Talk:Tobacco smoking/Archive 4

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Citation

I think [putting] "citation needed" all over this article is ridiculous. Everybody who has been inside a smoke shop has seen artistically carved pipes and has heard the end of a pipe referred to as a bit. I think these "citation needed" markers should be removed.

I've removed the "citation needed" for pipes being artistically carved, but it wouldn't hurt to cite a source for the end of a pipe being referred to as a "bit." --Lord Galen 10:10, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree--a lot of the "citation needed" markings are associated with what is considered "common knowledge" or linked to arther articles that can be found on wikipedia. After reading the article, I've noticed many POV and stylistic, as well as grammatic issue, though my opinion is that the overabundance of "citation" requirements is an overcompensatory product, and is counter productive. DPham4 16:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Smoking and sexual selection?

I'm doing a project on smoking, and the other day the thought hit me that one of the reasons why smoking is so prevelant might be related to sexual selection. It's a well known fact that many young people start because they perceive smoking as cool. That might be particularly so for young men. It is not unreasonable to think that the fact that smoking is dangerous contributes to its pereceived "coolness". If so, is it too far-fetched to say that smoking might be related to some kind of sexual selection phenomenon? A person that is smoking is exposing himself to something known to be dangerous. Presumably, only people in good health would be able to afford such a handicap. I have tried googling it but so far without luck but perhaps someone here has heard about this angle? To me it seems pretty obvious. I would also appreciate hearing other peoples thoughts on this. Maybe I'm taking the wrong search approach since smoking is just one instance of a general phenomenon where slightly dangerous things are perceived as being "cool" possibly due to a sexual selection phenomenon and perhaps no one cared to write about this particular instance. Nevertheless, my hypothesis has some support in statements made to me in interviews with smokers and why they started smoking. I've also found several references to statements to the effect "I unfortuneately don't have the health to be a smoker etc.". I've also found traces of some of the above thoughts in various literature and particularly clearly expressed in texts written by people with a smoking fetish. I can elaborate on some of these findings if anyone are interested. One person I've talked to have argued agains the hypothesis on the grounds that smoking was also "cool" hundreds of years before it was known to be dangerous. One possible argument against this is that while it hadn't been proven to cause lung cancer until 50 years ago it was certainly speculated not to be healthy long before. The literature contains several instances of doctors speculating about the unhealthy effects, and about parents trying to discourage their children from smoking on health grounds etc. There's also something obvious unhealthy about it since people quite often cough or feel bad the first few times they smoke. However, a perhaps even more plausible argument is that smoking originally was considered attractive because only the richest could afford it. Later when it became cheaper, it was picked up by the working class wanting to look like the richer. When smoking turned out to be dangerous it was seen as attractive for than reason! If the hypothesis is true it is a difficult public health issue to tacle since the more information is put out about how bad smoking is the more interesting it might become. On the other hand, sexual selection would probably not favor individuals involved in extremely high-risk behaviour and the person considering starting smoking in order to gain the benefits of sexual selection should on some level be aware of this too. Mike81 23:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is a very good hypothesis. Since it has become widely known that smoking is unhealthy numbers of smokers have dropped, not increased. Sexual selection can explain why women are attracted to wealthy men, but I don't think it's very good at expalaining smoking. Rebellion and peer pressure would be better explanations, and addiction being the key to continued smoking. Richard001 09:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a very interesting hypothesis and deserves some research. kristin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.140.58.63 (talk) 01:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so...for one thing, if it was the case, you would have to see an increase over time of populations becoming less susceptable to the dangers of Tobacco - that would be the only way to test the hypothesis that the ability to engage in the act of smoking was perceived as a sign of health in the individual. On top of this, smoking doesn't cause many problems in young people at their sexual peak, only later in life when people have, for the most part, dropped out of the mating pool. So there would be no discernable indications to the selector that the young smoker was healthier over the course of a lifetime. Thirdly, children born to smokers (women smokers) have lower birth-weights and sometimes even mental problems and respiratory ailments which would probably make them *less* attractive as mating material. How it might work is tied to older smokers. We know that populations of older men who have children with significatly younger women, over time, increase the longevity of the population as a whole...so maybe it would have to be a study focusing on all those sexy smoking septuagenarians and the Lolitas who love them. Which doesn't sound fun. Saudade7 23:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. To another point you make -- for a long time in the United States military (WWI and WWII, it was suggested that men smoke, especially in Hospitals, etc. because it was thought to kill certain germs. So that use of smoking wouldn't be seen as reckless, more the opposite. Saudade7 23:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

NPOv

The reason why I "weasled"/"vandalised"(?) this page yesterday, is that it's sum is entirely "bullshit".

For all the high ideals that the "Editors" of Wikipedia espouse, this article ammounts to nothing more than, biased, "anti-smoking" propaganda. Propaganda so extremely left wing that it is truly fascist. If it weren't for the fact that it serves the Pharmaceutical companies who have generated such "misinformation" (and that intend to vastly profit off such "misinformation"), and a small group of small minded neurotic paranoid prohibitionists, I would dismiss it.

This article is grossly inacurate by stated fact, and omission.

If anyone in this community is genuinely commited to truth, they should look a little further afield than the pharmaceutical industry's, or the "anti-smoking" charities that they finance, standard, of anti-smoking rhetoric, and simultaneously assume a little compassion for those of us who do smoke.

To begin with, there is no definitive evidence that ETS, or "second hand smoke", has any life threatening effect. Every study that I have seen comes in below tolerance.

