Seven thousand nothings

There are now seven thousand chemicals in tobacco, and the same number of chemicals in the smoke from a cigarette. The educationally challenged will believe this without question because they want to. They want to hate someone – anyone – and smokers are the easiest target today.

It’s how Hitler won Germany, by blaming it all on the Jews. How the Spanish Inquisition did so well, by blaming all evil on Protestants and Muslims. In the 1600s it was imaginary witches and these days it’s white man bad, everyone else good. Oh, and smokers are obviously stupid.

Obviously, because we question how 7000 chemicals can even be measured in the 0.6g of tobacco in the average cigarette.

We question how a little bit of dry leaf, which is mostly cellulose (made of glucose and not carcinogenic in any shape or form) can contain so many chemicals and all at detectable, never mind measurable levels.

Plant cell walls are made of cellulose which is a polymer of glucose. Dried, at least half of what you have there is cellulose so really we are talking about 7000 chemicals in 0.3 grams.

Okay, they probably include cellulose as a chemical so 6999 in 0.3 g, but we’ll round up to 7000 because they made the number up in the first place anyway. Ah, I remember when it was only 600.

And we’ll be generous and give them 0.5g of chemicals per fag because it makes the numbers easier, and no less ridiculous.

If antismokers had a brain between them they would realise that these deadly chemicals are present at 1/14000th of a gram per cigarette. Oh but wait – they don’t claim 7000 deadly chemicals. Just 7000 chemicals. Probably about the same number you’d find in lettuce or celery or… anything with a leaf on it.

Oh sure, you can take a kilo of tobacco and maybe find 7000 different chemicals (all of them naturally occurring because we are talking about leaves) if you include all the metabolic bits in there but almost all are harmless.

Oh and you won’t find road tar in there. That’s bitumen. From oil, not leaves. If you burn that and inhale the fumes you won’t get to your 20 a day today  😉

Yet smokers are stupid? You think that only 1/14000th of a gram of something that’s mostly harmless is deadly and you call me stupid?

Most of the material in a cigarette ends up as ash. The smoke is a tiny part of the total weight. It contains the magical 7000 chemicals too. We are talking micrograms now and still they want to divide it into 7000 undetectable little bits and claim it will kill you.

Death by homeopathy.

Comparatively, smoking in itself is far less dangerous than going outside to a busy street full of petrol and diesel fumes, and that is what the haters have made us do. So when we all get respiratory problems from the traffic fumes they can blame it on smoking and keep selling oil.

I’m not saying smoking is good for you. I don’t smoke to improve my health, I smoke because I enjoy it. I’ve been doing it for 35 years and have no ill effects. Is it as harmful as they claim? Hard to tell, when pretty much anything a smoker gets wrong with them is instantly blamed on smoking.

This wave of antismoking really took off big time with the introduction of NRT. You know, the patches and gum with the pitiful success rate that are pushed so hard by the antismoking crowd. They don’t like Electrofag because they get no back-handers from the Electrofag companies. Yet that has a much better success rate than the Pharmer drugs. Even I have a few that I use from time to time. They still don’t have tobacco flavour quite right although the menthol is pretty good.

Now they want a tax on Electrofags ‘to stop children buying them’ even though they are already not for sale to under 18s. Electrofags are already taxed. There’s VAT on them. What the Righteous want is a cut of the action, they want more money funneled their way so they can keep pushing their non-working methods that keep us all smoking and keep the gravy train on the rails.

If we all stop smoking, the antismokers are out of a job. They don’t want any successful cessation devices spoiling their easy ride.

Here’s a tip for the antismokers and the medics too. If you want people to listen to you, don’t make utterly farcical claims that anyone with half a brain can rip to shreds in a matter of moments.

When you get caught in a lie, people start to wonder if anything you say is true.