Comments show again what a totalitarian topic this is.
If you call this science, you can call scientists scientists who lobbied for tobacco firms, claiming it didnt cause detrimental health effects, claimed the leaded fuel issue wasnt linked to leaded fuel, eugenics proponents or people who used lobotomy and electro shock therapy.

Oh wait, they were.
Keep believing hypocrites. Humans and intelligent, if they cant even learn from history? Dont make me laugh.

Attack the imminent problems, like the hypocrisy in the conflicts in Syria or Libya. Then I am starting to take you seriously. But instead you whine about 0.1 C degrees and let millions of people die to people you elected and which will ultimately backlash to you too.
Just look at this fact: USA supporting ISIS and Al Qaeda through countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel, while also fighting it.
Unbelievable...

And dont tell me me "its not their job". Its everyones job to stop something like that, just like you claim on climate change. Even more so actually!

I had never heard it claimed that cigars pose less/different cancer risks than cigarettes.

Google search provides mixed (as you might expect) results.

Cancer.gov, the Mayo Clinic, and WebMD all seem to suggest that cigar smokers in general tend to have lower rates of lung cancer than cigarette smokers (because they generally don't inhale, which I didn't know), but higher than non-smokers. And they have comparable or possibly higher rates of other cancers (oral, esophageal ... pancreatic) as compared to cigarette smokers.

Several results suggest that there is less data about cigars, results aren't statistically significant, etc. etc. and that they believe that cigars are much safer than cigarettes, if not entirely safe. But frankly, the pages I see (in a cursory search that I don't really have a personal stake in) promoting that view don't seem as ... trustworthy to me as the Mayo Clinic, or Healthcare Triage videos like this one (that list references right in the video).


No holier-than-thou attitude intended. ...Although I can say that I'm personally very glad I never acquired a taste for tobacco products of any kind. And a very low interest in alcohol consumption -- I go months on up to a year+ between drinks of booze without ever missing it. I sometimes avoid social situations because of smoke, which I suppose is a downside. But on the other hand, I'm enough of an introvert that avoiding social situations is probably something I'd be doing anyway... So at the very least I have more money to waste on other things since I'm not a smoker or much of a drinker.

Waving frantically ... 'I'm' the market!

The brand I smoke is made with organic tobacco ... no additives. In addition, the paper has no accelerants to keep the product burning on its own. However, the sin taxes over the years have raised the price per pack to hair raising levels, especially harsh now that I'm on a limited budget, buuuuuttttt [see what I did there?] ... I've always been a conscientious social pariah. I carry my own ashtray and only smoke outdoors [currently in our designated area] even when I owned my own home. For me it's been a stress reliever and a social outlet as it gets me out of the apartment. I'd be a hermit otherwise so I continue to justify the expense.

As for pot my favorite form is ingestion but, with the change in our state marijuana laws last year, I no longer have the option to obtain the products in sufficient dosage [and dependability] that I once was provided. I'm no Betty Crocker so the chemistry of producing accurate and effective efficiency is out of my wheelhouse [plus the process really stinks up the place]. So mostly I vaporize the flower from the most potent Indica money can buy with my PAX 2. No burning of vegetation like smoking.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

Awesome to have real concrete information presented in a way that seems very distinct from what you'd get from sources on the far ends of the spectrum, like High Times or the DEA.

I'm quite surprised that smoking pot seems to carry an increased risk of bronchitis, like tobacco, but apparently NOT lung cancer (unlike tobacco). Are the carcinogens in tobacco cigarettes all from additional ingredients? Could people be growing their own tobacco and rolling their own cigarettes and avoiding one of the biggest health consequences? If so, shouldn't there be a market for tobacco cigarettes without any added ingredients?


I have never smoked pot OR tobacco. A lot of my reasons for avoiding either come down to a hatred of and pretty real sensitivity to / negative reactions to exposure to smoke. Some of my bias against that transfers into bias against pot in general, since smoking it is the default method.

At the same time, it seems ridiculous to me that pot is double-secret schedule 1 illegal while alcohol and tobacco are both perfectly legal. Especially when it seems apparent (although I don't really know what I'm talking about since I've never used it myself) that the intoxicating effects of pot are comparable to but generally LESS dangerous than alcohol, and the negative health consequences of pot are FAR LESS than either alcohol OR tobacco.

Getting real facts and knowledge out there like this video is doing has to have a positive effect on that very questionable policy.