And, furthermore, it is more than relevant to mention Hitler for his role as an "anti-smoker" as this is well documented, very relevant, and very relative to today's contraversial "smoking bans". JohnSmithW 04:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

It appears that your edits were a mix of legitimate additions and changing scientifically discussed, cited statements into the so-called "weasel words". However, I did a blanket revert to restore all positive statements. The key policy or style issue is that everything isn't politics: scientific statements can't be muddled up by inserting a lot of "maybes" and "some says". Good encyclopedias should mention all notable scientific results and (objectively) political developments, not "to be fair for both sides of the discussion", which is a political concept. Also, article authors have to take into account the poor understanding of the concepts of risk, probability, causality and correlation many readers have. You need to take extra care if you write about these to the general public. --Vuo 16:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

So find the sources that show the current article is wrong (or disputed). Then you can correct what's wrong and introduce alternative POVs where there is a legitimate dispute. Just weakening the current claims with weasel words doesn't, in the long run, produce a more NPOV article - the contrary, actually, because people are likely to read "some say smoking is unhealthy" as simply meaning "smoking is unhealthy," unless opposing views are cited (and if they're cited, obviously they should be sourced). VoluntarySlave 06:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, there's a whole literature regarding second hand smoke and its physiological effects. Perhaps you should expand the range of studies which you "see" to include those than come from scientific research and medical journals.DPham4 01:56, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I just thought I'd add that I found several things in JohnSmith's original comment quite funny, notably that being anti-smoking is somehow an inherently "left wing" position and that an excess of "left wingness" is fascism. And then he turns around and starts railing against the conspiracy of big pharmaceutical companies as if that is not a left wing position. Not only does this guy need to look at the scientific literature examining the effects of second hand smoke, he needs to learn a little bit about the broadstroke political labels he's using but very obviously doesn't understand the definitions of.

The Hitler comment, however, is my favorite. If we're going to add the fact that Hitler was anti-smoking to this article, should we also mention on the Wiki page for postcards that Hitler painted postcards for a living in his youth? Or perhaps we should add it to the page on painting in general and use Hitler as an example of the potential evils of that occupation.

And at the end of the day, as others have already said, simply adding "some people say" in front of every reference ultimately makes a Wiki article a sophomoric attempt to give equal weight to both sides of an issue without providing a coherent case for either, which (ironically) strikes me as the height of mindless political correctness.--24.107.35.146 14:38, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Erm - perhaps it's worth looking again at the "hitler" comment. Believe it or not, the mention of that particular person was not the main intent of the comment. The comment used the man as an analogy for how and why an encyclopedic article does not contain value judgements for good, or for bad. Crimsone 01:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Where Hitler is waved in the faces of anti-smoking writers it is relevant to remind everyone that Dr. Goebbels, who ADMINISTRATED the Big Lie, was a 2-pack-a-day cigaret smoker (Toland, l974).Tokerdesigner 20:21, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I am, like you, outraged by the POV problems here! I think it is important to note that Jeffrey Dahmer was not a smoker. In fact, he wouldn't even *Eat* anyone who smoked! This should be listed! I am sure that only those Left-wing fascists (like those people who think all kids should be forced to eat a hot nutritional school lunch and who always tell me to put on my pants when I am on public transportation) would want to supress these truths! Saudade7 00:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

This whole article is very POV. Most of the article (6 of the 7 main sections) is about dissaproval of smoking and health risks. Shouldn't those things be moved to their own articles and the article on smoking actually be devoted to discussing the act of smoking tobacco. Also, the section on religion is all negative. I know for a fact that Judaism's opinion on smoking is overwhelmingly positive, but the article only mentions the negative opinions. Why not move all the anti-smoking comments to an article, "Health risks of smoking," and chose a few big points people feel need made to a section here, "Heaqlth risks and controversies: see main article Health Risks of Smoking. BTW, love the racist slam against Muslims where it is said Middle easterners do opium and hash usually. Can we get a source for that. I live in the middle east. Want to guess how many times I've seen a person smoking either ina hookah. Hash like 4. Opium never. 88.153.200.32 05:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

74.8.112.195 19:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC) This article also repeats the disproved myth of cannabis as a 'gateway drug'. Facts not moralism, please.

I agree whole heartedly, there needs to be some mentions of benifits of smoking. I know that this phrase sounds evil, but there are benifits to smoking. Also I think that this article should be reviewed. I question it's neutrality. Scorch Fire #113 03:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Even the section that now exist on the beneits is full of weasal words and counter intuitive statements (in italics) "While smoking is synonymous with damaging one's health, a few marginal health benefits have been observed in smokers, reducing their risk of several diseases. It should be noted that the increased risk of terminal illness from habitual smoking is still widely believed to outweigh the benefits and should not be taken as evidence that smoking is healthful or beneficial overall. Several types of "Smoker’s Paradoxes",[35] i.e. cases where smoking appears to have specific beneficial effects, have been observed; often the actual mechanism remains undetermined. For instance, recent studies suggest that smokers require less frequent repeated revascularization after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).[35]" These sections are unneccesary, list the benefits and dont tip toe around it, can these phrases either be elimanted or properly reworded? User:JustinMcLJustinmcl 03:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Ever think, that whilst there is still some POV issues, that if you looked up Murder you might find there's a general leniency against the commiting of Murder, eg. Most religions go against it and society has negative views? That's an extreme comparison, but it might be negative because there is more negative?Zelphi 11:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that this article attempts even to turn positives into negatives. Regardless of societal views however, we need to strive for encyclopedic quality for wiki articles. We wouldn't need to say "hitler was a bad man" on an article about the Nazis. We would merely offer the facts from a completely neutral perspective and leave value judgements to the reader. Crimsone 17:29, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You admit that this is an extreme comparison, but I also think you've just lost a lot of credibility. You seem to have just compared smoking to murder, which is laughable. There are certainly health risks to smoking, along with second-hand smoke, but to presume that smoking is an inherently negative act is, quite frankly, stupid. Humorously enough, by my own reading, the article on Murder is actually ~LESS BIASED~ then this article, as it does not contain paragraph after paragraph attacking the act - it simply describes it. I too, think this article is very NPOV. Harpalus 05:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is indeed an "nvpov" article. For a drug that has spanned the globe for centuries, one the importance of which ranks alongside sugar, coffee, salt, and so on, I find it astonishing to see that a good 90% percent of the entry focuses on contemporary scientific analyses of health detriment. That bias is a joke. 211.29.0.163 17:50, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I can agree with this statement. I think that I would be more interested to hear the history of tobacco, its relation to colonization, ritual functions (if there are any) and social uses, etc. (I don't even know why I'm here. I don't smoke. I guess it is because that first questioner asked about sexual selection and I love biology. Then there was the Hitler guy (above) and here is (still) am!) Saudade7 00:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

