If you read any old literature, even as far back as the 1800's, you get this feeling. No one ever outright says "this will kill you," but it was certainly regarded as a poor health choice.
The one thing that bugs me about this was, as a kid in a health class, I was shown a video of a little girl and her grandma. The girl asked the grandma "Why do you smoke grandma?" The old lady responded "Because when I was your age, nobody knew that smoking was bad for you."
> The tabaco and oil industry (and other huge non-sustainabe and dangerous business models) cultivated this trust issue over decades
There's this popular myth that nobody knew smoking was bad for you until the 1960s. My dad would laugh at this, saying when he was a boy (1930's) his fellows called them "coffin nails". Doctors then always advised their patients to quit smoking.
In the 1960s, I saw a smoker's lung on display in a bottle of formaldehyde. It was black and looked horribly diseased. Another non-smoker's lung was also there, it looked pink and normal. A doctor who ever saw a smoker's lung would have to be crazy to not conclude smoking was bad for your health.
My father went to high school in the 1930's, and cigarettes were called "coffin nails" at the time.
The first thing every doctor would advise sick patients to do was quit smoking.
Every doctor who autopsied a dead smoker could see how bad smoking was for you. I remember seeing a smoker's lung in a jar in the 1960's. It was black and rotten. It was terrifying.
The idea that nobody knew cigs were bad for you until the 1960's is completely false. It was common knowledge.
Precisely this. Many people denied the idea that smoking was unhealthy. It sounds hard to believe, but I personally know many people who said these things to me in the 1990s.
Rejection of science in favor of something you personally want to be true isn’t a new internet age development.
Everybody knew cigarettes were unhealthy long before the 1960s. My dad was in high school in the 1930s and the kids called cigarettes "coffin nails". Doctors routinely advised patients to quit smoking. Any doctor who dissected a cadaver in medical school knew it was bad for you. A microscope or a scientific study wasn't necessary to notice the black, ruined lungs of a smoker.
This is just an old woman being dishonest with herself. The US was the 1st to put warnings on tobacco packaging in 1966. This was about the time this woman started smoking. Is it really believable that an additional scientific data point about the harm would've swayed her decision? Especially one she wouldn't have even understood at the time? It's always been abundantly clear that inhaling smoke into your lungs is not a good idea - the scientific details aren't really necessary in making the decision not to smoke. What was necessary was a shift in the culture and advances in general healthcare which made the trade-offs worth the delayed gratification
"Both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful".
With the benefit of 70 years of medical research this is an easy statement to make, but at the time this was far less clear - smoking was for a long time actively promoted as having health benefits [1][2]
It's easy from a modern perspective to look back and apply our accumulated wisdom, but it was not self-evident that smoking was necessarily bad. Otherwise millions would not have signed up for an early death.
Smoking something is obviously bad for your health, I don't need a study to tell me that, you are literally inhaling smoke. Followed by masses dying of cancer.
Eating marijuana can have some negative cognitive effects but its pretty obvious it doesn't do anything terrible looking at all the old hippies.
Yeah, I mean some people smoke all of their lives and live to be 90 and die of natural causes. Doesn't mean that smoking isn't incredibly dangerous and bad for you.
edit: this is agreement with the original comment, not sure why I'm being down voted. Just highlighting how outliers can exist, but it doesn't reflect on the danger of the underlying activity in general
I don't think tobacco companies knew 100 years ago. The data didn't really become conclusive until something like the 50s. There absolutely was a consensus in the 20s and 30s that cigarettes were not harmful.
Yes, my grandfather. Back then, the dangers of smoking were not well known by the public. In fact, the tobacco industry pushed bogus research to attempt to throw the conclusion that smoking causes cancer into doubt. Once it was apparent that smoking was harmful, my grandfather quit smoking cold turkey.
It was too late. He spent more than a decade coughing up his lungs only to finally succumb to cancer, weakened by the steroids keeping him alive to the point where he broke his back picking up a gallon of milk.
Hold on now, picking individual celebrity examples has some serious survivorship bias on its own. We don't hear from the ones who did experience early mortality.
Cannabis is a hard topic for Americans to talk about, because it's been so often unfairly demonized in the past, there's a pro-cannabis camp that sometimes won't admit any downside to it, fearing "Reefer Madness" style FUD which has been very common for decades.
But is it really all that surprising that smoking could be bad for your health, irrespective of what it is? My take would be that people shouldn't be persecuted for this, but that it's straightforwardly obvious that any smoking (and doubly so an unregulated plant that would reasonably be expected to vary tremendously in quality depending on supplier) -- would be harmful.
The thing is cigarettes were known to be harmful for a century before anything was done. In 1867 a report found smoking associated with cancer and lung disease. cigarettes were popularly known as coffin nails. At this point several centuries in, we would know if coffee was having a significant impact on our health
The thing is that both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful, if you took a step back from the cultural perspective that accepted them so thoroughly.
Smoking tobacco is inhaling an acrid a mix of chemicals that makes you cough, kind of feel sick and lightheaded, smells awful and leaves a tan stain - it’s not hard to guess that it’s not healthy. Remember that half of people who die from tobacco die from heart disease, too, not cancer.
Same with football. I was never attracted to sports where participants beat each other in the head repeatedly, whether it’s boxing or football. I don’t think it’s surprising to find out that people who experience concussions every week as part of their jobs and hobbies end up damaging their brains.
Edit to add, It’s a bit frustrating, because surely if one was to stand up 30 years ago and say “hey, I don’t think this high school football program is a good idea because I’m worried about all these young people knocking their heads together with full force”... The response would have been to mock you and dispute it, if they paid any attention at all.
i would argue that on a long enough timescale, anything will 100% kill you. not trying to be cheeky, more just trying to say that that sort of argument only really works for people who are active antismokers; most smokers (i think, from personal experience) are very aware of the danger of smoking, but feel that it offsets some condition of reality that makes it more tolerable even compared to the reduced lifetime. that's just my perspective though
The one thing that bugs me about this was, as a kid in a health class, I was shown a video of a little girl and her grandma. The girl asked the grandma "Why do you smoke grandma?" The old lady responded "Because when I was your age, nobody knew that smoking was bad for you."
The bullcrap we were fed as kids is incredible.
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