer just too awful?
I only noticed recently that "smoking" is a warning-tag on Netflix, so I suppose I could filter it out.
Clearly it should be illegal to watch Wong Kar-Wai below a certain age, as well. I didn't even remember that his characters smoke a lot.
40: I also imprinted on smoking being sexy. Sigh.
Somebody imprinted on car accidents being sexy, which is more dangerous.
That was a J. G. Ballard novel, IIRC. And movie?
I can't keep track of what is fiction anymore.
Is sexiness of smoking a GenX/Millennial distinction?
45.last: Yes. Crash (not the bad Oscar-wining one, though). It is a pretty creepy pic. With James Spader well cast. Trailer.