h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nicotine is extremely toxic, but not in the concentrations found in cigarettes. Like alcohol is extremely toxic but not in the concentrations found in beer

Nicotine is also not what kills people in cigarettes, it's the tar and carcinogenic chemicals found in the tobacco.

Please take a reality check before saying that nicotine is much more likely to kill you than heroin.

Zagreb - getting increasingly annoyed with this thread

I did not make that point.

The concentrations found in cigarettes are dangerous. If you distilled one in water, then drank it when it turned brown, that'd likely make you very ill- a cigar would likely polish you off. HOWEVER most of it is destroyed by burning, and it is taken in repeated small doses throughout the day (tho they may absorb what would be a fatal dose in the unaccustomed.)
It is an extremely fast-acting poison which acts immediately upon the central nervous system, particularly control of involuntary activities. Hence the addictive properties (which is what I was getting at, rather than likelihood of death.)
It is one of the things which kill people- poisonous alkoloids in the tobacco, as well as the tar and carcinogenic chemicals.

True, Mandragora, I remember reading a thriller where the killer needed to manufacture a powerful toxin quickly, and did so by mushing the tobacco from a single packet of cigarettes in a glass of cheap vodka, running the result through a coffee filter. then evaporating the final solution to coat the blade of a throwing knife. There was a comment by a scientist in the "afterword" at the end of the book saying that would produce enough quantities of "purified nicotine", a powerful toxin, to kill two or three people if applied to open wounds...

Nicotine doesn't have many good points. I guess there's two - it makes you look like Humphrey Bogart, and it keeps you awake. Some of the bad points - it makes you smell like Humphrey Bogart (but he's been dead thirty years! Exactly.) and it kills ya. But if I had a choice of being addicted to nicotine or heroin, I'd choose nicotine. Heroin is a physical addiction, while nicotine is a hand-to-mouth habit. Withdrawal symptoms from heroin might kill you. Nicotine withdrawal might make you kill somebody else.

I seem to remember that heroin was one of the first pain medications used, until they discovered it was highly addictive. Its chemical twin, morphine, is also addictive, but doesn't cause the spinal cord thickening. As to whether it can be used non-addictively - I think it depends upon the person and the situation. Mandragora, you may be thinking of the heroin addicts in Amsterdam who get medically-regulated samples of heroin for personal use. They manage to live normal lives because of their dose of heroin. Trying to break their addiction might kill them, and would certainly debilitate them. But with their daily dose, they can go to work and be normal people.

Substance abuse, in my opinion, is not the fault of the substance but the fault of the abuser. We have many substances - sugar, alcohol, cocoa, fat, aspirin, guifenesin, ephedrine, that are perfectly legal, yet can cause health problems and death as a result of their abuse. While there is at least one substance banned throughout the world that is virtually harmless (except for its high tar content!)

Oh, and helps prevent glaucoma and Alzheimer's disease. Go figure.

And it helps anorexics eat.

And it keeps the snack sections of 24 hour shops and garages in business...

And gives patients undergoing chemo a chance at a real appetite...

Well, I'm logging off - I've gotten oddly hungry... (the best kind of hungry...) G'night.

Look, people don't drop-dead from smoking a cigar so whatever's supposed to be present in pre-burning is irrelevant. Anyway, I'm sure I've known someone who's eaten a cigarette (don't ask) and didn't end up being sick all over the floor.

Lentilla...

The whole drugs thing is bizarre. Heroin was developed as a safer alternative to morphine (must have come as a surprise) and used as a cough medicine, LSD as a cure for migraine etc. Whack! I'd not heard of the Amsterdam situation... seems enlightened, particularly in that there are places willing to employ them. I'd have to be cynical tho and say, similarly, smokers obtain a regulated substance which enables them to feel normal. Hence therefore ergo etc. Habits are stuff you do because you don't not do it, addiction a dependence on external thing/substance which you require to feel normal. Habits are far more easy to come off since there's no reason not to, no side effects etc. Heroin is more a physical addiction but that's not to say nicotine is merely a 'habit', also there is the psychological dependence which is probably more influential.


I was on about eating a cigar, distilling it, whatever. Does this somehow translate as 'Smoking one cigar will kill you'? If what's present in pre-burning is irrelevent, why all the health warnings? must be unnecessary since, like Homer Simpson's flaming drink, fire makes it good.

Certainly eating one cigarette won't kill you. It will make you ill. (Ask anybody who's ever dipped snuff or chewed tobacco if they've ever swallowed their spit by accident!) Eating the cigarette would mean that you weren't ingesting all the nicotine at once, either - a true experiment would be to distill it in alcohol (like the guy who poisoned the throwing knife) and then drink it. I don't think I'll be trying it, however!

