Organic Cigarettes???
So, we finally sat down to look over our Newsweek magazine that arrived almost a week ago in the mail. In the tradition of my mother, nobody opens a magazine in my family without first flipping through and tearing out all of the inserts. One of them in this Newsweek was especially large.
This large flyer was advertising organic cigarettes. Now, let me ask you…if someone is intentionally putting a carcinogen into his body on a regular basis, is it likely that he wants that carcinogen to be organic?? Apparently so, or there wouldn’t be a market, right?
Although these cigarettes claim to be made with 100% certified organic tobacco and additive-free tobacco, there, plastered in large letters is the statement, “No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette.”
I guess it goes to show that organic is trendy, even with the not-so-health-conscious crowd.
Posted in Current Events, Healthy Living
September 8th, 2006 at 5:26 am
That is funny!
September 8th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
I would like to point out that the “carcinogens” in cigarettes are a by product of the manufacturing process (mainstream brands). Tobacco, in it’s natural state, used for millenia among indigenous populations the world over, has NEVER caused “cancer” (dis-ease of civilization) amongst the populations who use it in it’s natural form. It is the processing that causes it (over 100 toxic chemicals are used - nicotine is extracted from the tobacco(through the use of chemicals), and then reapplied to the leaf(with chemicals used as binders).
Also, Nicotine in and of itself, is a valuable chemical to cognitive function. There was a side by side study done with other “drugs”, ie caffine, ephedrine, and other similars testing the ability to help one study (boost brain power). Nicotine is the ONLY one to have IMPROVED cognitive ability. The others just made one awake and/or ‘wired’.
If you are going to have an opinion, it only “counts” when it is ‘informed’. Please do some research to prove to yourself what you ‘believe’, as the truth is truly stranger than fiction.
Informed
September 9th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Dear Informed,
Thank you for your anonymous comment with a bogus email address. I’m not sure I follow your argument or why you are assuming that I am uninformed. Are you saying that these organic cigarettes are not carcinogenic because they are processed differently? The large statement on the ad (and I assume on the box) seem to assert the opposite. Are you just trying to make an argument in favor of nicotine? If so, you might notice that I didn’t even use the word in my post. Cigarette smoking leads to illness. Asthma. Lung cancer. And not just for the smoker. That is informed research for you. Are you asserting that if someone smokes organic cigarettes, they will not face the risk of lung cancer? And those around them will not have elevated instances of asthma? It seems to me that organic cigarettes are too new on the market for you to know that.
September 21st, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Organic cigarettes? How about breathing in smoke from a forest fire? That’s pretty organic! LOL
February 25th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I’m confused. Chewmon, are you saying that there are still some carcinogens in organic tobacoo?
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 am
In response to your blog on organic tobacco. I have been a smoker for a number of years now. I was smoking newports for a few years and camels. After waking up day after day coughing up nasty stuff and having diffculty breathing I made the switch to organic tobacco. Now I know it says on the box that no additives doesn’t mean a safer cigarette, but I think it’s safe to say that it is safer. So you are telling me that smoking a cigarette laden with chemicals such as CYANIDE and a plethora of man-made unnatural filler is just as bad as smoking a cigarette with nothing but pure organic tobacco. The organic tobacco was also not sprayed with man-made pesticides which are laden with a boat load of things that are terrible for you. I know for a fact that organic tobacco is better for you, I have my health to show for that. I know it is not good for you, but I really feel much better now. Also I have to disagree with you saying that organic is trendy, I have switched to nothing but natural and organic products now for around 6 months. You couldn’t pay me to eat anything artificial anymore, once you go organic for more than a week, there is no turning back. It lets you see how deprived you have been of flavor and overall sense of good health
June 16th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
I have to agree with Donald, who on May 3rd commented about organic verses regular cigaretts. I quit smoking for 14 years and unfortunately started smoking a year ago. After just three months of smoking, i was coughing like i was smoking 2 packs a day - i smoke 5 cigarettes a day. I switched two months ago to organic, additive free cigarettes and within 1 week I stopped coughing. Yes, I do agree that it is harmful, but if I have to pick the lesser evil of the two, hand down it’s organic, chemical free for me!