That's where contemporary interest in smoking lies - cf the current implementation of smoking bans, etc. Its history is of course still interesting - but the health effects are more pertient to the article. Nmg20 23:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Just as a follow-up, I would say that if two people on this measley talk page that no one ever looks at think that what is interesting is the *history* of the practice, then chances are that health effects do not represent the totality of "where contemporary interest in smoking lies". As a non-smoker, I really don't care too much about the health effects. I can read "Fumer Tuer" and that pretty much sums up the health aspect. The question is, how did we get here? Is that story about Bernays and the suffragette debutantes with their "freedom torches" true? (for instance)! Saudade7 22:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes! The Bernays part is true. There is a phenomenal BBC documentary from a while back that covers the origins and history of psychology and public persuasion, from companies to governments to people (here: The Century of the Self). It's really quite good, and will send you off on trips to the library or Amazon for weeks. For more info here on Wikipedia, take a look at the Edward Bernays article. TeamZissou 00:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, Century of the Self is probably my favorite documentary ever, (I think) which is where I first learned the story, but I mean *that* kind of stuff should be on here! (It really is great isn't it?). I first saw it at a theatre, it was glorious on the big screen but now you can even watch it online. Google video I think, but it is kinda pixely. Power of Nightmares is pretty good too. Thank you so my for you response though, TeamZissou. Saudade7 13:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Non Health Related Effects of Smoke

This article doesn't mention the effect cigarette smoke has on homes / apartments. I'm thinking something along the lines of wall coloration, furniture, smell, etc. I've noticed some collectibles on eBay are advertised as from 'non-smoking' homes as well. I don't know if this sort of thing should be included in this article, or another article just on tobacco smoke, but it should be included somewhere.

Smoking Bans

It states "In New Zealand and Australia smoking is banned in all public places, including bars and restaurants." While i cannot speak for New Zealand The statement is misleading for Australia as there are a: the different states have their own anti smoking legislation and b: not all public places are smoke free - something along the lines of "And In Australia new legistation severly curtails smoking in public" would be more appropriate

Exactly,

As far as New Zealand goes, there is NO blanket ban on smoking outdoors here, it only applies to the interiors of workplaces, bars and restaurants. Smoke-free parks have been mooted here, but who is going to police that?.Trumpy 13:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC) 13:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC)]

Snide Remark

Deleted that little "they are very good for you" comment? What was that? - Gnome 58.165.115.225

That would be wp:vandalism. --Nephtes 16:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Good Article

The article was change to become more neutral, well-cited, accurate, and well-written. It is not yet good enough to become a Featured Article but is good enough to be listed as a Good Article. --GoOdCoNtEnT 05:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Archive

I have archived all the past discussions for this page. Please go to Talk:Tobacco smoking/archive1 to read them. Thanks. --GoOdCoNtEnT 21:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Moved to top - you should always place an archive somewhere easily visible so people are aware that there has been more discussion than is currently present. Richard001 09:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Featured Article

I have re-nominated this page as a Featured Article. It was greatly improved since its original nomination. --GoOdCoNtEnT 21:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

You probably should have waited to get feedback from the good article nomination first. I am not sure this article is stable enough yet for featured article status, but on the positive side it seems to be a large number of constructive edits and not an edit war.Badocter 15:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Passive Smoking

It has never been shown that second-hand smoke causes lung cancer. The studies done that say this were thrown out of a US court for being skewed and flawed. All warnings, such as the Surgeon General's Warning are based on these articles and are thus also flawed. Please watch : "Second Hand Smoke/Baby Bullshit." Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. Showtime. 21 February 2003. Even if you disagree with their tactics and attitudes, Penn and Teller have done their research very well. --The Talking Sock talk contribs 13:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The above comment is factually correct. But the issue, unfortunately but not atypically, is more complex than Talkstosocks implies. First, the EPA report to which he's referring to was *partially* vacated by the court; specifically, the parts referring to cancer. The rest of the report, which claimed links between 2nd hand smoke and other lung diseases such as emphysema, still stands. Second, it's worth mentioning that the judge who made the decision was a former tobacco lobbyist, and in many people's opinions, should have recused himself because of his dubious impartiality. I'm not getting into the issue of whether or not this justifies smoking bans. --Nephtes 14:42, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Enh, I guess this argument has been had already, many times over...--The Talking Sock talk contribs 17:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Summarization of history section

A user proposed to short the history section. I think it's the best section of this article and very informative. Perhaps it's not necessary to summarize it, I don't know yet. But, if we go for a summarization process then it's best to create a main article "Tobacoo smoking history", so all this incredible information does not get deleted. Loudenvier 13:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

There's already a History of Tobacco Smoking main article. I think I missed it in the first removal I´ve done... We could talk if it's best standing as an stand-alone article or be merged into Tobacco Smoking. If the artcile is reaching the threshold for article size then I would back-up the separate articles, if not then I'm against it, since there's no place better suited to host the History of Tobacco Smoking than the articl on Tobacco Smoking itself. Loudenvier 17:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm too lazy these days... The article already is beyond the threshold for a good article size. So I think it's best to have a separate article for the history section. We now have to be carefull to let the most important information on the main article Tobacco and only the details for the History article. Loudenvier 17:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's a solution: cut out most of the "it's bad for you" material here, and insert the historical material in its place, where it belongs. Because after all, this is supposed to be an encyclopedia. 211.29.0.163 17:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The "it's bad for you" material makes up perhaps a quarter of the article, and historical info is already in there - sections 3 and 4. The majority of the history of smoking is covered in the article on that, just as the majority of the health effects of tobacco smoking are covered there. I'm strongly against any attempts to bias the article away from the health effects. Nmg20 23:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Photo

The vast majority of tobacco smoking worldwide is via cigarettes, so the first photo in the article ought to be of someone smoking a cigarette, rather than Image:Smoking equipment.jpg, an assortment of (relatively) exotic equipment.

