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Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

It really is amazing. We were thiiiiiiis close to having a generation that wasn't addicted to nicotine for the first time in hundreds of years (like, since trade between North America and Europe really became a thing) and these guys pulled this thumb drive that tastes like cotton candy out of nowhere and every young person is just jonesing.

And the regulatory/public opinion environment isn't what it was in the 80s and 90s when we decided to take on cigarettes. Imagine a company being told today that they now have to stop advertising on billboards, can't advertise to kids, and have to pay a fifth of a trillion dollars over 25 years for the harms they caused to Medicaid. Can't, can you?

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> Imagine a company being told today that they now have to stop advertising on billboards, can't advertise to kids, and have to pay a fifth of a trillion dollars over 25 years for the harms they caused to Medicaid. Can't, can you?

That's what's happening to Juul right now. Juul e-cigarettes came out in 2015; 2018 had the first consent decree to not advertise anywhere kids might see the advertisements; by 2021, we had the first attempt to ban Juul from selling products in the US, period (something which never happened with cigarettes!). The current crop of lawsuits isn't at $200 billion, though, only a few billion. But for a product segment that existed for less than a decade, that's a pretty steep penalty.

We had a minor scandal here in Canada. The same company behind Vuse vapes (Imperial Tobacco of Canada) got approval for an oral product that falls in the same category as nicotine gum, legally. Not heavily controlled. The regulators had apparently never considered that someone might try to market nicotine gum to children who do not use any nicotine products. It was approved as normal, just another off-brand nicotine replacement.

To quote the Health Minister, "We were duped." Within a few months in most provinces, orders in council had been drafted to ban the advertising, and prohibit flavours except mint, and there may now be amendments to the laws federally to go further. The slow bureaucratic march to patch the loophole began as soon as it was recognized, basically. Still, the brazenness is stunning. It's the same mentality behind the marketing of the vapes.

https://globalnews.ca/news/10142796/health-minister-nicotine...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nicotine-pouches-regulation...

I always laugh when governments express surprise when companies exploit loopholes in the law. Here we have an amoral entity whose only purpose and incentive is to find ways to make money, and you're surprised that they hire a bunch of staff to figure out all the loopholes and how to make money against the spirit of the law but while sticking exactly to the letter of the law?

You weren't "duped." You wrote a law without red-teaming it thinking like a corporation.

Personally, I find it deeply troubling that we've come so far along the "free-trade" axis that companies are presumed immoral by default. There is no way to have a high-functioning society when one large part is actively undermining the social contract of society.

That the general public sees this as fait-accompli and seems to be cheering it on is not funny, it's tragic.

Companies will do the most heinous shit imaginable and people will be like, "Well, yeah, what did you expect? Should've known better!"

GP said amoral not immoral. I think their intent is more along the lines of companies are not human, hence they are immune to discussions of morality.

I tend to agree with that. Moralizing corporate entities will not bring us the outcomes we desire because humans are great at creating internal structures to diffuse accountability. Strongly enforced well-defined legislation _is_ the social contract, might as well throw our weight behind that instead of presuming companies will fall in line out of the goodness of their hearts.

Oh I know, that's exactly the part that I'm arguing against. Companies do not exist in a vacuum, the actions they choose to take directly affect the society they're a part of. Throwing your hands up in the air and saying "they're a company, why do you expect any better" is just burying yourself in apathy, and it plays right into these companies' hands -- $deity forbid voters might learn to grow a spine and vote against unbridled business interests!

Yes, I deliberately used the word amoral. We need to stop anthropomorphizing companies (not just true for Oracle[1]). They aren't moral or immoral. They are simply unfeeling lawnmowers that chew up anything in their way and produce money. They neither like nor dislike you--they don't even think about you. They just robotically do whatever they can do to make money.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728

> They aren't moral or immoral. They are simply unfeeling lawnmowers that chew up anything in their way and produce money. They neither like nor dislike you--they don't even think about you. They just robotically do whatever they can do to make money.

That's a useful model, but it isn't the whole story. It certainly often feels like that. However, the 10% of the time where the model doesn't hold really matters. Companies are made up of humans, and humans aren't just money-robots. Groups of humans don't automatically turn into unfeeling profit-maximizers either.

The moments when humans at companies make decisions that aren't purely motivated by short-term profit are significant and can have a large positive impact. It would definitely be nice to see it happen more often and more effectively.

(To anyone who caught me in the act, sorry for all of the edits :)

I sometimes like to imagine a derelect business ai from the 50s running the whole show. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_cybernetics

Meanwhile all the clones and copies just keep right on selling in bodegas and everywhere else. If anything they now have a competitive advantage because they're not paying a dime in penalties.

Some of these vapes are even complete units that are "disposable" which means we've gone from "cigarette filters" to "e-waste" littering everywhere: https://hackaday.com/2024/04/25/reverse-engineering-a-fancy-...

It's steep, but I'd say it's the monetary damages that make the punishment.

That's still real money by 2024 standards; but it was a thermonuclear bomb in 1998.

But what’s so bad about nicotine? Is it any worse than caffeine?

I’m genuinely curious, because isn’t tar and carbon monoxide the dangerous byproduct of smoking, not the nicotine?

There are many studies on the effect of nicotine. I would look for several meta-analyses or umbrella (meta-meta) analyses. Ideally reporting all-cause mortality.

Here is one like that: ~500k individuals, vaping has an odds ratio of 1.33 (95% CI = 1.14–1.56) for heart attacks compared to non-smoker/non-vapers.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01675...

[edit] To compare that to caffeine, this study does not see a significant risk increase for coffee drinkers. So it seems that vaping is objectively more harmful:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5940396/

[edit2] And an umbrella review, because I like them a lot: This shows that negative effects of high coffee intake mostly disappear when controlling for smoking. Note this paper has a correction, which I think is a great sign of credibility. https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5024

You are conflating the harms of the delivery mechanism with the harms of the substance.

Nicotine gum is relatively harmless for example. Or perhaps imbibe on a Nicotini[0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotini

You're right that these studies measure the product, not the substance. But TFA is about vaping, and I am referring to that.

[edit] Seems that nicotine is not really harmless, even in gum or patches: double the risk of heart palpitations and chest pains, 1.67 the risk of nausea and vomiting, 1.5 times the risk of gastrointestinal complaints, and 1.4 times the risk of insomnia.

