The next time that you are out and about, notice how many smokers you see. You will find them in their cars, walking down city streets, huddled outside businesses, etc. With tens of millions of smokers in the United States, smoking is ubiquitous.

Despite how common smoking is today, you can easily imagine this scene in 2050

    Grandkid I saw a really old movie today, and the people in this movie were lighting these white sticks and then sucking smoke out of them. What in the world was going on there???

    You Oh… We used to call that “smoking”. The white sticks were called “cigarettes.”

    Grandkid You mean lots of people did this?

    You Yes, sure, millions and millions of people. There was once a time when half the people in the United States smoked.

    Grandkid You must be kidding!

    You I am not. It was a very big deal for hundreds of years.

    Grandkid So what was the deal?

    You It used to be that the only way to get nicotine was from a cigarette. You would light the cigarette with a match and then inhale the smoke…

    Grandkid No! People sucked smoke into their lungs on purpose???

    You Millions and millions of people.

    Grandkid Didn’t they get sick?

    You Millions and millions of people got cancer and emphysema, yes.

    Grandkid Didn’t all these cigarettes cause lots of fires?

    You Yes, they did…

When you think about sad technologies, there are few that are sadder than cigarettes. Cigarettes should probably be the SadTech poster child.

Think about what a cigarette is it is a drug delivery mechanism (DDM). The drug that cigarettes deliver is nicotine. As a DDM, cigarettes are pathetic because

  1. The cigarette mixes the drug with smoke, and the smoke causes huge health problems.
  2. The person using the DDM is not the only one who receives the drug. Secondhand smoke also causes health problems.
  3. A lit cigarette has a tendency to cause accidental fires. This article points out that cigarettes are, “the leading cause of fatal fires in the U.S., causing one of every four fire deaths.”

Considering these problems, it is interesting that the use of cigarettes as a DDM is still allowed. There are plenty of other ways to deliver nicotine, including gum, patches and even water. They all deliver nicotine without any of the health problems or the fire problems.

The other thing about these alternative DDMs is that they are invisible. If you are wearing a nicotine patch or chewing nicotine gum, no one knows that you are doing it. Because cigarettes are so obvious, they tend to advertise themselves.

You have to believe that, sometime between now and 2050, there will be enough common sense in the country to ban cigarettes. At that point, all the smokers will simply switch over to other delivery mechanisms to get their nicotine. The transition should be very easy, and all the health and safety problems with cigarettes will be gone for good.

Cigarettes vs. e-cigarettes: which is less environmentally harmful? – news watch

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For Jon who says “You completely ignore getting to a smokefree society” and
Lisa who says “Why should bystanders have to choose the lesser of two evils when we can have no evil at all ?

WHAT DREAMERS!!

Until we get to a completely electrical society, furnished entirely by clean alternative energy sources this Utopia that you describe, can NEVER be realized!

Every breath that a person takes, contains the VERY SAME toxic chemicals that are found in cigarette smoke This material is pumped in some instances, BY THE TONS into the air, every day.

The Goverment and “so call HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS” would better spend their resources, trying to combat this isssue, but it can’t be stopped because the world runs on “Combustable energy”

For electricman who posted this link

This article is a farce it says absolutely nothing only a lot of maybe’s, possibly’s, could be’s, and other nothingness it appears to be published by the American Lung Association, who gets MAJOR funding from the pharmaceutical companies who make the “Stop Smoking” products that they tout on their website as the Only “Approved” way to quit smoking. See any conflicts of interest here????
They give NO LINK or information for the so called “Study” and it goes against YEARS of studies that show NO HARM from nicotine

For all who quote the worn out figures of “19% of the population dies from smoking” or “440,000 a year, die from smoking” (this figture equals approx. 18% of the population) Have you ever stopped to think that approx. 21 percent of the population (from around 2000 til now) smoke??? Let’s see 21 percent of the population smokes and 18% to 19% of the population die from smoking sounds almost proportional to me I say almost, but in detail, it means that the smoking population actually slightly outlives their non smoking counterparts.

For all who would say “well OK but smokers die miserable deaths” or “smokers have more chronic problems befor they die” this Surgeon Generals report, says differently looking at the figures, you will see that those who smoke a half pack or less a day actually have LESS chronic problems than non smokers do and those who smoke a pack a day have about the same (in some cases only SLIGHTLY MORE) chronic problems than non smokers do. It is only when you get above a pack a day, that th problems start No wonder it’s not published with all the rest of the Surgeon Generals’ reports!!!

We have been “hoodwinked” on the whole “Smoking/SHS” issue and this is the ONLY reason that electronic cigaretts exist.

With that said E Cigs have been instrumental in getting “Litterally” Millions of people to quit smoking, world wide because of that these people have become healthier and happier people aqnd have been able to move from the “Sub Class Smoker” to the position of “Normalcy” that they once held. They now don’t have to pay twice the taxes that “Normal” people do They now can get insurance, at the same price “Normal” people do, They now don’t have to live with the threat of children taken away, They can socialize like “Normal” people, Etc., Etc.

Whether they are better for the invironment, than cigarettes I can’t say for sure But for people thay are a “Win/Win”