Also, Image:Smoking equipment.jpg is obviously an altered image, which is technically a violation of the WP:NOR policy. It needs to be labeled as altered or removed, or the unaltered photo should be put in its place. Tempshill 16:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

This is absurd. Image:Smoking equipment.jpg does not violate WP:NOR policy. Modifying images to demonstrate a point is allowed, and is frequently done.

I changed the picture to better fit the article. --GoOdCoNtEnT 19:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

GA Nom Comments

I've dropped by to review the article. I want to commend all for an amazingly NPOV, thourough and easy to read article. While long, this is not a consideration for GA, although it is for FA. What needs to be done for me to promote it anyway is to document more thoroughly, especially in the early sections and the lead expanded according to WP:LEAD standards. I'll put it on hold so you all can work on it. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 11:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I expanded the LP a bit more and am trying to figure how to tie in more of the sections, but it is slow going. I find it a little amusing that an article with 60+ references gets the suggestion to document better, but admittedly the history section as well as its stand alone article need of more citations. Thanks much for the positive feedback.Badocter 18:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be much "controversy" going on anymore.

Should we remove the tag? --Frescard 21:35, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I will remove it. --GoOdCoNtEnT 05:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

---

minor inacuracies: some areas of new york state (for example suffolk county) have an age of 19 for purchasing tobacco. The photo of the price of a carton of cigarettes in new jersey is out of date. Currently they run at around $40-$60. The united states requires (small) warnings on packs of cigarettes, and packs from phillip morris (particually marlboro and parlament) sometimes come with quitting infromation. the image at the top is of Djarum Blacks, a brand of cloves. Cloves (kreteks) are not discussed in the this article, and are in fact only mentioned in the "see also" section. I'll let some one more experienced make the changes if deemed necissary, but i thought it would be helpful to point these out.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.185.239.254 (talk • contribs) .--CTSWyneken^(talk) 08:18, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

"admittedly the history section as well as its stand alone article" - this is the problem here. Since when in an encyclopedia is the history of a concept or thing a mere 'section' as opposed to what is "stand alone"?

Reason for new flags

GoOdCoNtEnT, it would help me to know why you raised the flags on the article, since I'm monitoring it for GA at the moment. Thanks! --CTSWyneken^(talk) 08:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Here are the problems with this page at the moment:

• Prices and laws are outdated.
• Page is too focused on the Western world.
• Page has too many sections that can be combined.
• The history section is poorly cited.

Otherwise, its GA material. --GoOdCoNtEnT 20:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, citations have to be re-written. --GoOdCoNtEnT 04:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

This article is still on the GA disputes page, but it was submitted on the 4th of august, are these problems still extant? Homestarmy 13:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

GA Failed; Hold expired.

Please feel free to work on the concerns in my hold comments and the flag explanation and renom when ready. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 22:07, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Package Warnings

I think that the Package Warning section should mention the Surgeon General warnings that the US requires on cigarette packages. Is there some reason this isn't included?

I have added the link to the main article that reviews warnings in various countries. There are often complaints that material in these articles is too US-centric, and this case the UK warning is more representative in both size and content to warnings I have seen in a dozen or so countries I have visited. The UK warning is more typical globally than the US labeling which goes into the minutia of what government agency issues the warning.Badocter 07:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Inhales the smoke?

I have heard that what is inhaled is not really smoke but vapors from the heated tobacco. Steve Dufour 01:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it's kind of a smoldering smoke which contains some heated and/or anaerobically cooked tobacco vapors. That's the problem (healthrelated). There are gadgets available which consist of a little hotplate set to like 500 degrees F and a funnel that actually do just vaporize the volatiles from your smoking material without either burning it or cooking up nasty reactive chemicals. Gzuckier 14:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

With a hookah you do not inhlae smoke but warm vapors, as long as the hookah is used in its proper Arabian way, which is to put the tobacco in, put foil over the tobacco, and put a coal on the foil. The tobacco is not burned, but baked. This helps bring out the tobaccos natural nourishing goodeness, without the harshness of burning. 88.153.200.32 04:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Acetylcholine

There are some serious issues with accuracy in this article which I am disappointed were never caught by anyone. Amazingly, in this article, it credits an increase in the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain with the effects of nicotine. The information seemed suspicious to me, and to my dismay, I found that the source that was cited did not mention this at all! In fact, as nicotine binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it has an "antagonistic" effect, meaning that it inhibits function of these receptors, which is the exact opposite of what acetylcholine does. This alone almost made me want to put out a NPOV on this article and when I saw it was almost a featured article I thought I had better put this notice in here to make sure you correct the factual inaccuracies.

Good point, I was just editing pages on some nicotinic insecticides where they mention how they don't affect the acetylcholine systems. Gzuckier 14:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, nicotine does affect acetylcholine systems, but in the opposite way that acetylcholine affects them. Flying Hamster 01:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned below, Nicotine is an agonist for the nicotinic acetylechonline receptors, but interestingly enough it binds to the NACH recepters in the Central Nervoues System more readily than those in the PNS. As for the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, it's actually the same affect more drugs of abuse illicit. DPham4 15:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, somebody is confused here and the article reflects that confusion. Nicotine IS an agonist for nicotinic ACH receptors. http://www.neurosci.pharm.utoledo.edu/MBC3320/nicotinic.htm It doesn't effect muscarinic ACH receptors quite so drastically. Acute administration increases the net ACH effect in a manner which seems to slow the progression of AZ (in a manner similar to acetylcholinesterase inhibitors) but its effect in PD is more probably related to a cumulative dysregulation of the extrapyramidal DA system.