Of course, if you measure anything this closely with >100k participants in RCTs, it's bound to have a significant effect. But these odds ratios are not exactly small.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1617-9625-8-8

Are those numbers comparable to caffeine?

This is an apples to oranges comparison. Ideally an apples to apples comparison of the effects of nicotine and caffeine would control for method of ingestion. I wouldn't be surprised if vaping caffeine[0] has a similar odds ratio for heart attacks.

Caffeine and nicotine both exist in gum form. Have their been studies comparing that?

[0] which, to my horror, I just discovered actually exist

Thanks! Your links have convinced me

I guess vaping/nicotine, while not the worst vice out there, is still a vice lol; so they have their own dangers.

Yes, this is the correct position IMHO based on the data. This is an impossibly hard subject because so many people believe it is immoral (either from religious teaching or cultural indoctrination (like D.A.R.E., etc) and many others feel defensive like they need to justify their choices. Both of these are extremely normal human reactions, so they come by it honestly.

But vaping/nicotine can be very safe if you don't do it all the time. Occassional usage is fine. Many people naturally really like the nicotine though and have a hard time regulating their intake. If you let yourself get hooked, it can turn pretty unhealthy.

"Here is one like that: ~500k individuals, vaping has an odds ratio of 1.33 (95% CI = 1.14–1.56) for heart attacks compared to non-smoker/non-vapers."

Are vapers more likely to get a heart attack or are people with a stressful life with a higher risk of a heart attack more likely to be vapers?

Sorry. Could not resist.

This feels similar to the thing where "non-drinkers" in studies were composed of "people who had never drank alcohol" and also "recovering alcoholics".

I would imagine a chunk of vapers are people trying to transition from smoking cigarettes and still suffering from some of the ill effects.

Fair question! We would need a RCT with controls for that, perhaps one exists :)

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. Quitting cigarettes is about as hard as quitting heroin. In contrast, quitting coffee is much, much easier.

On a more personal note, when "The King's Speech" was in theaters I kept watching people smoke cigarettes on screen, and went out and bought some Drum. (Loose tobacco that comes with rolling papers.) Within a few days I started getting a voice in my head that told me it was "a good idea to go have a cigarette on the porch once I get out of bed," or "it's a good idea to have a cigarette when you get home." It was really creepy, I've never had a substance put ideas in my head 24+ hours after it was out of my system.

Nicotine is only addictive when the delivery method causes a concentration/time spike in the bloodstream. Cigarettes, vaping, and gum in particular cause large concentration spikes, but many other delivery mechanisms do not.

I've been on nicotine patches for several years (treating ADHD - very effective) and I'm not addicted at all. I still forget and my wife often has to remind me to put on one! There are no reports to the contrary among patch users.

In fact, even moderate pipe smoking reportedly isn't addictive - although it certainly is pleasurable (partly due to the nicotine, but mostly due to other compounds in the smoke). Pipe tobacco doesn't have all the additives (and nicotine salts) that cigarettes have; moreover, unlike cigarette smoking, pipe smoking normally does not involve inhalation—all of which smoothes and limits the nicotine blood concentration/time curve significantly compared to cigarettes and vaping, thus eliminating most of the addictive potential.

More info on nicotine itself - this is essentially a very broad bibliography with some commentary mixed in: https://gwern.net/nicotine

I've thankfully never had to quit cigarettes or heroin, but in my experience quitting coffee is awful. 3-5 days of migraine-level headaches and nausea. And the whole time you're thinking, "all this could go away with just one little cup of coffee, which all the studies say has health benefits even. Just one little cup"

I absolutely can NOT relate.

I've spent years as very heavy coffee and/or tea drinker but I have never been addicted to it, either physically or psychologically. I can (and sometimes do!) switch from heavy consumption to going days without it and I don't notice a difference.

In fact, I barely even feel any effects of caffeine at all. Never have.

I've known 2 people who were previously addicted to heroin but had been able to quit. Both of them were still dependent on nicotine.

I've witnessed something similar, seeing someone quit a hard drug habit but still being stuck on nicotine for a few years before finally quitting. However, I don't think this says much about the inherent addictiveness of nicotine vs hard drugs, because it seems like the motivation to quit the hard drugs would be much higher. They're far more destructive in the short term, both to health and relationships.

Quitting nicotine ends up being a lifetime battle for most people in my experience.

I’ve know too many people who simply cannot quit smoking, even when it’s clear they’re rotting from the inside out.

Nicotine addiction is on an entirely different level than caffeine.

> 3-5 days of migraine-level headaches and nausea...

A single sip of coffee, or a cup of good black tea generally alleviates these symptoms. I had to drink a sip of coffee on day 4 while quitting coffee, and all my headache was gone.

It was very hard for me to quit caffeine for this reason too. Eventually I succeeded by tapering very carefully over 3 months. This allowed me to avoid all withdrawal symptoms.

Why quit coffee if it has health benefits?

Great question! A couple of reasons.

The simplest is that I dislike being dependent on any substance.

A more nuanced reason is that I want to be able to use caffeine as a tool. A cup of coffee is the largest dose of caffeine that I am comfortable taking at any one time. If I already have caffeine tolerance at the level of a daily coffee habit, caffeine has lost much of its utility to me. However, if my tolerance is lower than that, I can really feel it when I do occasionally have use for a cup of coffee (e.g. the day before code freeze.)

Currently my caffeine intake is a cup of tea[0]. This is at the level where I don't hate myself if I miss it[1], and I can still use coffee as a tool on occasion. Also, you can pry my tea out of my cold dead hands.

[0] Note that how much caffeine a cup of tea has is much more nuanced than "black vs green". Cultivar, terroir, steep time are much more important to caffeine levels than how the tea is processed. In fact if anything, green tea cultivars have been shown to have, on average, very slightly more caffeine than black[2].

[1] I feel it, but it's not 3-5 days of migraines

[2] Y. Zuo et al, Simultaneous determination of catechins, caffeine and gallic acids in green, Oolong, black and pu-erh teas using HPLC with a photodiode array detector, Talanta 57 (2002) 307–316

> I want to be able to use caffeine as a tool.

Same here. All my daily coffee drinker friends say coffee has no effect on them. I drink it ~4-6 times a month (when I'm very busy) and I can feel the effects from one cup almost all day. More than two cups actually is quite uncomfortable.