If you wanna quit smoking, buy a proper vaping kit (not the sort they sell at the gas station or likely anything a tobacco company makes), cut down the nicotine level bit by bit over a month or so (but don't let it drag out too long) until you're at about 1 or 2 mg a day. Then stop.

It's pretty easy if you do it right. The vapor makes all the difference. The gum and patches don't work, you need the instant absorption you'll only get through your lungs.

If you don't want to quit smoking, don't.

coffee and cigarettes are my last vice,and i ain't fucking giving them up!

how is that people feel perfectly at ease to just walk up to me,a total stranger,and offer health advice?

"you know those will kill ya,you should quit"

thanks captain obvious.

so i always offer them options,people LOVE options.

cigarettes or heroin i ask them.

which always stops them in their tracks and totally bewilders them,and gives me the silent giggles.

which of course they suggest neither,but i tell them i kicked my heroin addiction,my coke addiction,my painkiller addiction,my sex addiction,my porn addiction,i have plenty of experience with addictions.

"so why not lose the cigarette addiction?"

because i don't want to i reply,as i sip my coffee and take a drag of my cigarette.

and they got nothing,and they know it.

smokers realize that smoking is bad for them.that it will facilitate future health issues and most likely result in an early death.

so when you walk up to a stranger smoking and preach the dangers of smoking.you are not revealing some secret truth that they are not already fully aware of,your intentions may be good and your heart coming from the right place,but it is extremely condescending and patronizing.

and the dangers of second hand smoke have been proven to be totally over-blown.it is just rude of a smoker to be forcing anyone to be in the same air space while they enjoy their addiction.

i do not smoke in someone elses car,or in their home.i don't blow smoke in peoples faces.i go out to smoke on the patio.i try to be respectful.

and when you look at the statistics,fewer and fewer young people are picking up the habit of smoking.for all the tobacco companies whining and crying,it appears education is the very simply answer to address a very nasty habit,and even worse addiction.

so to all you well-inentioned do-gooders out there.please do not waste your time or energy pointing out the obvious to people like me.who will be turning 50 in a few months.save that energy for the young people.

coffee and cigarettes are my last addictions.think i will keep them.

hmmmm....coffee sounds good right about now.

Yeah, they're doing it wrong again. Something they did or just some nebulous culture shift around ~2000 or so seemed to actually work, and it takes about four or five years before you can know whether what you did worked or not. Prior to the 2000 thing, it was scare tactics, which don't work on invincible teenagers. Then they switched to a less dramatic "it's not a big deal, it's okay to chose not to smoke" approach, which I think was the good one.

The real problem (in the US at least) is the 17 and 18 year-old kids smoking, which means the 13-16 year-old kids do it to be like their older peers. If you can break that cycle, even just once, you come as close to solving the problem as you can. But, since there is this lag time between the beginning of the cycle and it coming full circle, the industry assumes it was the most recent ("evil tobacco corporations taking advantage of you") effort that was actually the effective one. I don't think it is. I especially don't think it will work on college-age demographic they're targeting. It's still "The Man" telling them what to do, even if it's a different hand of "The Man."

Imagine the Tobacco industry would start backing weed....

OK, assuming what you say is correct (I'm not taking the time now to check) you have a point, but the stats, even if only 1/2 as bad as it seems, still show there's absolutely no equivalence.

Well, if you ate like that, no wonder you think meat is deadly. Eating like that, it is. Eaten in moderation, meaning <50g of CURED meats, and probably less than 1/3 lb of non cured lean red meats, the conclusion I came to is reasonable....that it's in no way comparable to smoking in it's danger. it's not even comparable if you eat 5 times the studied portion of cured meats, although it is clearly not healthy to do so. I eat < 1/2 lb of steak, on the rare occasions I eat it. I eat 1/2 a chicken breast on a normal day, baked. Because I eat good meat, properly prepared, in moderation, there's little to no statistical increase in danger to my health over eating pure vegetarian.

No sir, your stats are wrong....here's direct from the WHO.....
http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
12. How many cancer cases every year can be attributed to consumption of processed meat and red meat?

According to the most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project, an independent academic research organization, about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat.
Eating red meat has not yet been established as a cause of cancer. However, if the reported associations were proven to be causal, the Global Burden of Disease Project has estimated that diets high in red meat could be responsible for 50 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide.
These numbers contrast with about 1 million cancer deaths per year globally due to tobacco smoking, 600 000 per year due to alcohol consumption, and more than 200 000 per year due to air pollution.