(DA dysregulation in the mesolimbic system may be one of the reasons that chronic smokers who suffer from schizophrenia have a higher need for antipsychotic medication. An alternative theory is that the hallucinogens harmaline, harmane and norharmane present in tobacco may be the major contributors. These hallucinogens disrupt the serotonergic system rather than ACH or DA.)

I'd recommend deleting the entire paragraph starting with "A large body of evidence". Sorry I forgot to sign this comment, starting with "OK" I'm new here. Trilobitealive 22:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I have been looking at this article again, especially the paragraph starting with A large body of evidence but don't believe I'm quite ready to destroy another person's work, even if it is biased and erroneous. I did add a paragraph at the bottom of the health benefits section clarifying the nature of the smoking/PD negative correlation. Trilobitealive 20:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I did some work on the section Bodily functions and how they are affected to correct some of the misunderstanding about N effect on ACH receptors and add some important links. Edit includes the first paragraph and the first phrase of the first sentence on the second paragraph.Trilobitealive 14:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

You might want to mention that all of this neurochemistry research comes from rats. That might be more informative to the general reader than the degree of exitation of particular receptors. {unsigned|211.29.0.163}}

Burning temperature 1000 degrees F.--Is this true?

I have been informed by a few sources that a burning cigarette does so at 1000 degrees, is this true? also if you dont inhale the smoke, but keep it in your mouth are you more likely to catch mouth cancer?

It burns 1500 degrees F (860 C)-- just seven inches from your trachea!

Here's where the public would be served by offering the persistent smoker info about an overlooked option: a mini-toke utensil with a long flexible extension tube. The tobacco (or alternative herb) burns less hot to start with, and the gases have a longer way to go, and cool down, before reaching you.

Because the tobacco companies, with their huge tax payments, have won the subservience of legislators, there are "headshop laws" to selectively suppress any smoking method safer than overdose cigarets-- usually on grounds that it could be or is a "cannabis utensil". So perhaps this article should remind users who want to try a miniaturizing utensil to get a letter from their congressman authorizing them to do so for tobacco purposes.Tokerdesigner 20:21, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

dingos-ate-my-baby 15:09 11th October 2006

"If you don't inhale the smoke but keep it in your mouth are you more likely to get mouth cancer?"

More likely than what? Definitely more likely than if you don't smoke at all, probably not more likely than if you inhale. Gzuckier 14:10, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Improved.

Last time i saw this last january it was a quagmire of poorly pov'd crud from addicts in denial and badly sourced anti-smoking rhetoric. I think it's almost GA quality again, although there are still gaps in the sourcing and problems with health issues being pushed off into their own article which seems a POV edit designed to lessen the "impact" such connotations may have on opinions of readers.--I'll bring the food 21:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Erm - I'm afraid that I consider many of your recent edits to be of the anti-smoking POV. The humorous (yet POV) edit summary "savour the flavour no more my fellow wikipedians" is a pretty good demonstration of why. You have stated that all smoking is the "addictive habit of..." Which is something the reader can assert for theirselfs. In my case you are probably correct, but in the cases of others, I kow for a fact that non-addicted smokers exist that smoke only for occasional enjoyment or as a form of socialisation. --Crimsone 00:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I have just semi-reverted your edit of the lede. I have however included your mention of addiction. What is important is not that the words are given in order of percieved importance, but in accprdance with WP:NPOV, each fact be given additional weight. In possesion of the full facts, it is for the reader to decide what's important. As per WP:LEDE, the article should be written with a good flow of text and minimal redundancy.

Please also note that "habitual" is NOT a weasle word. There are two components to what is commonly known as a smoking habit, one being that of the habit of smoking, (the physical act in subconcious association with the passage of time or given situations), and the other being nicotine addiction. This, in part, is the reason why nicotine replacement therapy can be unsuccessful. Each component of a smoking habit or addiction can be equally significant as the cause of smoking.

It would appear from your edit summaries and consideration of "habitual" (A verifyable fact) as a weasle word hat you are strongly against smoking. Please be advised that this is indeed a non-neutral POV. You may wish to make the article make smoking look bad, but that is not the goal of an encyclopedic article. The goal is to offer the facts in a neutral format, and let the reader make that assertion for his or her self. --Crimsone 19:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Habitual is less clear cut and can also mean accustomed to, or used to. It also is similar to the word habitat which gives feelings of warmth and housing, animal housing and cute little fuzzy hamsters etc. Addiction is a very blunt and obvious term. Habitual is true of smoking for most if not all smokers but is also IMO weasel wording. I am however fine with what i removed the second occurance of pleasure from. it looks okay like that.

My decision to put the "savour the flavour no more" as a description was based on chunks of wording about the flavour and subtleness of tobacco etc etc which i removed from the methods sections (also naturalness with the complete absense of info about artificial chemicals used to treat them). As the first part of the article they were being used as a pro-smoking vehicle, not by you, but by a user who formally edited this article whom i have had my eye on who ceased to edit in may of this year.

I feel especially compelled to the pro-POV and take exception on a wholly almost unreasonable level as i feel an article on a children's CD should be better than this was.

Your mention of 'i know for a fact people that smoke only for pleasure' or similar wording of some degree is original research. My goal is certainly to improve the article which is why i just gave it its first ISBN'd book reference. Thank you for your collaboration. --I'll bring the food 19:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Not really - i know for a fact people that smoke only for pleasure means in this context that I know it can be easily sourced :) --Crimsone 21:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Minor Inaccuracies:

Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict, not heroin.