Agreed. I would also add that something can simultaneously provide health benefits in one area and costs in others. If the costs outweigh the benefits, quitting makes sense despite the benefits.

Insomnia: Sometimes I'm still wired at midnight from the 1 cup from my Kerrig at 8AM.

I get weird swings in my caffeine tolerance, so I only consume caffeine 1-2 times a week, or less.

Caffeine can also cause weird mood swings. Its effects are similar to cocaine, just somewhat muted because the delivery mechanism is slower.

On caffeine I am very skittish, cannot take naps and sleep quality suffers which affects my memory and optimism.

Why quit coffee even if it's health neutral? Coffee is amazing.

You could drink decaf I suppose. I’m skeptical of the alleged health benefits from coffee but at least it’s unlikely they come from caffeine itself.

It must depend on the person. I used to smoke and drink coffee and it was much easier for me to quit smoking. I just stopped one day (12 years ago) and never looked back.

In contrast quitting caffeine took me several tries and I had to very carefully taper over the course of months to eventually be able to do it.

I also quit alcohol and that was pretty easy too. I used to drink every day and then I stopped without much trouble.

Definitely depends on the person. I've heard from many people very similar to you. For me, I quit dipping twenty years ago, and I still get occasional cravings for it, especially right after a meal (which is when I used to dip). It was heavenly, but damn I'm guessing my two-year light habit (one to two dips per day at most, and several days without at times) is going to leave me scarred for a lifetime. Though to be fair, it may not have been the nicotine. It's definitely psychological for me.

Yeah, I think this is one of those things where there can be pretty wild deviation from the mean. One of my uncles quit a 30-year smoking habit about 10 years ago, and the only reason he waited so long was because he had heard for decades how hard it is to quit. However, like you he just stopped one day and that was it.

(My family credits his success in nicotine cessation to having previously kicked a 20-year heroin addiction. It would be interesting to see if you can “get good” at overcoming addictions, or if every substance is different for every person.)

I stopped smoking cold turkey in 2013 and it wasn’t very hard, but I’ve never moved beyond the feeling of wanting to smoke. It definitely does something to your brain permanently.

How proud I was of myself when I finally kicked the smoking habit

Really nothing; you're correct to think of it in the same category as caffeine. Both addictive, yet safe.

But vaporizers have more than nicotine. There's other chemicals needed to produce vaporizer fluid, and it's far too soon to tell if they are safe. Even though most of them have been in the food supply, they haven't been inhaled at scale. We already found one that wasn't safe (Vitamin E Acetate), because it was causing very obvious problems. What about the non-obvious problems?

A more direct comparison to caffeine is a nicotine (not tobacco) pouch.

Aren’t nicotine’s vasoconstriction worse than coffee’s (at regular consumption levels)?

Nicotine addiction is chronic and very hard to break. You can reset caffeine tolerance and dependence in 10 days.

Actually with vaping it becomes pretty easy to quit. You just taper down the nicotine slowly until you're on nothing and eventually you just kind of stop because you don't feel the need to do it anymore.

What about body's response? Is it easy to curb?

I was drinking 2 liters of coffee per day while finishing my Ph.D.. Next week I wasn't drinking, and after that I occasionally drank half a cup per day. This was seven years ago, and I still drink half a cup, because I like the taste of coffee.

I have at least a dozen vaping friends who said they started to stop smoking. Now at least half of them have heavily souped up, customized e-cigs. Two of them are making their own liquids with nicotine, rest are using bog-standard vapes.

None of them stopped smoking or nicotine intake, which was the goal of all of them.

This is such an edge case on quitting a caffeine addiction. 2 liters is an INSANE amount of coffee to be drinking daily.

Kudos to you but let's not pretend this is the average experience of people breaking even much milder levels of caffeine consumption.

I did my research before letting coffee loose on my body.

The coffee acts by blocking tiredness/sleep receptors on the brain, so brain builds more of them to work normally. This is how coffee dependence and tolerance builds.

When you stop coffee, brain detects that the number of receptors is too high and starts to break them down. This is why you get the headaches.

That "one week" period is not an edge case, it's the science of it. If it was proved to be harder on that research, I'd never let my body to reach 2L/day levels.

>I did my research before letting coffee loose on my body.

Was this research similar to you drawing conclusions about nicotine based on the handful of your friends that vape?

Yes. I read papers about both subjects. Also read papers about other drugs because of an addicted friend who I don't talk with anymore.

What I gave was an example, and looks like you're upset about it.

Please keep in mind that while itsoktocry, itsnotoktosnark at HN [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fwiw I thought this comment was the snarky one, not GP. Given that this snarky comment also tried to call out GP for snark and refer to the HN guidelines against snark, it also became highly ironic. I would guess that's why you've been downvoted.

That comment is not my best by any means, and I see where you’re coming from, and respect your view. Thanks for bringing it up.

However, language is both subjective and culture dependent (plus, words doesn’t carry tone and sound). If somebody asks the same question the same way in my native language to my face, it’s not only snarky, but it’s rude (and mildly offensive depending on the context).

I don’t think I’m expected to know the all possible cultural styles, and take anything and everything kindly and politely, all day, every day.

Henceforth, I tone matched the comment according to my perception. I might be correct or wrong according some dominant discussion culture here, and people may perceive me the snarkier one according to their cultures. I can’t judge them, but this doesn’t change the fact that the style of question is rude on my side, and I have the right to respond equally (to my perception).

Normally I’m a much softer person and don’t write sharp comments, so that one is an exception.

Lastly I’ll be posting a research tome on caffeine addiction/withdrawal to the person who asked, so you might one to follow that thread too.

Have a nice day :)

All make sense to me! And yes for sure there was some snark in the comment you replied to. If it helps, the specific part of your comment that I felt elevated it to a higher level was the reference to their username, which was ad homimen/personal snark, whereas both theirs and the first part of your reply was snark directed at the research or the methods.

Likewise have a nice day, and thanks for the tip on the research tome! I'm definitely interested to see it :-)

Honestly cigs were way easier to quit cause theyre inconvenient. Vapes can be used anywhere discretely.

Easier != Easy

Can you link a study for this? I'd like to read more.