The average smoker will consume about a pack a day - but this is by no means a regulated substance. There are two-pack-a-day smokers, and half-a-pack-a-day smokers. Scientist types say that the addiction to smoking is mainly psychological - there are very few side effects from quitting smoking, and they're all attributed to habitual behaviors, rather than to a chemical need. Those smokers who smoke more than a pack a day probably have a greater mental need, rather than a greater physical need.

I keep trying to think of the main ingredient in prescription cough medicines... my grandfather had become addicted to it at one point (because of his throat surgery.)

Speaking of drugs, PCP was originally (and probably still is) horse tranquilizer.

Excerpts from a medical source:

"Nicotine is one of the most lethal poisons known."
[Haddad, L.M. and Winchester, J.F. Clinical Management of Poisoning and Drug Overdosage. Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders Co., 1983. 513]

Trawling the archives of a medical database reveals that smoking a cigarette gives a dosage of nicotine about 1mg (Source: Muramatsu M et al; Int Arch Occup Environ Health 59 (6): 545-50 (1987)), whereas the lethal adult dose is 60 mg. (Source: Zenz, C., O.B. Dickerson, E.P. Horvath. Occupational Medicine. 3rd ed. St. Louis, MO., 1994 641). This implies that a sixty-a-day smoker ingests enough nicotine in a day to kill a healthy adult who is not conditioned (and thus addicted) to it in a single dose. This is, of course, not even considering the long term effects.

Returning the the original topic; as an asthmatic passive smoking has an immediate and deleterious affect on my health. Some say banning smoking in public places impinges on smokers' rights. I say allowing smoking in public places impinges on asthmatics' rights.

Lentilla, many old cough medicines contained "Tincture of Morphine" - there's still a chemist in Aberdeen who uses this ingredient in his "Lightning Lung Tonic", which is sold in a square bottle with a faux-Victorian label. But it comes near the end of the list of ingredients, so I think it's probably just a trace amount...

On the subject of morphine in cough medicine, its still in the most powerful preparations, in a less harmful form: codine or pholcodine (sic), opiate drugs supress the cough reflex.

Good news regarding the demon weed. (That's the 'tobacco' demon weed, not the other one...)

http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/09/09/tobacco.plant

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_15/b3676121.htm

(We're still within the month to post links, right?)

Don't know how anyone feels about the whole altered genes/biotech thing, but it looks like tobacco is an ideal playground for making human proteins. Remember that scene in Woody Allen's "Sleepers" where we're told that 'health food' in the future will be mostly tobacco and red meat?

Won't it be cool when tobacco is credited with *saving* lives?

"It's astounding: time is fleeting. Madness takes control..."

"Scientist types say that the addiction to smoking is mainly psychological"

What scientist types? I'd always thought it was a physical addiction.

As soon as it is absorbed it alters the nervous system, narrows blood vessels and increses heart rate (in habitual users). Since the substance itself is so toxic that tolerence needs to be quickly developed- causing dependence- that would suggest the addiction is physical. i.e. Tho' everything associated with it makes the psychological dependence similarly severe.

It has to be said I kinda disagree with the comment that 'the other' substance which is largely illegal internationally doesnt have side effects. Quite apart from the tar (you could always eat it...) it DOES have side effects. Ok, users may not get smoking lines around their mouths (my best friend's husband said there's one thing he'll divorce her over and that is she ever gets the smoker's lip wrinkles. He's serious), if ingested they wont be coughing all over the place, but what about the effects on mental health and stability?

I know many many people who I feel are in denial over it. (I used to loudly cry that it's a victimless crime and there's nothing wrong with it myself... I still agree but will argue against it being harmless. It patently ISNT). I have seen friends completely fall apart and I feel that the CATALYST was a certain 'not dangerous' plant. It's easy to say 'Oh a FEW people are weaker/have problems already/are pre-disposed' but I'd say its a much larger and more pressing problem than can be so easily dismissed. In personal experience, I have very very few friends who have come away unscathed by their experience if it persisted past a certain level of irregular social use.

Sorry to have a little semi-not-on-topic rant but I couldnt let that comment pass

There are none so pure as the purified.
Time will tell but I think you will find that the Britsh/American tobacco companies add things to make cigarettes more addictive, in the same way the fast food companies adulterate the food to suppress hunger.
Yes - I smoke - black tobacco - but the Regis De Tobacc, having been bought out by foreigners, is fast trying to phase it out and forceeveryone to smoke chemical fags. When they do - I will stop.
I never moke in non-smoker's car or houses. If they come to mie - they have to put up with me. If I sit outside a café - I try to sit downwind of non smokers. The dangers of the sulpher from the traffic - in Casablanca - is infinitely more dangerous.