Forgive me if this was brought up before, but most people don?t seem to realise exactly how bad cigarettes are for you. Tobacco in itself isn?t very high on the toxicity scale. However it contains nicotine, which in concentrated form is lethal to any organic life within less than a minute. The trouble is that while raw tobacco, like ancient pipe tobacco, wasn?t very addictive on a chemical level, today?s cigarettes are intentionally designed to be extremely addictive. This is because of the additions to the chemical formula included in rolled cigarettes, which in most cases is a concoction of around four thousand different chemicals, every single one of which is toxic to a greater or lesser degree. You might look at it as a marketing ploy, suppliers and manufacturers have an incentive to make their product as compelling to use as possible. Unfortunately, the end result is one of the most deadly combinations of substances on earth. It might not kill you very fast, but every single time you take a drag on a cigarette, you subject your body to a major overdose of several thousand toxic compounds. There is no way to ?safely? smoke.
I?ve met more than one person who swears that marijuana is harmless if taken in moderation. They will frequently cite several medical journals and the opinions of certain scientist groups as evidence. What they don?t want to know is that recreational marijuana usage is still abuse, since the lowest possible dose to achieve a high is more than eight times the maximum daily allowance for medical marijuana use. Alcohol is another example still. Roughly one glass of wine a week is provably beneficial, any more than that and your body starts to strain instead of relax.
I?d just like to point out that the only way to smoke in moderation is not to smoke at all. It doesn?t matter if it is one cigarette or a dozen; it is still an overdose of multiple harmful chemicals that can continue to damage the body for days or even weeks after the cigarette has been finished. My own father had a brief habit for about four years before quitting. He would say he smoked in moderation, but five years later he developed an intense wracking cough that has plagued him for over fifteen years. All because of lung damage from his brief, ?light? smoking habit.