Here's a small research tome I collected yesterday. Please note that I have access to all of the papers' full texts. I was unable to find the original papers I read at that time (i.e. 7 years ago!), but found the video which brought me to the entrance of the rabbit hole.

- The base video I have talked about is from TedED. It's here [0].

- This study was done on rats in 1985 but verifies that caffeine tolerance is real [1].

- Another controlled study on humans about caffeine tolerance [2] involved one group taking caffeine and the others taking a placebo. Caffeine drinkers taking the placebo reported withdrawal symptoms, and non-drinkers taking caffeine reported overstimulation.

- A meta-study [3] details the symptoms and durations of caffeine withdrawal's effects. The paper cites that effects persist between 2 to 9 days, and the peak of the syndrome is around 20 to 51 hours. It also notes that caffeine introduction during this phase alleviates symptoms (This study basically confirms that what I have gone through after I stopped drinking coffee as I noted in a previous comment).

- This interesting study [4] explores the body's caffeine response via blood pressure change. Subjects are administered high doses of caffeine, and blood pressure is monitored. After day three, the blood pressure normalizes, and spikes disappear. The abstinence required to reset the pressure response is less than three weeks, pointing that the body resets caffeine tolerance in less than three weeks.

If you need the papers, or want more resources, please let me know.

Have a nice day.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOjvYRgjCyU

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0024320585...

[2]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02245285

[3]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-004-2000-x

[4]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC370671/

Yes, nicotine is much worse than caffeine for your heart.

Nicotine is a highly addictive stimulant

We socialized people to realize smoking is dirty, then went ahead and legalized marijuana so now kids who would never have smoked cigarettes are filling their lungs with tar: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/14/health/marijuana-smoke-wellne.... At least cigarettes made people skinny and hot.

> At least cigarettes made people skinny and hot.

Until you lean in for a kiss, or even a hug.

I was in college when the bars in my college town went smoke free. It was noticeable how all of a sudden I didn't feel like my night needed to end with a shower just because I went out and didn't want to lay in bed smelling like an ashtray. So yeah, well before the hug.

And the things it does to your skin. You can tell a smoker from across the room by looking at their face.

Smoking was a signal between men and women that we were on the same page. It was also a way for women to initiate a conversation with a man without coming on too strong.

See also:

The $4 billion gum industry has gone into freefall, with sales down 11% and volume down 20% in the past five years.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3033451/why-nobody-likes-to-chew...

Once we legalize MDMA that will pick right back up again!

Add some probiotics, call it keto, give it a more modern packaging and palette, advertise on the L train, charge $6 a pack, give it a person's name like "Greta".

Or for example, try to climb the stairs

It doesn't take a kiss or hug, I have a visceral reaction to just talking to or walking by someone who stinks of cigarette smoke, it's disgusting to me. I'll still assert that all people are innately deserving of compassion and respect, but it takes effort and a choice when I smell that.

As a father, an uncle, and a dog owner who has changed a lot of diapers and cleaned up a lot of poop (at ~10 years x 365 days x 1-10 events/day x ~1 lbs/event, probably a literal ton of shit) and been numbed to the smell, I'd literally prefer to smell feces in your adult Depends than cigarette smoke on your breath. It's not "hot" at all, completely the opposite.

Socialization is a funny thing. I have the same reaction you're describing to dog smell, but I'm not troubled by cigarette smoke at all. (My dad was a multiple packs a day smoker when I was a kid.) I actually find it quite pleasant, even the stale tobacco smell in old motel rooms.

This is so the case - I never smoked myself but my college years were filled with others smoking; it didn't bother me at all until a few years removed when I return to visit.

It's not entirely off-putting it but it is certainly noticeable.

I grew up in and around a family of smokers, always in the smoking section of a bar, etc. I don't smoke myself and have been away from it for decades.

I recently attended an event hosted at an American Legion Post and went to the bar there where smoking was allowed (and done, frequently). The scent first hit me quite negatively, but something triggered in my mind and honestly made it feel more like home. It was an odd feeling of both not really enjoying the immediate sensation while also triggering positive nostalgia memories.

As someone with asthma who has trouble breathing around cigarette smoke I agree it's nasty.

Personal anecdote (about blood pressure):

I have smoked less than one cigarette in my entire life, but for two decades was a daily cannaburner. In the past two months, I have almost entirely stopped combusting to consume (i.e. no flame/burning), and instead used a Volcano.

My blood pressure has dropped -20/-15 in those two months of not burning.

YMMV, n=1, "not a controlled study."

Your link does not support your assertion that more kids are smoking weed in non-prohibition states. Non-prohibition states do, however, have greater access to other delivery methods, like edibles, so I'm not sure this assertion can be defended at all.

Way more of those kids are vaping marijuana, which has an orders of magnitude lower threat profile than both smoking AND tobacco vape oil rigs.

Also, even full smoking of marijuana is less dirty than smoking cigs, and a significant amount of marijuana smokers use things like bongs, bubblers, and other water filtration systems which do (slightly) reduce the harm of the smoke.

Marijuana is straight up harm reduction over big tobacco.

There is no such thing as "tobacco vape oil"

I would trust vape juice 1000x over thc oil, especially if it was unflavored. Vape juice is three ingredients and very easy to get their pure forms. Vape oil is pretty sketchy and has to be done very carefully.

But thc gummies are almost certainly safer than any of the above.

> Way more of those kids are vaping marijuana, which has an orders of magnitude lower threat profile than both smoking AND tobacco vape oil rigs.

Very much depends on how you define threat.

I'd very much prefer that the driver in the other lane is smoking a ciggy rather that vaping marijuana in the interest of preserving their individual health.

Stoned drivers will actually slow the fuck down and often don’t tailgate. The average ciggie smoking driver is an asshole who will tailgate in their oversized dodge ram pickup with their brights on.

> Marijuana is straight up harm reduction over big tobacco

Not as big of a harm reduction as people not smoking anything, which is where we were heading in the 1990s before marijuana legalization.

Curious, what makes having cigarettes have low body fat? or in general they get undernourished?

nicotine activates a pathway in the brain that suppresses appetite

For me, cigarettes eliminate hunger.

Nicotine acts as stimulate and appetite suppressant to some people.

But since cigarettes also accelerate aging, you don't stay "hot" for too long.