Good catch. According to Sherlock Holmes he was "an occasional user (a habitual user when lacking in stimulating cases) of cocaine and morphine": not really right in any respect, and hardly relevant to pipe smoking, so I have removed it. Notinasnaid 20:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Two points, being that an addiction is with an addict always - not just when business is slow and boring. Secondly, it has absolutely nothing to do with the article --Crimsone 19:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

He was shown to use cocaine according to the source in much the same way Hendrix used drugs for "inspiration". Either way it's relevant that he was also addicted to other substances, as cocaine use was also seen as trendy at the time (as smoking is or at least was until the last 10 years), see coca cola.--I'll bring the food 19:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I fthis were an article about addiction I'd agree with you, but it's an article about tobacco smoking. The comparison between smoking and cocain use is not exactly encyclopedic though - There are (and always have been) far less cocaine users, and in the last 20 years Cocain has been banned anyway, being as it is an illicit substance - which tobacco is not. However, if you wanted to add a fully and appropriately sourced section to the article on the subject of parralels with controled substances, you'd be more than welcome to if it was purely relevant to smoking. However, it still is not relevant to the mention of the fact that Sherlock Holmes smoked a pipe in the pipe smoking section of the article, where the comparison is further weakened by the fact thatHolmes pipe nothing to do with looking "trendy". Smoking a pipe was just a part of everyday life for the landed gentry and upper-middle class of the time. --Crimsone 21:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps that new section you suggest should mention the debate between those who believe smoking leads on to illicit drugs and those who believe it doesn't?--I'll bring the food 01:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That would be a minor debate against the number of smokers who havn't gone one to illicit drugs. You could mention it of course, but you'd need to qualify it against it's direct opposite for balance. If the article started on that slippery slope, it would mean huge editwars in the long term. You're attempting to add a lot of weight to the anti side of the article - it's not really required. Non-smokers don't like smoking (and dont smoke anyway), and most smokers wouldn't bother reading it if it's biased towards the anti-smoking side of the debate having heared it all already.

However, given it's something that 25% of the UK population partake in, and I don't know how many millions of people in Europe and America, WP:BLP could come into this to some extent.

Um, no, it wouldn't. BLP is for specific people, not a minority of the population--I'll bring the food 02:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The spirit of the policy is that such things may affect the lives of living people adversity. Smokers aren't labels - they're people like you and I (well, like me perhaps. lol.Bear in mind that I did say that the BLP argument was weak, though it has been invoked before now in an article regarding PayPal, so there is a precedent :).) You aren't a smoker as far as I know.) However - 25% of the uk population may be a minority - but when you factor in children and elderly that can't smoke for various reasons, that number is probably closer to 30%. Whether 25 or 30%, it a very significant minority even so. In places such as the arab world, or possibly China or Africa, I'd expect to see that number significantly higher incidentally. Crimsone 02:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Smokers are labeled. They're called "smokers". It is a label to describe them based on the plumes of cancer causing smoke that pillar from their mouth.--I'll bring the food 03:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Link Between Tobacco use and subsequent use of Illicit drugs.

Cigarettes along with alcohol and marijuana are considered a “gateway drug.” A 1994 report from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University states that there is a consistent relationship between the use of cigarettes and alcohol and the subsequent use of marijuana. Cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana use and the subsequent use of illicit drugs like cocaine is also linked, regardless of the age, sex, ethnicity or race of the individuals involved. Children 12 to 17 years old who smoke are nineteen times more likely to use cocaine. The 1994 report also found that the younger children are when they use these gateway drugs and the more often they use them, the more likely they are to use cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and other illicit drugs. The report concludes that the data is already robust enough to make a strong case to step up efforts to prevent childhood use of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana and to take firm steps to reduce children’s access to these gateway drugs.

People who abuse drugs are likely to be cigarette smokers also. More than two-thirds of drug abusers are regular tobacco smokers, a rate more than double of that in the general population. NIDA researchers have found that craving for nicotine also increases craving for illicit drugs among drug abusers who smoke tobacco, and this suggests that smokers in drug rehabilitation programs may be less successful than nonsmokers in staying off drugs.

I'm not adding arguments against a proven fact, you can't delete a reliable, sourced statement, i suggest you make those additions yourself. Be bold ;), unless you can't find anything that says there is no relationship, which you probably won't, unless you look at some wack job pro smoking site that wants people to die of passive smoking induced cancer so they can savour that flavour...--I'll bring the food 03:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What "proven fact"? Your citation [1] is bogus. It links to a recollection (accurate? inaccurate? who knows?) by Dr. James West of the BETTY FORD CENTER (hardly the most netural of sources) of an outdated study which he himself doesn't even bother to cite. Even though the original study has since been disputed, you should at least cite the actual source or simply drop the ridiculous statement that tobacco smoking is a "gateway drug". If you'd like to get into a more in-depth discussion of the whole falacy of the "gateway drug" concept (and why the causal link is to illegal behavior rather than to any substance - yes, studies support this), I will, but I doubt that's actually appropriate for an entry on tobacco smoking. Come to think of it, neither is the "gateway" statement. Incidentally, no, I don't smoke, no I don't do drugs (I get my kicks above the eyeline, sunshine), and yes this article is obviously biased toward non-smoking. --Some anonymous coward in Turkey. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.108.230.184 (talk) 09:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

Additionally...

The report you almost reference uses the 1991 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) to investigate the impact of children's use of gateway drugs - cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana - on the probability of their subsequent use of illicit drugs such as cocaine. Rather than using original research.

The core (and additional) funder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University (e.g. the majority of their funding) comes from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Among the RWJ foundation's four primary "interest areas" is, "...to reduce the personal, social and economic harm caused by substance abuse—tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs." (quote from the RWJ Foundation's website).