So, it's 34000 cancer deaths for cured meats (and IF the correlative results with red meat are in fact causative, another 50000 worldwide for red meat) VS 1000000 cancer tobacco deaths. So no, it's not 2/3 there, it's at best, IF red meat is the cause of cancers at the highest level possible (not at all proven) it's 1/12 of the way there....around 8.4%. Agreed, that's not good, but no where near what you (and he) claims.

Cholesterol and saturated fat only MAY cause heart disease and diabetes, not 'do without a doubt', and then usually only in high levels (in normal people). They raise the risk factor for those diseases, but do not automatically cause heart disease and/or diabetes, even in people with incredibly high levels.

Research indicates that you missed the mark with the 644000 number, it's more like 34000 (and maybe another 50000, unproven) according to the WHO, I'll take the stats of the organization whose study is being discussed.

So if you look at the real numbers, it's still not comparable at all. Cancer, and death rates are orders of magnitude different, far more than 10 times higher for smoking with every possible benefit of a doubt given to meats toxicity/effects, so not at all easily matched. Sorry.

(and you also appear to be 100% wrong about cancer survivability)
http://www.Cancer.org -Colon cancer-For stage IIB cancer, the survival rate is about 63%. The 5-year relative survival rate for stage IIIA colon cancers is about 89%. For stage IIIB cancers the survival rate is about 69%, and for stage IIIC cancers the survival rate is about 53%.
http://www.lung.org - Lung cancer-The five-year survival rate for lung cancer is 54 percent for cases detected when the disease is still localized (within the lungs). However, only 15 percent of lung cancer cases are diagnosed at an early stage. For distant tumors (spread to other organs) the five-year survival rate is only 4 percent.

So, to summarize, colon cancer 53%-89% survivability (depending largely on when it's caught) VS lung cancer 4% (for 85% of cases, and 54% for the 15% of lucky few with early detections)

I'll address your linked report first because I have a problem with the statistics on there. It's a little misleading because the bit you mentioned only considers cancer deaths attributable with processed meats.

But then goes to includes all diseases attributable with smoking, not just cancer.
So it's not comparing cancer to cancer rates. The report is comparing processed meat cancer with ALL smoking diseases.

And this makes smoking look a lot worse. For a fair comparison we'd need to compare only smoking caused cancers to processed meat cancers.
Or we'd need to compare diseases from processed meat, to all diseases from smoking.

Further the report, states that it's an 18% risk for only 50g of processed meat.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I ate the stuff, it wasn't just 50g. That's like 3 chicken nuggets. I'd eat 9 at least in one sitting for lunch(150g). Maybe I had 2 rashers of bacon for breakfast, another 50g, and then I might have a few slices of salami for dinner, another 50g.

So in a day I might have eaten 250g of processed meat. So it might only be 18% chance to get cancer, but that's 5 times I've rolled the dice(250 divded by 50g = 5). So even low odds get pretty dangerous if you roll the dice often enough.


Right after that paragraph, it goes on to say that the total number of attributable deaths to processed meat is 644,000.

So now we're finally comparing apples with apples. 644,000 processed meat deaths vs. 1 million tobacco deaths.

Still smoking is the clear winner here, but it's 2/3 the way there. So to me Dr. Greger's statement is starting to ring true.

Of course Dr. Greger isn't only talking about processed meat, he's talking about all meat, including poultry and fish too. Because just like processed meat, they have cholesterol and saturated fat which causes heart disease and diabetes without a doubt.
The heart disease statistics are (google says:) "An estimated 17.5 million people died from CVDs in 2012, representing 31% of all global deaths"
Now granted not all of these cardiovascular diseases will be diet related. But we only need to another 366,000 out of that 17.5 million to be caused by diet, and now we're comparing 1 million meat related deaths to 1 million tobacco related deaths.

So it's totally comparable in my eyes. And in the end, regardless of which has higher chances of cancer. The death rates are easily matched.

(not to mention colorectal cancer is kills more people, even though more people get lung cancer. Because lung cancer is more survivable).