I always assumed smoking made all food taste like shit.

pretty much. Once you stop smoking everything (including yourself) smells and tastes better

I've often wondered if our complete demonization of all smoking was a bit of a disservice to the sporadic smoke that likely helped with managing one's weight which has its own health benefits.

The problem came from the fact that sporadic smoking didn't serve the profits of tobacco companies in the way they would have liked.

The shoving of high-fructose corn syrup and other calorie-rich ingredients into everything sold in the US to increase consumption (again, for profits) has a much greater impact on weight management, though.

And the ones responsible are the same. Much of the obesity crisis is caused by tobacco companies investing in food and employing the same advertisement and lobbying tactics as before [1]. The penalties were too light, really the behaviour should have resulted in serious jail time and confiscation of all assets.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction...

> The shoving of high-fructose corn syrup and other calorie-rich ingredients into everything sold in the US to increase consumption (again, for profits) has a much greater impact on weight management, though.

It doesn't have to be some conspiracy to make people addicted to calories. People are (relatively) rich, food is cheap, and eating feels good.

I think my GP isn't suggesting that it's a conspiracy at all. Just that sugar is in almost every where you can put it even if it doesn't need it just to hook you on sugar a bit more.

If people are genuinely happy they don't start doing things to excess. Eating to excess is usually an attempt to distract oneself from something else, a 'cope'.

That only happens in a society that is not rich and happy.

If people are actually rich and happy you see them take up expensive sports, golf, tennis, horseback riding. They rarely get fat unless there's something personally wrong with them.

You’re projecting culturally-determined views about what “rich and happy” people do onto others. Rich people taking up sports and eating in moderation is a WASP thing. It’s much less of a thing in the south. And it’s not a thing at all in say the Indian subcontinent, where it’s unusual for adults to play sports.

I don't think so.

Swedes aren't WASPs, but we are this way. I think Spanish people and Germans are too. I agree that it is as you say in India, but surely both Indian-Americans and Asian-American must become a bit this other way, since they'll probably work with many WASPs, and surely they get affected by media and general societal expectations?

I was talking about American subgroups. The moralizing around sports and exercise tends to be a WASP thing (which refers specifically to northeastern WASPs, not anyone who fits the literal definition of the term). Among Asian Americans it depends on where you are—they tend to assimilate into the local culture.

My point is that suggesting that people who eat and gain weight must be unhappy and coping, because happy rich people play sports, is a culturally based assumption. American WASPs and Northern Europeans absolutely stand out in that respect. Even in East Asian cultures with strong social pressure to not gain weight, adults playing sports isn’t common.

Why do you say moralising? Surely sports are something people do because they're fun, and prestige sports, to demonstrate skill, finesse and the kind of complete capability that engaging in the sport at a high level requires.

I think when people have more of their needs fulfilled, it becomes more rational to tackle the final bits. When you're poor, you care about food and having somewhere to live, then at an intermediate level it's about paying the bills and not falling down into the poverty hole, then at a higher level it's succeeding at university, doing good research, making a successful company, but when you have all that, and you can't lose any of these things, then you start also wanting other things, and then playing sports reasonably often becomes extremely natural.

If someone is getting fat, or eating to excess, there has to be something wrong. Something stressing them, something they want to turn away from, to distract themselves. Happy people don't have such needs.

>The shoving of high-fructose corn syrup and other calorie-rich ingredients into everything sold in the US to increase consumption (again, for profits)

Do you have any evidence of this conspiracy? Perhaps it's just food producers adding an abundant, cheap sweetener to their crap because that's what the market demands?

Read the ingredients and buy or don't buy. People need to have a bit of personal accountability in these things.

Better yet, buy the ingredients and make your own. Most food is not hard to make from scratch, tastes better, and is healthier because you see what goes into it and can choose to moderate elements.

But it takes a little time and a bit of care.

The time is the rub.

If you're stuck in traffic for time measured in hours, you're not baking fresh bread during the week.

Where are you finding many options in products without HFCS or additives?

Even the much-higher-end supermarkets near me don't have meaningful alternatives for a lot of products where I am, and I'm in a HCOL area.

What sort of products are you looking for?

I read the ingredients on everything (I'm a vegetarian) and I don't buy anything with corn syrup or added sugar that isn't either 1) a once-in-a-while treat or 2) something I'd add a bit of sweetener to if I were to make it myself.

I don't shop anywhere special.

I've not yet been unable to find something without corn syrup (I don't feel that "high fructose" or not changes how much of a filler it is), but it can be a pain in the ass to read the ingredients on everything on the shelf.

If I were FDA dictator for a day, I'd requite a corn logo on anything with corn syrup, and crossed corn for anything with HFCS.

Now calorie inflation can be done with sugar, too - the real deal is to have things that aren't "diabetes inducing sweet".

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy. I'm saying it's fact. Humans like sweet foods because with the exception of felids, pretty much every species on the planet gains a survival advantage by consuming as many calories as possible when eating. This means that our brains feel rewarded when we eat sugary foods, and rewarded behavior is repeated behavior. That wasn't a problem when such foods were rare but now that they're available pretty much anywhere on-demand, yeah, it's a problem.

Personal accountability can only go so far when you're shown ads for sugary cereals and candy every morning as a kid.

Contrast that with, say, the current marijuana market in my region. It's regulated, it's only available at a relatively high price from licensed dispensaries. There are billboards but not much in the way of TV or radio ads. It's not marketed to kids. If you get addicted to marijuana in the Lower Midwestern US, that's a lack of personal accountability because you can't point to all of the stuff that's used to make junk food popular and say "they got me addicted!".

LOL "the market demands". Sure, and Opium was also demanded by the market, should we just add it to all food items?

No we shouldn't. But we also shouldn't pretend that demand for opium is manufactured by evil people. There's high demand for opium because it makes people feel really good.

The same thing is true for junk food. People eat it because it tastes good. How much food should be regulated is up for debate but there's something irritating about this reflex to blame every problem on some shadowy cabal of rich people.

I highly doubt "the sporadic" smoke helped anyone with weight. More and more sugar and other junk has been dumped into our food to make it tastier than the competition and society has taught us to "just grab something" rather than taking an hour and cooking a meal. We didn't get fat because we smoked less. I'm sure a few did but all evidence points at reduced exercise and more junk stuff into our mouth holes as the culprit.

