What do nearly all nicotine addicts have in common? To varying degrees, damaged DNA.[1]
Cost rationalizations either deny or minimize use-induced harms or costs. Why? Because, why stop if it's safe to inhale nature's most potent insecticide, or if my health issues can be blamed on something else?
We reviewed the following cost rationalizations in Chapter 4:
- "I'm still healthy."
- "I'd gain weight and that's just as dangerous."
- "Nicotine is my friend."
- "I vape e-cigs and they're vastly safer."
To again briefly touch on vaping, while e-cigarettes are likely substantially safer than combustible cigarettes, they're still as risky as hell. It'll be decades before science has a reliable understanding of the "average" long-term vaping risks.
I say "average" because, with so many different devices, power settings, additives, flavorings, and nicotine levels, some users are likely exposed to significantly greater risk than others.
- "I use smokeless tobacco and that's far safer."
While in most regards true, safer than deadly is miles from safe. And some smokeless risks are actually greater.
Have you ever wondered why mouth or oral cancer hits smokeless tobacco users hardest? While smokers are 6 times more likely to develop mouth cancer than non-smokers, smokeless tobacco users are 50 times more likely.[2] How can that be?
Tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) are a highly potent group of cancer-causing chemicals that include NNAL, NNN, NAT, and NAB. A 2020 study examined 11,000 adults and found that the mean nitrosamine level in smokeless tobacco users was 993.3ng/g, a rate 3.5 times higher than the 285.4ng/g found in smokers.[3]
And it's not just mouth cancer. A 2008 study found that the odds of a smokeless tobacco user experiencing a fatal ischemic stroke were 72% greater than for non-users.[4] How many more years before e-cig users know their stroke risks?
Does it make sense to suggest to a smoker with 20 pack-years of damage to their body, that if they transfer to smokeless tobacco that they'll suddenly have the same risks as a smokeless user who never smoked?
- "I smoke lights and they're not as bad."
Lights and ultra-lights are fully capable of delivering the same amount of tar and nicotine as most regular brands, depending upon how they're smoked.
They don't reduce most smoking-related health risks, including the risk of heart disease or cancer. In fact, those who smoke "lights" often compensate by covering the holes with their lips, or by taking longer or deeper drags, thus introducing more tar not less.
- "So I can't run marathons…"
The title to one of Joel's original clinic reinforcement articles, while admitting that they can no longer engage in vigorous and prolonged physical activity, the word "so" proclaims "I'm fine with that."
As Joel notes, "Unfortunately, many fail to consider that giving up strenuous activities today means possibly giving up essential capabilities in the future. Today, jogging may not be possible, but tomorrow, getting up stairs, walking, and eventually getting out of bed may be more than the smoker can handle." [5]
- "I'm only hurting me!"
Reflect upon the emotional pain and financial loss your needless dying and death would inflict upon loved ones, pets, and friends. How should they explain your death? Did you love nicotine more than them? Was your death an accident? Were you murdered? Was it stupidity? Was it suicide? Did you intentionally kill yourself?
- "It's too painful to stop!"
Compared to what? Imagine a diagnosis of lung cancer and having your left lung ripped out, followed by chemotherapy. Imagine years spent trying to recover from a serious stroke or a massive heart attack, or fighting for every breath through emphysema-riddled lungs as the twelve steps to the bathroom seem impossible.
- "There's still plenty of time left to stop."
Keep in mind that one-quarter of all adult smokers are being claimed in middle-age, each an average of 22.5 years early. Also keep in mind that such figures are just averages, that many die sooner.
It's how WhyQuit.com got its name. We've been sharing stories of young victims at WhyQuit since 1999. The common thread among most claimed in their 30s or 40s is that they started using while still children or in their early teens.
- "A cure for cancer is coming soon."
Between Europe and North America, tobacco will claim more than one million victims this year. How many of them thought that a cure was on the way? Sadly, it was false hope.
Which type of lung cancer are you hoping science will cure: squamous cell, oat cell, adenocarcinoma, or one of the less common forms?
Even if the right cure arrives, what will be left of your lungs by the time it gets here? If gambling on "how" tobacco will kill you, don't forget to consider diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart attack, stroke, and emphysema.
- "Lots of smokers live until ripe old age."
Oh yeah? Look around. Old vibrant smokers are rare. If you do find old smokers, almost all are in poor health or in advanced stages of smoking-related diseases, with many on oxygen. Smokers tend to think only in terms of dying from lung cancer when tobacco toxins slowly destroy every organ in the body.
For example, circulatory disease caused by smoking kills more smokers each year than lung cancer. You may be too young to remember George Burns, the cigar-smoking actor who lived to 100. But how long would George have lived and how healthy would he have been if he hadn't smoked cigars? What's wrong with living a long and healthy life?
- "It's too late now to heal these lungs."
Not necessarily. All tissues not damaged beyond repair will heal and could provide a substantial increase in overall lung function.[6] Even with emphysema, although destroyed air sacs will never again function, recovery will halt the needless destruction of additional tissues.
- "We have to die of something."
This rationalization all but admits our own intentional slow-suicide. But I challenge you to locate even one terminal lung cancer patient who wasn't horrified upon learning that they'd actually succeeded.
Some apply the cup half-full rationalization to smoking's 50% adult kill rate,[7] suggesting that what it really means is that there's a 50% chance that "smoking won't kill me."
Try to name any other activity in which we'd willingly participate if there was a 50% chance that doing so would kill us.
References:
2. Illinois Department of Public Health, Oral Cancer, http://www.idph.state.il.us/cancer/factsheets/oralcancer.htm - Accessed July 30, 2020.
3. Xia B et al, Tobacco-Specific Nitrosamines (NNAL, NNN, NAT, and NAB) Exposures in the US Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study Wave 1 (2013-2014), Nicotine & Tobacco Research, July 2020, doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntaa110. Online ahead of print.
4. Hergens MP, et al, Smokeless tobacco and the risk of stroke, Epidemiology, November 2008, Volume 19(6), Pages 794-799.
5. Spitzer J, "So I can't run marathons…" 1986, https://whyquit.com/joels-videos/so-i-cant-run-marathons/
6. Buist AS, The effect of smoking cessation and modification on lung function, The American Review of Respiratory Disease, July 1976, Volume 114(1), Pages 115-122.
7. Wald NJ and Hackshaw AK, Cigarette smoking: an epidemiological overview, British Medical Bulletin, January 1996, Volume 52(1), Pages 3-11.
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