January 9th, 2008 at 2:49 am
informed was a bit over the top. but a few things were right.
an important misunderstanding here is carcinogens. these are not something that happen when we do bad things, they happen almost any time we do anything. cooking using any type of heating element will produce a carcinogenic effect, this is actually most common when cooking vegetables, as the tar in cigarettes is a natural product of plants, and is found in every plant we eat.
the studies regarding linking cancer to various things have been long and often times puzzling; following studies on cigarette links to cancers have been at times perplexing and frustrating. what we have discovered is that cancers associated to smoking occur in a randomized fashion, with the major trademark being a genetic (i.e. hereditary) requirement to be prone. there are documented genetics in some families that actually give them an immunity to very specific forms of cancer.
we can certainly link cancer to carcinogens… but this is not helpful. great examples of recent study results: increased risk of stomach cancer from using any form of charbroil, deep frying, or open flame cooking. increased risk of oral cancer from toasted breads. increased risk from sauted vegetables. increased risk from use of wood burning stoves and fireplaces, gas flamed furnaces and water heaters.. etc.
people often reference an old chart, that charts the specific increase of cigarette tobacco use in america and the rise of cancer. what they rarely explain is that cancer rates (in cancers related to smoking) have been dropping faster then the rate of people quitting.
what the chart doesnt tell you is tobacco smoking is centuries older then the chart documents, it is an ancient past time of the native americans, india, and the middle east. it has bene practiced in europe for at least three centuries. what the chart actually charts, is the impact of industrial pollutants (industrial revolution) on cancer rates.
remember the ionic breeze ‘air purifier’? all those ionic toys? yeah, they arent too popular anymore after they were linked to autoimmune disorders of the lungs, specifically causing asthma, increased bronchitis infections, etc.
the most recent cigarette focused tobacco & cancer study found a new result: of cases that can be casually (not causative, there is not 1 case of officially recognized cancer from cigarette smoking *only*, world wide.) linked to tobacco, 60% of them were in people who quit smoking before they developed cancer.
nicotine has, additionally, nothing to do with cancer, and is infact as a natural additive, safer for humans than caffiene. don’t believe me? ask a botanist about all the other plants you eat with nicotine in them, most noteably, tomatos.
and yes, the email address is real
April 1st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Ok people, here’s an informed response.
I’ve been in the radiation business for a long time. I work at Los Alamos National Labs and came across this blog trying to find some organic tobacco to use in a research project on radiation and tobacco (not that anyone will believe me, but I don’t smoke). Here’s the problem. The radioactivity in cigarettes does, in fact, come from the tobacco itself and consequently, the nicotine. Polonium 210, an alpha emitter, is absorbed by the roots and sticks to the leaves. Tobacco leaves have a “sticky” quality that attracts Polonium. Polonium is found naturally in small quanities in the dirt, and is present in foods, but it is also found in ferilizer.
Now, in most foods where you find Polonium, the Polonium just goes through your digestive tract, it doesn’t do much damage, and you also urinate it out. (Smokers have more Polonium in their urine than non smokers about 10 times over) But when you inhale it, it goes to your lungs, and it happens to be attracted to the places where your lungs branch. But there is no way for the alpha particle to leave your body like there is in the digestive tract. Thus goes “informed”’s tomato arguement.
There are three types of radiation: alpha, gamma, and neutron. Gammas are the stuff that comes out of the sun - you know you have small bout of radiation poisoning when you are in the sun too long, we call it a sunburn. Gammas go right through the body. Gamma radiation is also found in cigarettes, but they go right through the body and not much happens. Alphas are these huge particles (on a molecular scale at least) that are usually repelled by dead skin.