> then went ahead and legalized marijuana so now kids who would never have smoked cigarettes

...Except marijuana absolutely isn't legalized, so this is completely incorrect. And in the minority of states that currently ignore the illegality of marijuana, they impose the same age restrictions as cigarettes.

In the USA, “THC-A weed” is now legalized as hemp nationwide. But the secret is that this is just 100% normal weed. There’s literally not a single thing different about “THC-A weed” vs. “Amsterdam” or “California” weed.

THC-A is just the natural form of good old delta-9 THC while the plant is still freshly harvested and unheated. THC-A is the natural, standard weed chemical that converts to “good old delta-9 THC” at 100% efficiency as soon as the weed is heated for consumption, or while the plant sits around in storage for a long time. The old laws counted THC-A as contributing to delta-9 THC content, you summed them together or converted them before testing to decide if it was hemp. Now it’s treated as a different cannabinoid and only delta-9 content determines if it is hemp or weed.

So yes, weed is now legal nationwide is the USA, and sold in brick-and-mortar stores in all 50 states…it’s just gone completely and utterly under-the-political-radar.

Also “good old delta-9 THC” edibles are legal now as well, at very high strengths, because as long as the total weight is <0.3% delta-9 THC its a “hemp gummie”.

> Except marijuana absolutely isn't legalized

I don't know where you live, but I buy my marijuana from a government store. There exist other countries.

Yeah, but we know where rayiner lives -- the US -- where it is not legalized. So we can refute his specific claim.

Marijuana is legal for recreational use in the states where most people live. I'm in a Romney 2012 county and there's a giant dispensary on the main street that looks like an Apple store.

It is still a schedule 1 drug subject to criminal federal prosecution for possession and sale. The feds are just ignoring their obligation to uphold the law.

Lots of things that are de jure illegal are de facto legal. In many US States, marijuana meets this description.

To claim "marijuana absolutely isn't legalized" is completely incorrect. Something being illegal is more complicated than what the above poster makes it seem, unless a definition of "illegality" is used that's so broad that it's meaningless.

The fact that it’s technically illegal under federal law may be relevant in some context, but not to my specific point, which is about the effect of the law on individual behavior. As you acknowledge, the federal government isn’t enforcing the federal law. To people in states where it’s been legalized, the federal law is a legal technicality. I had to remind my Oregonian in-laws not to bring weed on the plane recently because they forgot that they’d be in federal jurisdiction passing through the airport. (Their logic was it’s legal in Oregon and legal in Maryland…)

My point is that the legal and cultural barriers that kept young adults from heading down to their local dispensary to buy dope have disappeared. So while we were on the cusp of freeing people from smoking in the 1990s, we have just made it easy and effectively legal to smoke a different thing, and everyone seems to have forgotten that inhaling smoke into your lungs is bad for you.

Not how the law works at all. Federal law applies to interstate issues, or when local LEO requests assistance. When a state legalizes, it means directing local LEO to stop asking for that assistance. Interstate and border checkpoints absolutely still exist and DEA absolutely still pursues trafficking. Businesses in non-prohibition states buy from in-state suppliers and deal primarily in cash. The feds have no obligation to drive into these places and start flipping tables.

I mean its literally at this time in the process of being downgraded to probably schedule 2 or even schedule 3 once research is ACTUALLY allowed.

> Except marijuana absolutely isn't legalized, so this is completely incorrect.

I don't know for sure, but does this imply that the FDA can't really regulate these dispensaries? Since the federal government's official stance on marijuana is "you shouldn't be using it anyway!" then presumably they don't feel the need to ensure purity of the product for dispensaries.

I've said for years that I'm the only person I know that D.A.R.E. was actually effective on; I'm way too much of a coward to consume things that aren't regulated. Even as a teenager I never did any drugs because I was afraid that it might be cut with something horrible like meth and I wouldn't have any recourse for them doing that.

I'm sure most dispensaries are fine, but I'm still kind of afraid of something that doesn't have FDA oversight.

Based on the recent decision by the DEA to move marijuana from schedule 1 to schedule 3, that could be changing (insofar as legalization goes anyways)

The grandparent commenter was trying to blame current societal ills on the legality of marijuana and the legal availability to children, both of which are plainly incorrect, so any future legality cannot have had any bearing due to the causal nature of the universe. And even if it becomes legal someday, all current precedents involve treating marijuna like cigarettes as far as age restrictions go.

> The grandparent commenter was trying to blame current societal ills on the legality of marijuana and the legal availability to children

I'm blaming marijuana legalization for young people smoking marijuana, when they wouldn't smoke cigarettes. The fact that marijuana isn't legal in all states, or is illegal at the federal level, is immaterial to my point. In the places where my family and I live (D.C. and Oregon), marijuana has been legal for a decade. It was made legal in Oregon in 2015, after being decriminalized in 1973. Dispensaries are all over the place. In D.C. it's been legal to grew, possess, and barter since 2015.

The fact that it's illegal under federal law has no effect on people's use of it, because the feds do not bother to enforce that law on individuals. My neighborhood in downtown D.C. reeked of pot smoke way back in 2016.

> I'm blaming marijuana legalization for young people smoking marijuana, when they wouldn't smoke cigarettes.

Young people who would never smoke cigarettes smoking marijuana was already happening the 2000s, long before any state approached legalization.

I'd be interested to see actual data on that. For example, a Canadian study done after a year of legalization found that more youths tried marijuana, but that they were trying it later than average and the overall usage of cannabis among youth remained the same. Interestingly, there was also an increase to the perception of harm from using cannabis among the youth surveyed.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2022.09.003

Schedule 3 is a lower standard for researchers and prescribers but it does not fundamentally change the legal status of recreational, self-elected use. Other class 3 drugs include e.g., ketamine, a weird amphetamine (benzphetamine), and some drugs with the opioid codeine. None of these are legalized for recreational use. And my impression is that sentencing guidelines for marijuana just specify it by name rather than relying on its former schedule 1 status. It's a move in the right direction, but only barely.

Health risk is health risks

20 years from now the cigarette will have a comeback as "totally natural", " 100% bio", "no batteries needed"...

This is already beginning I think. Right now usually with some irony but that's how these things start sometimes.

I don’t see the problem with being addicted to pure nicotine. It’s completely safe, causes next to no health issues, is not carcinogenic, actually has health benefits for acuity and long term memory. Addiction in itself is not a bad thing.

