Healthy Smoking Advocated (No, NOT from the Onion)

[panzerfaust]

From the Indonesian "paper of record" the Jakarta Post in discussing President Obama's anticipated visit, and the misfortune that the President's wife and doctor are concerned about his smoking:

...There is currently important work going on in Indonesia, which indicates a difference between good and bad smoking. A history of tobacco also points to this distinction and it’s important to know and quickly clarify in Indonesia just what this is and then point it out to the rest of the world...

The main reason for supporting the pro smoking lobby really has little to do with employment or revenue, that’s a bonus. The real argument is here in Indonesia some quite remarkable Indonesian scientists and doctors have discovered that cigarette smoking can, with specially treated cigarettes, significantly assist people’s health and has the potential to cut health costs around the globe.

This work has been going on quietly and unaided for some years and the reason I write today is because I am one of many that have benefited from this remarkable Indonesian discovery....

... {the healing power of tobacco} was part of the wisdom lost in ... oral traditions that existed before the written word. Unfortunately most of that knowledge disappeared with the death of so many indigenous peoples and their languages as a result of European Colonization...

This has it all: A few brave, unfunded, independent Indonesian scientists standing up with truth against the mistakes and lies of the vast monolithic conspiracy of mainstream European science which has suppressed the Ancient Knowledge of the healing powers of a natural curative plant.

So strange to hear this defense of tobacco abuse in 2010, though, perhaps coincidentally, the Indonesian government is heavily invested in tobacco farming, and virtually everyone in Indonesia smokes.

I wonder how they feel about Global Warming?

[RainDog]

1. "specially-treated cigarettes" what's that?

do you have a link to the work from the scientists?

I don't care if someone smokes cigarettes or not. But I don't see how this article has anything to say about studies of tobacco smoke.

So, before you start making big claims, you should have something more than a casual mention to some work. did you read the work to see what it says?

Otherwise, you have to join the olympic jumping to conclusions team.

[panzerfaust]

3. and to what conclusions would I be jumping?

That the evidence for the health benefits of tobacco have - almost totally - been illusionary(*), but that this fact did not stop the tobacco industry from promoting cigarettes as having such benefit (go to a library, and look through the magazines at the cigarette ads from the 20's, 30's, 40's) and from subsequently waging a decades-long policy of distortion and lies to prevent the demonstrated health risks from being known?

Sorry, simply do not get your point.

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(*) as far as I know the only health benefit clearly demonstrated to smoking is that a current smoker is slightly less likely to have nausea or vomiting after surgery (but also has a higher risk of infection) than is a non-smoker; and that there are suggestive studies that dementia might - might - be less likely in a smoker.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. smoking probably does "cut health care costs around the globe"

It is also a great contributor to the solvency of social security

[Warpy]

5. It cuts them by killing people off from heart disease

before they become frail elderly.

It also contributes to the number of frail elderly through emphysema.

[Warpy]

4. Ceremonial smoking like some of the tribes did

is the closest you're going to come to anything healthy with that particular drug. Lighting one butt after another all day long is not healthy and can't be made so. The constant rise and fall in nicotine levels in the body plays hell with the cardiovascular system and that plays hell with all organ systems, especially the heart. The ceremonial use prevented dependence by relegating it to special occasions when the illusion of mental clarity nicotine provides was important. That's the wisdom that's been lost right there: rare use instead of trying to maintain nicotine levels at all times.

Smokers need to face the fact that inhaling concentrated smoke into the lungs is a noxious thing to do to one's body, whether that smoke comes from pot or tobacco or any other substance. Calling it "healthful" in any regard is to engage in the same doubletalk all addicts use to justify their behavior.

[Schema Thing]

6. Well, a recent study did find some benefit

I think wrt Alzheimer's (?) (I'm too stricken with it to remember)


Not that it in any measure outweighs the harm; but I did find it funny and sort of common sense (drugs ALL have more than one effect).

[Blue Owl]

7. Either you don't smoke or you're addicted to 2 packs a day

Or such is the way most people frame the culture of smoking these days.

There is a big difference between occasional/ceremonial tobacco leaf smoking, and chain-sucking the chemically-laden cancer sticks they call today's "cigarettes".