So when you smoke tobacco, you have all this Polonium beating around your lungs giving off radiation with no escape. Sure, the organic stuff has less of it, but it’s there. And it’s there no matter what you smoke. And it can stick around for a while and cause a lot of lasting damage. Thus goes “informed”’s arguement about people getting cancers after they quit smoking.
Now, “informed” (and I use that moniker lightly) might point out that there had never, since 1964, been conclusive evidence to “prove” that it’s the Polonium that causes health problems. This is true, but mostly because of the lack of study design. We are not allowed to take measurements of lungs from people who have never smoked and tell them to start smoking (something about ethics…) nor have we figured out how to get lab rats to smoke, and it’s the mechanism of actually smoking that we need to look at to make the determination. Someone tried to get lab chimps to smoke, but it didn’t work out for some reason.
And “informed” reasons that because people have been doing it for centuries, and that is simply false. People have done a lot of things for years and it turned out to be harmful. The Romans put lead in their wine to bring out the taste. Oops. People leached for almost a thousand years when they were sick, and people died from blood loss. Women died from sepsis in childbirth because people assisting them didn’t wash their hands.
“Informed” - just because you have a fact or two doesn’t mean that you have an argument of value. Facts have to be intpreted as a whole, not just out of context, which is clearly what you are doing to justify your smoking habits.
Just say you like to smoke and leave the science to the scientists.
And yes, I did used to smoke myself, so don’t get all “you don’t know what you are talking about”. I learned all the facts, and decided it just wasn’t worth the risk - organic or not.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I made a mistake - I admit it. Tony made the arguements as well as informed. But both of you are still not correct.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
So are you saying they make a nicotene free cigarette? I am not a smoker anymore but if I was a smoker I would choose a nicotene free organic cigarette before I would choose a cigarette with nicotene cigarette.
INFORMED said that nicotene improves cognitive thinking????? What???? If so why aren’t they useing nicotene on mentally challanged people. I think informed is actually misinformed……… Never heard of that!
June 29th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
To Stephanie.
I’m not doctor, not in the least bit, but on your comment against Informed, just because it “improves” cognitive thinking doesn’t mean it’d cure any sort of disease or disorder.
Not all mental illnesses affect your brain in a way that it affects your ability to think cognitively. Plus, your brain is an amazing organ and uses different parts to effect how you work.
The nicotine may affect one area, but a disease or disorder may attack multiple making the nicotine have little to no effect.
Plus, if you think about the severity of certain mental illnesses, you’d have to have a very high level of nicotine to have any effect.
I may not have direct facts on this, but this is just was common sense says to me.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
In response to Informed’s statement about nicotines purported mental cognitive enhancement, it nicotine’s metabolic byproduct, cotinine, that is responsible for this. Cotinine is also useful for testing of someone has had nicotine in their system. In addition, tobacco traditionally was not inhaled as are modern cigarettes.
January 5th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
My American spirits have 75 pct more tobaco in there king size ausomeness than your puny average ones. Im allso a prety big, not fat, person. I cant find one person or case of any person/s that smoke organic tobaco, and conciously keep away from cancer causign agents. People who smoke organic and avoid cancer dont get cancer as far as i can tell.
If you can point me to the study where organic tobaco is smoked in 10 cigarettes a day or less and the results are for peopel that never smoked non organic tobaco(smoking regular kind coudl of left you with cancer still growing, as cancer is caused by damaged calls that dont get cleaned out)and not show till a random like time later.
Then i will tell you how amazed i am and quit instantly. But theres a few conditions.
The study has to be on “more than one”lol , person and not by crusty the clown with a internet colledge degree.
Then they should smoke marijuanas with a vaporizer and allow some natuaral elements to loosen the tar and flem in there lungs, reducing greatly the effect of tobaco smoking, my alowing you to caugh up the tar and phlemb and helping your cellia(in the long periods of not smokinng in between sesions).