It is well known in the medical community that they will only fund studies related to drug (alcohol & tobacco) use if said study seeks to prove the negative impact of such practices. If this is the only source you can cite for this disinformation then it would be best to delete the entire "gateway" section as unsupportable opinion. --Same anonymous coward in Turkey. 85.108.230.184 09:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Nope - I can't delete it and I wouldn't dream of it (why you might believe that I would try though is somewhat beyond my comprehension), but I can put it into it's true context on the very same sources. (and should were it not for the fact that I'm tired).

Most children aren't very likely to use cocain anyway, and so 19 times more likely is still not very likely. Not all smokers start in childhood, let alone before the teenage years. Smoking habits quite frequently form as a result of depression etc. Many (though not all) smokers smoke in moderation and so aren't addicted.

While two thirds of drug abusers are tobacco users, not all of those are addicted - some simply use it to take the drugs occasionally. Even so, drug abusers make up a minuscule proportion of all of the people that smoke. That said, I have no issue at all with efforts to stop childhood tobacco use - There is an age restriction on it precisely because it's addictive - it's a case of everything in moderation, but only once you're old enough to be responsible.

It's also worth noting that from everything you've written, it says nothing of adults and those who already smoke. I would like to finish this comment with a request that you please be civil. As it happens, the BMJ not very long ago published a journal article that called the evidence for passive smoking in general harming others significantly into some question. I'm neither pro nor anti smoking myself - merely a smoker. I am pro-balance though. sources which are not vehemently anti-smoking do exist. Crimsone 03:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd ask "how many people who have smoked have also had sex", and then suggest that sexual relations are a gateway to smoking. 203.129.45.216 04:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The references I just added suggest that smoking is correlated with a specific facet of personality. In short, the people who smoke despite the health risk are also the kind of people who abuse drugs despite health risks and despite it's illegal. When it's related to personality, then it's related to availability: are supplying tobacco and alcohol to minors and supplying illegal drugs to minors correlated? If they are, then tobacco is a gateway drug. --Vuo 09:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You're getting closer, but I think you're missing the point here. Studies that dispute the concept of "gateway drugs" deal with the fact that is it related to developmental stages (usu. adolescence) in conjunction with availability (one goes to a "dealer" for marijuana, with the same "dealer" supplying other substances). The argument is that it's not the substance itself (on which the "cause" is being wrongfully attributed in this hypothesized cause-effect relationship) that is responsible for a small minorities' "progression" to "harder" drug use, but the fact that once the "illegal act" has been committed said purpetrator is (marginally) more likely to "progress". The point is that there are no "gateway drugs", and that any evidence that tobacco is one of these mythical beasts is, at the very best, highly limited and questionable. Therefore, this section should be removed. --Anonymoys coward in Turkey. 85.108.230.184 10:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Notice this article is about tobacco smoking, which should include all societal implications. If this were an article on nicotine, the mention of a gateway drug would be inappropriate, but I'm pretty sure it is in this context. DPham4 12:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

anon twit

Are they always fiddling with the article? and why was the studies link section deleted?--I'll bring the food 21:50, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes unfortunately. I've a few articles on my watchlist that tend to be subject to vandalism and tests, and I'm afraid this is one of them :( Crimsone 22:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

smoking

smoking is not hard to quit at all its all in your mind. like i know this one girl her boyfriend had been smoking his hole life and she told him if he did not quit it ways over and he quit he said that once he took his mind off of it.it was really easy and i think that people should thing about it because their kids might start smoking to and to be turthful with you i am only 13 years old and yes i did try it and i did do it for about a mouth and i feel so bad because i would get on to ever one around me and now ever time some one smokes around me i start coffing and they had to go out side because it hurt my throt really bad and I DONT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO YOU.

Urm.--I'll bring the food 22:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

...and a similar thought from myself also. Crimsone 23:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. The above contribution should lead the entry - ironically, it is an excellent summary of what is currently extant.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.29.0.163 (talk • contribs)

Why is that ironic...? WP:NOR covers why the above should not be let anywhere near the article. Nmg20 23:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

suicide risk

It would seem that an addition could be made in the section on smoking and depression. I'd recommend: "There is a correlation between smoking behavior and suicide risk. Whether the tobacco effect on suicidality is primarily causative, secondarily causative or co-morbid has not been fully determined." Here is a quick link to one of many articles which illustrates one of the opinions. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/32/6/1000 Trilobitealive 22:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

There's some research in the field which now links smoking/tobacco use to anxiety disorders in general. Arguably this is an umbrella term which inclues suicide as a product. Once I have some time I'll start working on that section as that's my little niche at the Scripps Research Institute. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DPham4 (talk • contribs) 12:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC).

Oh boy, are you serious? And smoking = anxiety disorders and therefore (the 'product' of) suicide (and that's the link you will need)? You'd better get that time and work on it, because in psychiatry, we can't do anxiety disorders leads to (causally) suicide. We can't even do major depression = (causally) suicide. Good luck, and let everyone know what you find. If the problem's smoking, we've got that nasty suicide beat! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.29.0.163 (talk • contribs)

First, please WP:Assume good faith - in this case, assume people posting about recent research are, indeed, serious.

Second, how would you suggest we prove that anxiety disorders cause suicide? To do so would require you to be able to randomise people to getting an anxiety disorder or not, and then to wait and see if they topped themselves: the first's impossible and the second unethical. So no great surprise that causation hasn't been formally proven. By the same token, it's a misrepresentation of the field to imply that psychiatry isn't sure whether anxiety disorders lead to suicide. A lot of the most recent cross-sectional work shows they do - e.g. Sareen et al 2005 (PMID 16275812) concluded "a preexisting anxiety disorder is an independent risk factor for subsequent onset of suicidal ideation and attempts. Moreover, the data clearly demonstrate that comorbid anxiety disorders amplify the risk of suicide attempts in persons with mood disorders." I accept the association isn't cast-iron yet, but it's certainly there.

