this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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If you smoke one or two cigarettes a day, it's not too terrible.
The probem came from people smoking a pack a day or more, and yes, it's the kind of habit that tends to grow.
When big tobacco made the stuff plentiful enough that people could support pack-a-day (or even case-a-day) habits, the money was just too good not to defend by surpressing science.
As the fossil fuel revelations have shown, billionaires get desperat for money, and can't imagine deciding they have enough or sharing substantial portions of their wealth to change the world for the better.
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/5/315
In both sexes, smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease and from all causes, and from lung cancer in women. .
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/smoking-and-cancer/how-does-smoking-cause-cancer#:~:text=and%20other%20diseases.-,Reducing%20the%20number%20of%20cigarettes%20you%20smoke%20a%20day%20is,never%20too%20late%20to%20stop.
Reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke a day is a good first step. But, there is no safe level of smoking. The best thing you can do for your health is to stop smoking completely
Well there's really no safe level of anything. Literally everything you do increases your odds of dying. It's all about proportion. Breathing doesn't increase your odds of dying very much.
The conversation around nicotine is severely lacking in comparisons of scale. It's all like "IF YOU SMOKE LITERALLY ONE CIGARETTE YOU WILL DIE OF HORRIBLE CANCER" which is a ridiculous thing to be putting out there. I get the intent, it's because cigarettes are addictive and smoking one usually leads to smoking more, but it really makes it difficult to get a sense of how harmful cigarettes actually are at lower dosages.
That first study you linked was a good one in this regard, but the summary still couldn't help but tend towards "you smoke at all, you will die". A graph would be helpful.
Actually, I'll just make one.
I mean... Breathing doesn't increase your chance of dying, but not doing it will guarantee it. If you smoke, there is a good chance you will die from a horrible disease. That's the reality of it. With one cigarettes a day, smoking more will increase that chance.
Same for alcohol, lead and absestos btw - no safe quantity has been found for all those
Every amount has a measurable negative effect with precise enough measurements