Tobacco firms 'misled' public about additives

[Ansel]

:-o

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...s-6279898.html

[muddyfunkstar]

It speaks volumes that cigarettes need so much doing to them to make them tolerable at the expense of health, whereas snus just needs some salt and water.

[truthwolf1]

I really liked those additives.
It was quite a switch to American Spirits which were like sucking on lit sticks.

[Darwin]

It speaks volumes that cigarettes need so much doing to them to make them tolerable at the expense of health, whereas snus just needs some salt and water.

There are in fact many Roll Your Own tobaccos that are additive free, and exceedingly palatable, but I have to wonder how much difference that makes in the overall scheme of things. Burning tobacco is burning tobacco and additives or not that fact alone is way more than enough to cause all kinds of problems that oral tobacco is simply not heir to. Even snus has additives, besides salt, but so what? It is so enormously safer than smoking that even some fairly questionable additives are likely to make little difference to its advantages over the burning of the leaf.

Such product as American Spirit may not be tolerable to some but if so then that is the fault of A.S. in making a crummy tasting cig and not an inherent property of additive free tobacco. It's true that going the RYO route is a pain in the tookus but it is a good way to get palatable additive free smokes. But going RYO is an aesthetics/economics choice and has little or no discernable positive impact on the relative "safety" of the resulting cigs. In short however mendacious tobacco companies might seem to be regarding additives the simple fact is that leaving all of them out results in a cigarrette that is 99.99 percent as unhealthy. Big whoop.

It certainly could be that additive packages might tend to reinforce addiction to a manufacturer's benefit but I have to wonder how effective this strategy could really be with a product as inherently and intensely addictive as cigarettes are to begin with. The real mendacity in all this razzamatazz is the unyielding obssession of the anti-tobacco zealots to paint all tobacco products with the same tarred brush as cigarettes. The harm in this unthinking jihad is at least as bad as the purportedly criminal intentions of Big Tobacco if not worse.

[stubby2]

I agree Darwin. I had switched to high quality RYO a dozen years before I found snus. It tasted better to me then the more artificial tasting Camel and Marlboros but I have no doubt they are just as harmful. You could smoke grass clippings and it would have about the same danger as tobacco. It's the smoke that will do it.

The anti-tobacco zealots are trying to demonize the big evil tobacco companies but it's all in the way it is processed and consumed as to if it is harmful or not. Take away the smoke and the amount of harm goes dramatically down. The whole thing of evil tobacco companies manipulating cigarettes to make them more addictive, and or, more harmful, is just part of the propaganda campaign by the zealots.

[truthwolf1]