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Comment by whyleyc | Hacker News Reader

"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.

[1]https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/wp-content/...

[2]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/50/4f/40504f0de983d78f3c0f0b22c...

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And yet the stereotype of the dumb football jock who's had his head knocked a few too many times has been prevalent as long as I can remember. It's just that previously it was used as a punchline in sitcoms rather than seen as a serious health risk to our children.

Except for 'Varsity Blues' (1999) I guess, and I'm sure other examples, where the evil coach telling the kid to play when another head injury could kill him was a main plot line.

That may be so, but the widespread knowledge that most/all football players sustain serious brain damage was not there yet. Big hits that left the opponent slow to get up or unsteady on his feet were celebrated, on the assumption that he’d be able to shake it off after a day or so.

That said, I do think the destructiveness of football in knees and backs has long been known. I remember them being detailed when reading “where are they now?” articles in Sports Illustrated as a kid (I’m 30).

The scientific knowledge was not there yet, but I feel like it’s not hard to put together that football players and boxers suffer damage from being knocked in the head to dozen times a day for decades. My guess is probably this would have been figured out earlier if there wasn’t such a strong cultural desire to keep playing these sports.

It's true that smoking was promoted as healthful by parties with a financial interest. By clearly harmful, I mean that the indicators I listed should inform one's common sense that it is likely to be harmful, because physical senses perceive many things about tobacco smoke as unpleasant.

For example, lore is replete with stories of young people's initial experiences with smoking involving coughing, choking, turning green and feeling nauseous or vomiting. There's also the fact that nicotine has long been known to be a poison as strong as cyanide, and has been used for insect control by Europeans as far back as 1763.

The same can be said for exercising: you’re out of breath, your heart is racing, you can get dizzy and nauseous, you’re covered in sweat, and the next day all your muscles are aching. Surely, such an activity can’t be healthy!

Of course after the first few sessions you’ll start to get used to it, and actually feel better after exercising. Just like how you feel better after smoking once you’re addicted.

It seems like a stretch to compare the most normal activity ever, moving your body, to intentionally ingesting poison.

For one, if exercise makes you dizzy, nauseous, sweaty, and all your muscles ache, you are either severely out of shape are overdoing it.

I smoked for a fair portion of my life. The main motivation for addicts is to relieve the craving for tobacco. It’s pleasurable in some ways other than that, but cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time.

You're wrong about exercise (ask any water polo player...)

> cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time.

Sounds like an easy habit to kick!

No, not an easy habit to kick and that’s exactly the issue with cigarettes. Even though they’re not really that pleasant, they chemically trick your body into wanting them.

Extremely vigorous sports is different than your average exercise. I’m still happy to assert that it’s a twisted analogy - If you compare the feeling from exercise to cigarettes, it’s obvious that they are not qualitatively similar, despite the fact that each involves some unpleasant sensations.

Another significant thing to note is that over time, exercise clearly has positive effects on your body – you feel healthier, more muscular, lose weight, breathe easier. Cigarettes do not have a healthy effect on your body over time, and it doesn’t take a doctor to tell or modern medical technology to tell they are staining your teeth, making your breath bad, making you cough, and so forth.

This was not lost on Europeans went tobacco was first introduced.

> Sounds like an easy habit to kick!

This is an odd view on the nature of physical addiction. I personally know more smokers that hate their smoking than smokers who are ambivalent or actually enjoy it.

I think addiction itself acts as a vastly profitable and effortlessly marketable boogeyman today, moreso than a Sisyphean defect of the human condition, if you catch my drift...

> "[...] the wound itself is its own healing when seen from another standpoint." [0]

> "As for smoking tobacco, Shapiro argues that quitting is hard because smoking does not disrupt the smoker's life, not because of the mild effects of nicotine on the brain" [1]

etc. I expect up-in-arms responses to views like mine, but even neuropharmacologically, speaking there is really less of a danger to ~"the disease known as addiction"~ than there is to codifying addiction as a metonym for "sepulcher for all the lost people". I say this for all substances, even something as malicious and unforgiving as carfentanil..

[0] https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zize...

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=...

We had similar problems with football over 110 years ago.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/teddy-roosev...

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