And if you can smoke weed(that you know is organic Oo) , with a vaporizer in small amounts with long periods of time in between, well keeping away form dryers- refidgeseses adn freezers and microwaves and telephpone poles and every thinng else, send me a plane ticket to madigascar i want to come too.
Other wisdom would be full organic diet, and the facts of evil you can find on the FDA’s own website such as a real example, -that when a grain is listed in ingrediants as enriched well folowed by vitamins names,in parenthsis, that those vitamins are actualy depleted usualy by a chmical process for the purpose of making vitamins,either way.. depleted by at minumum of 20 pct- thats what enriched means, those vitamins are gone,. Only when listed as an ingrediant by weghts there by usualy at the botom of the list, are they added. Any sellers of anything any oe ingest also can call all there buddys or meet them in secret and agree on usuing a new unsafe ingrediant and not listing it on the label as well, because the law states that if the majority of the producers of a product agree that the unlisted ingrediant is commonly known between the majority of makers than it does not have to be listed. This is a real law.
One of the reasons mayonaise filled with lard fat no longer usualy has lard on the label,and lead you to think 1/12 of a whiped egg with lemon juice amounts to your 32 grams of fat per table spoon or w/e it is. Proble causing brain damage internaly from the thought process that is broken on a dialy basis by the non sensable terminlology ad implications given by the FDA and powers that be{American Institute of[insert name here])
Ya but people that switch to organic are are wasting there time. Not you mine.
March 8th, 2009 at 3:02 am
I would like to begin with a quote, every generalization is wrong including this one. Statistics are misleading and should not be used as evidence toward making further predictions but that is not to say that the results of such studies should be ignored. I have smoked on and off for about 4 years now and i personally believe i am more addicted to smoking than i am to cigarettes. In my opinion, the first question that needs to be answered is- what exactly does organic mean on a pack of cigarettes. If the answer to that question is that the tobacco is not bathed in chemicals (ones UNECESSARY to the process after harvesting the tobacco, if there are any that are necessary) I would have just as much a problem smoking it than i would marijuana, i habitually smoke marijuan and enjoy it to the extent that I am prepared to deal with the consequences and i apply the same discretion toward organic cigarettes if they are defined the way i previously suggested.
The overall message I am trying to portray is that by smoking you are statistically taking on a risk, but if you decide to assume this risk you will be safer with the naturally occurring God made product.
First and foremost we have to clearly define organic, in reference to cigarrettes. If it is as natural as the title would have you presume. There is a serious, rediculous, malice, problem with the concept of commercial unorganic tobacco.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
you want to make an informed decision on Smoking, read the book,The Health Benefits of Tobacco: A Smoker’s Paradox
By Dr. William Douglass . Personally I have smoked for 35 years and my opinion is that its one of the worst drug addictions facing the world today. I fear to say that I am a nicotine “addict” the best thing that could ever happen to me is if cigarettes were outlawed. Regardless of the benefits or dangers of smoking, millions of us are “hooked to a habit that has been compared to the psychological addiction of crystal meth. I love my smokes and will fight for my right to smoke, but please god I beg you… outlaw this nightmare before its too late.
My only real concern about this blog is a woman hiding the world from her kids by tearing out the pages of magazines. Man are they in for a major letdown. I would think it would be better to ease them into the horrid society we have, rather than let them grow up and be plunged into it all at once.(whoa, talk about major bad head trip trip). some one’s gonna need counseling. and yeah i know my spelling and punctuation sucks… get over it. thank you and god bless jeff
March 28th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I smoke organic tobacco not for the health of my body, but for the health of the soil. Buy buying conventional cigs we support the practice of poisoning the earth, and financial contribute to major chemical companies. Buying organic smokes supports farms who are just growing greens. I grow my own, its easier than you think. Nicotiana tabacum seed, its easy to find online.
