Hacker News Reader

Comment by bentt | Hacker News Reader

We are bad at most things that are complex and require behavior change. Maybe our best victory in recent years has been the vilification of tobacco. It didn't get any less physically pleasurable to smoke, but the combination of political, social, economic, and medical pressure has turned the tide.

It takes a lot.

View on HN

Yup. A lot of people blame environmental hazards for perceived clusters of cancer patients in neighborhoods. But behaviors are much bigger contributors to cancer risk these days. The best ways by far to avoid cancer these days are (1) don't smoke, (2) maintain a healthy BMI, (3) don't drink, and (4) eat plenty of vegetables. If you want to further reduce your risk of dying of cancer, (5) get the recommended screenings, and (6) get regular physical checkups and talk to your doctor about any new health problems.

Reducing one's cancer risk is well within the power of any person. But "People should just have more willpower" is an ineffectual public policy.

And none of these changes are permanent!

Look at the cultural attitudes towards smoking pot. Often the same cities/governments/people what were fining cigarette smoking out of existence suddenly have a hands-off attitude towards pot.

In NYC its illegal to smoke or drink in parks, but you can walk through a park reeking of pot and see cops writing tickets to the 2 kids who hid their beer too poorly.

Not to nitpick but smelling like pot is not a crime.

But smoking pot is equally unhealthy as smoking tobacco

Nope, that's a plain lie. Cancer risks don't line up between the two at all.

https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effec...

You're right - it might actually be worse, but is still not well studied.

Ctrl+F "cancer" 1 result, in the footer, unrelated to the page content

So what you actually meant was "it's definitely not as bad as cigarettes" given your lack of evidence despite the link ? Or what, this makes no sense

Smoking in public parks is

Smelling like pot in a park doesn't mean you smoked in that park though, you can walk through a park smelling like cigarettes too.

OK for the pedants let me be more clear - "NYPD writes tickets to people drinking beers in the park but not to smokers, for reasons".

Anecdote lines up with actual data from GOOG: In a three-year period, the NYPD issued a total of 440 tickets for public smoking violations.

In the period between January and March of this year, the NYPD wrote over 7,000 tickets for public drinking. This represents a significant increase compared to the same period in 2022, with roughly 5,000 more tickets issued.

You'd need to know the frequency of each crime to determine if enforcement was different.

I suggest reading about the different effects of smoking typical amounts of tobacco vs cannabis, and comparing the magnitude of the damage, both at the individual and societal level.

I really dislike the smell of cannabis and can count with the fingers of one hand how often I vape it per year, so I am not exactly an advocate, but comparing it with tobacco is silly.

I'm doubtful of any motivated reasoning/research that one type of smoke in your lungs is dramatically better than another type of smoke in your lungs... compared with.. no smoke in your lungs.

Have an edible, do whatever you want in your own home, enjoy. But don't rationalize the laissez faire attitude towards one type of secondhand smoke over another.

How much does a typical cannabis smoker consume per day? How much does a typical smoker consume per day? See the difference in magnitude?

Also, second hand smoke where? Do you often have people smoking indoors with you?

It's not just the relative harm of a particular dose. People lighting up a joint a day, let alone per week, are not being exposed to anywhere near the dose of the classic multiple pack a day chainsmokers that used to be everywhere and now hardly seem to exist. Even if they're equally harmful per unit, they're not equally harmful as habits to have.

It's just simple math.

Look, I was a Tobacco smoker, and the level of addiction you have with Tobacco is on another level.

I was smoking easily 20 cigs a day. I don't know anyone, even the most stoner of stoners, who smokes 20 joints a day. That doesn't even sound, like, logistically possible.

Obviously smoking anything is bad, but getting an order of magnitude or more less smoke HAS to be a big win.

Also nicotine. Nicotine even by itself is a problem. Don't listen to Zyn bros, nicotine is in fact evil and it does destroy your cardiovascular system over time.

All the cool kids are back to smoking because vaping became too mainstream.

Yea. My daughter is 15, and while I don't think she smokes, when we've talked about the dangers of vaping and smoking, she has said that she would never vape, just because it's so lame, but that she finds smoking so much cooler.

She's right, smoking is much cooler.

Electronic cigarretes should be made at least as bad smelling as the original ones. Without the foul stench that acted as a barrier of entry before, I suspect vaping has potential to eventually get >50% of the population hooked.

In the Netherlands, we banned flavoured vapes. Now every 12-16 year old has a vape dealer. Just banning is not enough. Society needs to decide vaping is as bad as smoking.

Currently it's still somewhat accepted to vape inside of public buildings. Which, IMHO, is insane

> Society needs to decide vaping is as bad as smoking.

Why though?

Unfortunately the evidence that vaping is as bad as smoking is mostly from faulty studies, p-hacked studies, or misinformation. Which will ultimately blow up in the face of those trying to push it. The same way "Weed will make you jump out a window" just made kids blanket distrust all "weed is bad" messaging.

I'm not arguing for or against vaping, just stating that the negative health effects from vaping appear to be rather minor. In it's pure form its just nicotine and propylene glycol. Nicotine is well studied and similar to caffeine in harm (outside the addiction) and PG is used in medical inhalers (along with almost everything else, seriously its used in food and cosmetics everywhere).

> Currently it's still somewhat accepted to vape inside of public buildings. Which, IMHO, is insane

Well because second hand smoke is so obvious and real and second hand vape... I mean... I'm not convinced it even exists. I see the vapor for about 2 seconds then it's gone. I can sniff as hard as I want, I'm not smelling anything.

But smoking? Woof. I could tell someone smoked 2 hours ago from 10 feet away. My fingers used to smell like ash 24/7. Even walking past someone 20 feet away, outside, in the wind, you can clearly smell cigarette smoke.

So I don't think it is the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com