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Comment by cgag | Hacker News Reader

there are tons of benefits which is why people do it

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted because there are very clearly benefits to smoking in the form of stimulation and relaxation. Many people get started with smoking because it provides these benefits. People shouldn't do it because the overall risk profile is highly negative given the health impacts, but to say there are no benefits frames the problem completely incorrectly.

I'm one of the sorta-fortunate (I guess) ones who almost never got any pleasure out of cigarettes. Something about my physical composition doesn't jibe well with them. A handful of times when the air was super humid, I was intoxicated in some way and/or my body was in a certain equilibrium, I experienced the enjoyment, but the rest of the time (~95%) they made me feel worse. I was still stupid enough to keep doing it for social reasons way longer than I should have.

My small experiments with cannabis have made me wonder how tobacco possibly could have ever become more popular, the former's effects are much more noticeable with a vastly smaller amount of smoke and can be quite pleasant.

Tobacco had a longstanding religious significance here in North America, that's how I was first introduced to it and I still appreciate it as part of sweat lodges or similar events. It makes more sense to me viewed in that light, a good analogy might be the bread and wine of a catholic mass.

Such as?

Probably that it feels good. Same reason people do anything addictive.

Doesn't it feel good in a similar way that scratching an itch does in that its more a temporary relief from suffering instead of feeling good all the time?

A social network with other smokers in proximity. Regular breaks from work that they don't forget to make. Regular time outside of a sealed office space..

There are definite short term advantages to smokers. There (_)used to be similar short term advantages for those who drank during work hours when it was socially acceptable.

(_ Used to might be wrong.. Startups with designated drinking times that seem to be mandatory are annoying but not irrational given their short term interests.)

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I'm lucky that at my current job none of us smoke and still regularly take quick walks outside of the office. I guess it helps that every room has a door that goes directly outside.

Nicotine has stimulant & nootropic effects:

https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#benefits

Tobacco also naturally contains, in addition to the nicotine, other compounds that act like MAOIs - ie, as antidepressants:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16859748

I hear death has some great benefits too, everyone's doing it.

You probably didn't mean to be correct, but it happened anyway. A virus is immortal. The macro-organisms we're all familiar with will age and die even under ideal circumstances; there is no fundamental reason for this to be necessary. But we evolved to do it because it offered advantages over the more traditional ageless immortality.

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