Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism.
Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism.
Essentially the chance of dying in a given year due to alcohol if this were anything like a random chance is around 1 in 2000 whereas the chance of dying from smoking is around 1 in 77.
This is something like the difference in danger in riding a motorcycle 100 miles and base jumping.
Of course its not random at all whereas taking up smoking is extremely likely to result in becoming a life long smoker and suffering the average ill effects its perfectly possible for most people to enjoy a sane amount of alcohol infrequently.
Consumption of intoxicants of some variety seems to have been a feature of humanity for the entirety of human history. The expulsion of smoker from reasonable things to be in human society has only happened after we realized its predictable massive effect on human health. There just will never be the same impetus with alcohol.
This sounds right enough, but can you cite your sources for it?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180109214939.h...
> At least 61 per cent of people who try their first cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, suggests an analysis of survey data by Queen Mary University of London.
This is actually stronger than the original statement. A substantial minority who even try smoking become smokers.I think it ought to be considered a given that people who smoke are physiologically addicted to nicotine. Having many relatives who smoke currently or have in the past. Smoking in America has been so pervasive that most of us likely have direct knowledge of smoking by either smoking having family members who smoke.
Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted is a statement about step two and asserting that n is somewhere near 100% based on knowing a plethora of smokers, hearing about how smoking effected them, and watching their struggles to quit and reading about the physiological effects of smoking. It isn't a very scientific analysis and I'm open to more clear numbers if you have them.
Going to the other end percentage who have tried smoking. This is harder to pin down because tobacco use by youth is illegal and its hard to ask kids to be honest about breaking the law even when its supposed to be anonymous. It looks like between 20%-30% self report trying tobacco in school here and in France although I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this was substantially wrong. Not as wrong as 95% is though.
I suspect you like most people don't really closely associate with enough people from your school days to be called a useful sample, you don't actually know how many of them tried nicotine products, and you don't know how many of them ultimately spent some of their life smoking. What you have tried to do is make a rough estimate of how many people you know and tried to bring to mind the ones you had seen smoking.
It's not shocking that a large portion of people that try a very addictive and at one time socially acceptable drug have gone on to become addicted.
From the abstract:
New research has overturned the dogma that cigarette
addiction takes years to develop. Studies of adolescent
smokers show that symptoms of addiction, such as
withdrawal, craving for cigarettes and failed attempts at
quitting, can appear within the first weeks of smoking.
To account for these findings, scientists have developed
a new theory positing that the brain quickly develops
adaptations that counter the effects of nicotine. These
adaptations lead to withdrawal symptoms when the effects
of nicotine wear off. The results highlight the
importance of boosting government funding for antismoking
campaigns, particularly those aimed at youngsters.
The author of the paper (Joseph R.DiFranza, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, USA.) wrote in May-2008 issue of Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2008/05-01/
outlining his research findings.
The article Hooked from the first cigarette in this issue isn't available online, but if you are subscriber of SciAm checkout this issue.Turns out it's really hard to ban something you can make in a 20 gallon drum from yeast and sugar.
It seems quite likely that absent all of these, smoking would still be as popular as it ever was.
If people drink like a normal smoker smokes its considered a problem. If your having a couple morning drinks and taking shot breaks at work people would view that as extreme, yet that was/is a norm for smokers.
The thing is that its not so much explicitly smoking, but cigarettes that are the major problem. Cigarettes have so many additives and distort the natural tobacco to enhance the addiction that they themselves create the bulk of the smoking related issues. Using a natural tobacco product at the same frequency as normal / social drinking wouldn't have nearly the terrible health impacts as what happens to typical cigarette smokers and would likely be seen in a similar vein were it not for the negative attention brought on by cigarettes.
Why do you think this? It seems an extremely puritan outlook, I'm a bit sceptical that puritanism is saleable without enforcement of society-wide religious norms. Smoking, sure, but smoking is not at all like alcohol consumption.
MD, mushrooms (and acid et al) are far too powerful (yes, you can take very small doses, but in general). To look at it coldly, they're just not at all practical, regardless of them having, I would say, far fewer direct negative health effects. Indirectly though, things that immediately change people's mental state to such a degree are I would say more dangerous than alcohol.
With alcohol, I can go and have a small amount with family or friends or colleagues, for a short period of time. I can do it home, with a meal. And the actual drinking of it is core. It's not like taking one the above drugs: I take the drug then I am mentally altered to a large degree, possibly for a long period of time. In the case of a selfish drug, like cocaine or an amphetamine, I can function, and the effects a shorter, but there's no social aspect. The actual sitting down with others to spend time imbibing is central.
Cannabis obviously has this in common, so I think that's a very fair comparison. And just to stay on topic, so does tobacco. It's not just the effect of the drug that's attractive, it's [what I think is fair to say is] the social ritual associated with it. It helps that taking those isn't quick (it's not just slipping a pill), that's a feature.
No it is not magnitudes more addictive. Alcohol is extremely addictive, 1 in 12 Adults in the US has an alcohol problem [1] and withdrawal can literally kill you, unlike nicotine.
Almost everyone who smokes to any degree becomes addicted and a regular user. Tens (100 million+) of millions of Americans drink occasionally with no addiction.
Alcohol is a dangerous drug in every dimension, and I specifically said that. But their addiction profiles are dramatically different.
There is no standardized addiction metric. The product, the dosage, age of user, and social habits matter significantly. Alcohol is extremely addictive and habit forming it kills 95,000 people a year in the US. I think it is disingenuous to dismiss it is as orders of magnitude less addictive than nicotine.
Most people can smoke a Cigar without becoming addicted to nicotine and a regular user. In the same way most people who are exposed to alcohol in the US don't get addicted.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-addictive-substances...
Of course, 1/4 is still a HUGE amount of people, and an absolute health crisis.
On the other hand for alcohol, I know a lot of people who will have a glass of wine whenever they go to a nice restaurant yet are not addicted.
So there's a magnitude of difference. Nicotine is significantly more addictive for anyone who uses it semi regularly whereas alcohol is not as addictive in that case.
Okay, now exclude people who did that as children, an experience after which they had zero access to cigarettes. That same survey if demanding an adult experience would be much, much closer.
Everyone has a "Jimmy lit up a smoke and I took a drag and coughed my guts out when I was 9" story.
Overwhelmingly people either had a problem smoking (one that they had to quit through extreme effort), or they never smoked cigarettes at all as adults.
The one "exception" I can recall is a "social" smoker who would tell everyone that she controlled it by only smoking when she drank/at social events, a consequence of which was that she sought drinking opportunities at every venue. She was a problem smoker that turned it into also being a problem drinker.
I'm some kind of introvert, if i hang out with people, my social "battery" drains and i get tired. I smoke because it gives me much more time before my social "battery" is empty. I don't smoke otherwise.
Right now i'm at two packs a year.
Notably 90% of Americans have drank alcohol at some point without becoming addicts which one can't be said of nicotine.
That year, not some point in their lives.
Nicotine is very addictive, but it's not an order of magnitude (10x) more addictive than alcohol.
What could be possibly so special about this year that you're so adamant to talk about it?
Also, nice website, definitely not partisan.
> This year
Your other points aside (I agree, they should probably at least include some citations to their statistics), this article is from 2015, so I don't think anyone is making it about 2020/covid other than you.
If you don't like that source Here is the NIH [1] in 2019 saying 5.3% have AUD, slightly lower stat but it is including 12 year olds.
I consume Alcohol and accept the health risks, but it is a hell of a drug and highly addictive.
1. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...
1 in 12 being 6% seems fairly accurate and supportable