OK, so cured meats cured with nitrates are now classified carcinogenic, but non cured meats, and meats cured without nitrates, salt, or smoke only "may" be slightly carcinogenic...or may not. So still, not all deli turkey, not all chicken nuggets (I make them at home from whole chicken with no preservatives) or bacon (I had some uncured bacon a few years back...it sucked, but it does exist)....so not ALL processed meats are in that category, and certainly not all nuggets, sliced turkey, or bacon...so exaggeration, even if you wish to say it's only exaggeration by omission of detail.

Because he strongly implies it's because they are meats, says "The World Health Organization recently published a report that puts chicken nuggets, deli turkey slices, bacon and other processed meats in the same category as cigarettes and asbestos: known carcinogens" without explanation, and extrapolates to imply that all meats are as carcinogenic as habitually smoking processed tobacco cigarettes.

In terms of disease, overall danger to a person's health, and morality, it's completely inaccurate, and grossly misleading. A processed plant diet (the norm) can be FAR worse for you and the environment than a sustainably raised, non processed meat based diet (which is not the norm). It's not cut and dry, details matter.
"The International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) used clearly defined guidelines to identify hazards (qualitative evaluation), i.e. whether an agent can cause cancer, but IARC does not assess level or the magnitude of risk.
Even though smoking is in the same category as processed meat (Group 1 carcinogen), the magnitude or level of risk associated with smoking is considerably higher (e.g., for lung cancer about 20 fold or 2000% increased risk) from those associated with processed meat – an analysis of data from 10 studies, cited in the IARC report showed an 18 percent increased risk in colorectal cancer per 50g processed meat increase per day. To put this in perspective, according to the Global Disease Burden Project 2012, over 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to high processed meat intake vs. 1 million deaths per year attributable to tobacco smoke."
source- https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2015/11/03/report-says-eating-processed-meat-is-carcinogenic-understanding-the-findings/
So, smoking =2000% greater risk, eating meat daily-18% greater risk....so not honestly equivalent by any stretch.

I would agree that switching from a processed meat based diet to a non processed plant based (not even necessarily pure vegetarian) diet, in general, might be equivalent to quitting smoking (but smoking how much, and smoking what, depends on MANY variable factors, and it appears it's generally equivalent to smoking <2 cigarettes per week, while breathing air in most cities is equivalent to smoking a pack a day).

1. My family was considered to be a 'organized crime' family by the police in Tucson, AZ.
2. I've committed 2 crimes in my life. My first was when I was 13, I shoplifted a Gen 1 Transformer from Kmart and was banned from the store until 18. The second was helping a friend load an illegally poached deer into his truck.
3. My first car was a 1974 Dodge Challenger
4. When I was 19, I almost ran away from my future wife to go to Dallas and open one of the first ink cartridge refilling companies with a friend.
5. My mother never married and let my Grandparents raise me.
6. I started smoking at 14, rolling my own from my Grandfather's Bugler tobacco.
7. I smoked for many years, quitting twice. Once when my Grandfather died from Emphysema and then for good when my Grandmother died of lung cancer.
8. I worked for Texas Instruments, Dell, and Apple. Their stock allowed me to retire early.
9. I've had a mental breakdown that lead to me retiring early.
10. I still suffer from depression and anxiety.
11. Online I can interact with people much better than I can in real life. I find it very hard to deal with people in person.
12. My wife embarrasses me in public because she is very outgoing.
13. I hate doing dishes. I mean I really loathe doing them.
14. I have two dogs.
15. I don't like cats very much.
16. I sometimes have weird dreams that my best friend is still alive.
17. I prefer being indoors vs being outdoors.
18. Other than my mother, my family is all dead or estranged.
19. I am a video game enthusiast.
20. I don't want children.
21. I once had a 4-wheeler roll over on top of me and pin me under creek water.
22. I used to use twilight as my online handle until Stephenie Meyer ruined that for me forever.
23. My favorite animated cartoon was the 1990's Batman animated series.
24. I used to be a huge Stephen King fan until he was hit by that vehicle and his writing suddenly started sucking.
25. I have very poor eyesight without my glasses.

OOO! Oooo! I've got the perfect solution: Roll your own cigarettes...but with CATNIP! The pain in the ass it is to roll catnip (which doesn't stick together, unlike tobacco and other...stuff), and the beyond-satisfaction one gets from a catnip-high will quell any craving for hours! Or all cravings, for that matter. Repeat when necessary, and you'll be nicotine-free in no time!

Hooked on Catnip worked for me! (ow)

Ironically, it's the tobacco that will kill him.

Food is the new tobacco.