Nicotine use without smoking raises heart rate, constricts blood vessels, raises blood pressure, and remodels the cardiovascular system and individual cells. Those cardiovascular changes are associated with stroke and dementia. It stimulates the mesolimbic dopamine system which causes downregulation of dopamine receptors, addiction, and feeling less good when you aren't ingesting nicotine.

Here is an overview: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8026694/

There isn’t a single mention of dementia in that paper. The only mention of stroke is associated with cigarette smoking. It talks primarily about nicotine’s effect on the vascular system and the effects seem minimal, even in mice.

Here’s a pretty comprehensive list of the benefits of nicotine and the lack of significant side effects.

https://gwern.net/nicotine#benefits

Here’s the conclusion he came up with after significant perusal of the research

“Nicotine is pretty much harmless, the studies are clear, the relevant areas & studies comprehensible with not too much work, and I feel I can discuss it with a clean conscience. Really, about the worst you can say about pure nicotine use is that it might be a gateway to tobacco or that one’s blood pressure might increase, which are issues that can be easily addressed empirically via additional studies/surveys or by eg. measuring one’s own blood pressure after taking nicotine, respectively.”

Linking nicotine to dementia, which study?

For all the other things, the same can be said about coffee. Are we banning coffee?

Except coffee is associated with lower all cause mortality (likely due to the amount of fiber extracted in coffee drinks) [0]. Do you have any evidence of decreased all cause mortality associated with any nicotine product?

https://youtu.be/IBB_8vR7wpU?si=0Cmq26oBQ-9dwUNN

I think you mean “dependency” and not “addiction.” Addiction is by definition a bad thing:

“Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behaviour that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences.”

You’re right about nicotine though. It’s the delivery that’s the problem, in addition to the addictive properties which make the harm of the delivery less salient. Emphasis mine. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction?wprov=sfti1#

Anyone else remember when "internet addiction" was a thing?

That’s my point. A nicotine addiction does not satisfy the “despite substantial harm and other negative consequences” corollary. Using a high quality vape pen and unflavored vegetable glycerine as the base, the delivery issue is somewhat resolved.

Nicotine DOES cause health issues, most of them are extreme versions of caffeine, and due to the severity should be controlled a little similar to alcohol.

What are they. I’ve done a lot of research and the most I could find is a slightly increased cardiovascular risk. It has been a few years since I looked into it so maybe there is new research I’m missing. Maybe you’re referring to a nicotine overdose which is a separate discussion.

Have you had said addiction, and if so have you tried to quit it?

I do have the addiction and I have quit before but it’s really hard. That was when I smoked cigarettes and needed to quit because I was severely harming my body. I now vape with a 100% vegetable glycerin and nicotine mix that is fully unflavored so I haven’t found the need to quit again because frankly the health risks are very low.

I’ve quit as well and imo there’s no “quit before,” it’s quit or still doing it.

I respect your opinion but I can’t really take a nicotine addict’s claim that the substance isn’t harmful, when the addict hasn’t actually ever quit the chemical.

Somehow along the way “quit” got subbed in with “vaping but it’s basically the same as quit.” Biggest marketing con the industry has ever pulled.

Yes! I wholeheartedly agree. You can only quit once. You may have stopped before, but if you ever pick it back up then you didn't quit.

Turning quit into a waffle word takes away its impact and probably eases some psychological constraints for people.

Oh, I am not saying I quit. I meant to say I made an attempt at quitting and succeeded for sometime. I am not calling vaping “quitting”.

What does my quitting have to do with its effects? If nicotine is dangerous it’s going to be that way if I quit of not.

Try to quit fully, long term, and then tell me the chemical isn’t dangerous after that process is complete for you.

We did something similar with prescription opioids and medical amphetamine relatives are extremely regulated.

It's really just alcohol, tobacco, and now marijuana that get this treatment.

Vaping has made it so that now there's no need to hide the smell from parents

I hate that my smoking cessation aid is being ruined because gas station attendants can't be bothered to check IDs.

I'd welcome those kinds of regulations to be applied to oil and car companies. Arguably they've caused a lot more harm.

except now everyone who isn't on Ozempic, is obese.

You say it like that it is desirable. Unfortunately people perform better when they have nicotine, so the effect for society as a whole is non negligible if a huge mass of people get a slight performance bounce.

Smoking is annoying, disgusting, unhealthy etc. but we are way too quick to dismiss the possibility that nicotine itself may have been a civilization booster.

> Unfortunately people perform better when they have nicotine.

This is the first time I've ever heard someone bring this argument. Ignoring the health risks involved with nicotine, the 'performance boost' is negligible. It's less than caffeine.

> but we are way too quick to dismiss the possibility that nicotine itself may have been a civilization booster.

There are nicotine gums and patches available, and a very good reason you don't see people who don't smoke using them, because the idea of using nicotine as a performance enhancer is crazy.

A silly question, but why not just distribute cocaine or Adderall without prescription if you're concerned about performance? Where do you draw the line ?

It’s that crazy… I’m a masters degree student who has used nicotine in the form of low-dose patches and oral pouches as a cognitive enhancer for many years. Never felt compelled to use nicotine outside of focused work at the library and I also maintain a high level of cardiovascular fitness.

That's really interesting actually, I've never heard of this. What gave you the idea of using nicotine in the first place ? Do you also use caffeine etc ?

> [...] because the idea of using nicotine as a performance enhancer is crazy.

It's not [0]

[0] https://gwern.net/nootropic/nootropics#nicotine

> A silly question, but why not just distribute cocaine or Adderall without prescription if you're concerned about performance? Where do you draw the line ?

In certain parts of society that is what happens, including fun places like the European Parliament.

If you were to test YC applicants for Adderall (illicit or otherwise) I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were over half of them, and if you would be surprised you're naive.

I understand that it's ongoing and I'm by no means naïve, I'm no stranger to Adderall myself but what is being suggested is to have these substances as freely available as nicotine is today. I'm not suggesting to ban nicotine but I don't think it should be considered some kind of measurable performance improvement.

That said, I really don't know, it just doesn't seem right with me but I'm happy to be proven wrong and I see another interesting comment of someone who does use patches. So it's interesting, and strange to me.