Those studies (Julien talks about it in his fantastic book which I recommend to all of you ‘A Primer to drug action’) showed that nicotine improved memory retention and improved focus (which are not unrelated) Think about that crowd of people outside of a school smoking before a test. SMART!
peas and love
April 28th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Maybe it’s good for society to have a few of its members soak up as much of that natural polonium 210 as they can from their Natural American Spirits and leave it in their system until they die. And then take it to the grave with themselves so that the rest of us can enjoy life without it.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:42 am
The only person on here with any sort of logic in their head is objective-not subjective. This is just a battle between smokers and non-smokers. If it grows from the earth, it’s probably ok.
I can tell you from personal experience, Organic tobacco is ok in moderation, not by fact, but by logic. If you want to compare it to all of the stuff we all eat everyday. If you eat fast food, I can tell you, smoking isn’t what will take you out first.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
The evidence is there. It’s really hard to deny it. All arguments for cigarettes are justification for the fact that they enjoy or are addicted to cigarettes. There is no such thing as healthier or not healthier. A cigarette goes into your mouth, the nicotine makes your brain feel good, and then you “want” (need) more. Just admit you’re addicted if you want to keep it up. “Good in moderation?” Don’t bullshit yourself. C’mon.
I just recently tried smoking because I was curious. Despite my strong convictions against allowing a corporation make a lifetime customer out of me, I did it anyway. Big mistake. Then I started saying “It’s okay once in a while,” or “It’s okay socially.”
I finally bought my own pack. I took the pack and I threw it onto the roof of the apartment next to us. Now I’m trying to create a device with duct tape to get it back.
Smokers, stop the bullshit. I have tried a cigarette and understand why one would enjoy it, however, there is no justification for it’s usage.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Smoking tobacco whether organic or not is unhealthy. The smoke contains numerous carcinogens both radioactive and non. In addition to cancer and respiratory problems smoking has an undesirable effect on the cardiovascular system. So if you have high blood pressure or a heart condition it’d be a good idea to quit, as smoking will increase your chances of a heart attack or stroke.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I have been a smoker for most of my life ( I started when working in the tobacco fields of S.C. as a child to make extra money) and really did not even think what it was doing to me until about 10 years ago when I was poisoned by an exterminator. He gave me a chemical that was supposed to be used by as professional with a special suit on and I almost died. I went organic with all of my food and cosmetics. I did still smoke but as instructed not to over indulge in any vice (drinking, desert, smoking and so on). I found the organic American Sprits and started using them (I probably smoke 5 a day) I could have never cut down to this with commercial tobacco. And the other people on her talking about the food and other contaminates in our society are absolutely right as corporations are all playing the same game as the tobacco companies did - think about profit and not about the customer. Cheat and fool them with the propaganda and commercials - no I do not think smoking is the worst thing I can do - I do not think drinking is that great either (but at least I know I will not kill some unsuspecting family while drunk in a car by smoking). I also know that by smoking organic that my second hand smoke will not put over 100 bad chemicals into the air to hurt others. My sister has asthma (really bad) and she could not be around me even after I had smoked. The smoke in my clothes gave her a reaction. Now she has no problem with me smoking in the house and does not have a reaction at all. Burning wax candles can put hundreds of chemicals into the air, spraying those chemical air fresheners can too. What I’m saying is that we need to find out what we are buying and who is doing the studies. We all have bad habits that effect others. We are human. And personally I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is perfect. I love my friends that have a few drinks, I love my family that is way over weight because they eat horrible fried food and they love me with my 5 cigarette a day (sometimes more most times less). I really love to sit down after a day of horrible news on how the government is taking away all of our freedoms and working to make money to pay their ridiculous taxes and have a smoothie and a cigarette (yes a safer not perfect cigarette). Just a normal person!!!!
February 4th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Some sources (like the National Institute of Health training site: http://drs.ors.od.nih.gov/training/sectionf.htm ) suggest that a regular daily smoker is exposed to 16,000 mrems of radation per year, which is the equivalent of getting 2,000 chest X-rays every year.
They don’t call cigarettes ‘coffin nails’ for nothing!