There was a pretty good NPR piece some time back by a reporter who was quitting smoking. The reporter went on a pretty deep dive of this popular quitting-smoking self-help company that was based on some dude’s book, the gist of which was that everything about nicotine making you feel good and perform better is bullshit and the trouble with is entirely a mindset thing, and an irrational craving for something that only makes you feel worse, in fact.

The piece entertains this and struggles with it for a while, before turning to experts on the biochemistry of nicotine.

TL;DR: “omg, lol, of course it makes you feel awesome and enhances performance on mental tasks in particular, here’s a list of the exact ways it affects your body to 100% for-sure do those things, that’s part of why it’s so incredibly difficult to quit for many people”

While I don't doubt that there's a slight temporary productivity boost, I doubt it outweighs:

1) Lost years of productivity as people die early from lung cancer (my smoker granddad ended his career early because of it, a challenging maritime career that as I understand it has an increasing shortage of workers).

2) Healthcare resources being directed towards diseases directly caused by smoking. Tax money and individual money that could've been productively invested elsewhere, plus the working hours of healthcare professionals (another field with a shortage).

That's a very interesting, but completely ad-hoc theory.

The problem with these is that there are almost always equally plausible theories, and it's really hard to figure out which is correct.

Especially given the huge amount of effort that has gone into research on tobacco and nicotine (I guess millions of hours, if not more), I would definitely NOT say we are too quick to dismiss the possibility.

I'm sure you can find an interesting econometric paper presenting this argument, but then it would be more credible.

This has come up before here but unfortunately I'm right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Performance

Thanks, I take the ad-hoc theory back!

Opium War 2.0 - we have too much inertia to stop the "good times", and while everyone had the right to ruin their bodies, they're doing it out of complete ignorance.

The Western relationship to addictive substances is insane, and I hate to admit this, but to a certain extent Wang Huning's thesis about America is right.

Which non-Western utopias have avoided addictive substances? List them.

No one can avoid addictive substances, but at least countries like Singapore try to criminalize or heavily restrict their access via sin taxes AND prosecution of dealers.

The kind of model Canada and California follows could be helpful as well, if only prosecution and the stick was also used in conjunction with cracking down on black markets for drugs the same way provinces and CA do on moonshine.

But smoking and coffee are still popular throughout the rest of the world, and I don't think we top the leaderboard in alcohol consumption...

Tobacco usage in the US is much higher than peers in other developed countries [0] due to limited sin taxes and lack of enforcement of black market tobacco sales (eg. Cigarette smuggling).

Also, our rate of spirits consumption is higher than most developed countries and comparable to Russia [1]. Most other developed countries tend to stick to beer and wine.

[0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-who-smoke

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption

Your own links contradict your claims. The US is higher than some developed countries and lower than others. When looking at tobacco, you're doing a disservice to exclude smokeless tobacco products, which would significantly increase the numbers in many countries - including Norway and Sweden.

Additionally, whether or not Americans consume more spirits is pretty irrelevant when your link is looking at the equivalent of pure alcohol consumption, that shows the US is below countries like Germany, France, the UK, and Spain, and probably ends up being about average compared to western nations.

> to a certain extent Wang Huning's thesis about America is right

What is that?

Hyper-individualism leading to a nihilistic worldview.

Individuals absolutely should have autonomy to choose what they wish to do, but not if it has an impact on the rest of society.

Fundamentally, some amount of regulation (either via social norms or via actual laws) is needed, yet we as individuals will continue to fight each other while ignoring the core fact that we are all on the same team.

I strongly disagree with Wang and Xi, but on this part I am in agreement - individualism has gone too far in America (both economically and socially), and we need to return to our communitarian roots.

Patriotism previously worked as a check on hyper individualism in the US, tying people to a shared sense of national community.

Now that we collectively know too much about the harms perpetrated by our government, we have also lost that sense of unity and shared values and purpose.

Pretty much.

Access to information isn't bad, but we also need to remember that we're all part of the same team.

Increasingly, partisans on both sides of the political and social aisle don't actually care about the opposing side. They just want to win.

And this is why countries like Russia, China, and Iran have been so successful at weaponizing disinformation - it's being used by partisans on both sides to undermine the other, leading to chaos.

I haven't seen any evidence against "communitarianism" just being authoritarianism with happy words painted over it, pretending that there is a mandate of a community behind the dictators and oppression.

> "communitarianism" just being authoritarianism with happy words painted over it

There are various different definitions of "communitarianism" but the idealized American Town Hall model of direct democracy is a direct example of communitarianism at the local level.

Political Scientists and Philosophers (all of whom are mainstream btw) like Michael Walzer, Robert Putnam, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel all touch on a light form of communitarianism that directly connects with Democracy.

In a word, that it is a civilization without society, or perhaps a society without culture, which (by this lack) is engineering its own decay.

Not exactly. It's hard to translate but I'd recommend taking a read.

You wouldn't say "civilization without society" is pretty close to your first two paragraphs in your comment? Maybe I need a refresher.

"Society" and "Civilization" are very loaded terms, and by "Society" Wang specifically meant the community aspect of society.

For example, he is very positive about the kind of direct democracy he saw in Belmont, MA (the classic New England Town Meeting), and viewed that as a cornerstone of American society, along with a shared vision of innovation and development.

Fundamentally, the core pieces of America that Wang looked up to were the same pieces of policy and legislation that were pushed in the Progressive Era [0] as well as by FDR as part of his New Deal [1] and LBJ as part of his Great Society [2].

In essence, the vision that Wang and Xi are pushing within China today is basically an Authoritarian but also decentralized version of the Great Society and New Deal.

[0] - https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-wo...

[1] - https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-wo...

[2] - https://library.fiveable.me/apush/unit-8/great-society/study...

Thanks. I still think civilization without society works pretty well as a (necessarily lossy) compression. The US as a civilization without a sense of communitarian civics. The presence of such in rare cases (e.g. Belmont) puts its broader absence into sharper relief.

> The presence of such in rare cases (e.g. Belmont)

I thought it's fairly common to live in a town with a town hall meetings or PTA meetings? Or visit city hall or met your city council in elementary school?

It's the norm in most suburban towns (use the local PTA meeting as the Town Meeting instead depending on the suburb).

If you live within a big city, then it's a different story of course (city government is absolutely not community driven), but only 12% of Americans live in Urban areas/cities [0] and 69% live in suburbs.

[0] - https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cusrancvs.pdf

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