Suggesting that major depression doesn't lead to suicide is simply wrong - there's an excellent reason that every trainee doctor in the western world is taught to assess suicidal ideation in any patient with depressive symptoms. Nmg20 23:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Nmg, I am referring to the term 'cause.' In your post you admit it is not possible to establish that anxiety disorders cause suicide (your reasons for thinking so are different to mine, but there you go). Then you slip in the words "lead to" in regard to major depression and suicide, with the implication that one does indeed 'cause' the other. This issue of the slippage of terms (in this case, 'leads to' equating with 'causes'), and the source of evidence (in this case the 'excellent reason' for a teaching unit in a medical education curriculum - which incidentially mangles the point anyway, since the implication here is that major depression and depressive symptoms are the same thing), must be more carefully assessed. Indeed the very notion of causality itself must be dealt with more carefully and thoroughly, otherwise it becomes meaningless. To say that x causes y is an enormous and utterly decisive claim, and for one value to exist in a causal chain, the next value must follow as the direct unmediated consequence in each and every case - no exceptions. I appreciate the frustration some people are having here in regard to what they see as 'pro-smokers' trying to carve up the opposition's research examples and claims, but care must be taken. Be accurate. Cause is a term best left to the pure sciences, not chemistry or biology. There are, after all, many other terms to use, viz. 'associated with,' 'accompanied by,' 'in conjunction with.' These terms are accurate, but they're not as sexy as 'caused by.' This issue is of great importance, not just for smoking. 203.217.85.249 15:35, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Read more carefully. What I said was that we could not prove that anxiety disorders cause suicide - I went on to explain why ethical constraints would prevent you running the sort of study that can prove causation. We can still establish the causative link between the two through careful examination of correlation - if you read the conclusion of the study I cited, that work is already underway and already doing just that. So while I certainly admit it isn't proven yet, it's a lot closer to being proven than your initial "Oh boy, are you serious?" post made out that it was.

I'm a little disappointed that you go on to talk about my comments about medical education as if they were my "source of evidence" when I also linked to a recent cross-sectional study about the links between depression and suicide. Given the requirements here that we provide sources for claims in articles, perhaps you could address that omission by coming up with comparable studies finding no link between the two? I'm sure they exist.

Your comments on causality are interesting - in brief (as it's something of a tangent), I absolutely disagree that medical science should be forbidden (as an impure science?) from using "causes". If we can demonstrate that A is associated with B in a population, we can eliminate likely confounders, and we can suggest why the association exists, then it is fair to say that A causes B - because at a population level it is true. Saying "depression is associated with an increased risk of suicide in the individual" is just a clumsy way of saying "depression causes suicide", IMHO, and it should be the job of an encyclopaedia to discuss things at a population level. Nmg20 01:50, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

In my previous post, I pointed out the serious problems posed by the term 'cause,' and your following post reduplicated the problem. I refer to "A is associated with B". Association is not cause. This is the point I am trying to make: it is not enough to say that it's as good as cause. No study, however unethical, could establish that anxiety disorders cause suicide simply because it is impossible to isolate, say, 'generalised anxiety disorder' from the person so-diagnosed. In fact, we don't even know where this disorder is. The brain? The mind? The mind/brain? Behaviour? Interaction with environment? All of them? And what is this disorder? Does it have consciousness? Can it 'act'? Does it have autonomy from the person? What kind of a study could be proposed for this? We cannot do with human beings what we can do with inclined planes or asymptotes, ethical or no. Pure science introduces variables to experiments. We frantically run around trying to eliminate them because we can never achieve the totally constructed evrironment they deal with - that is the meaning of 'pure' science. It doesn't make pure scientists smarter. Concern with populations does not change any of this. Indeed, the distance achieved by examining such a broad canvas may give us an insidious sense of confidence for claims that we might not have confronting face-to-face individuals with all of their complexity and confounders. When you refer to population, I assume the methodology of work you are or might rely on is statistical. Statistical analysis is not empirical analysis in the strict sense of the term 'empirical' (Experience and perception of a thing in itself), and indeed you are quite correct to use the term 'association' in regard to this form of research (or almost all forms of research). Because we have entered the world of numbers, we think we're brothers and sisters with the asymptote-studiers. Statistical analysis can never achieve anything beyond association - the methodology is built on that very premise and was never meant to demonstrate cause. And such research may be workable and fine for what people want to achieve. But it is not by any means the same thing as cause, and it could be viewed as disingenuous to claim that association is the same as or as good as cause. It is not merely clumsy; it is a calculated attempt to make a lofty claim with all of its attendant scientific, political and moral implications, without the means of justifying such a lofty claim. Likewise is it with the claim that smoking behaviour has a 'causative' or 'secondarily causative' (a contradiction in terms due to presuppositions) effect on suicidality. What you can do, however, is to say that "X claim that A causes B", and that seems more in keeping with encyclopedia entries. An enclyclopedia reports on topics; it does not generate original research. I'm not clear as to why you think encyclopedias should only be dealing with populations. Surely it depends on the topic at hand. Now, I want to apologise to you in regard to the 'sources of evidence,' and I acknowledge your reference to the cross-sectional study. In terms of this debate, references for my statements would be general and philosophical rather than physical science. The names I can offer are Martin Heidegger, David Hume, José Ortega y Gasset. I want to assure you that I pursue these issues not because I want to argue. I think these issues are critical. I think both suicide and cigarette smoking are currently key battlegrounds for these issues, and I believe they are the generator of the furious debates on this 'talk' page. 124.168.21.7 14:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate where you're coming from, and of course association does not prove causation. However, nor does it render it impossible to say A causes B under any circumstances. For instance, smoking is associated with increased risk of lung cancer - it doesn't cause it in everyone who smokes, but it does make it more likely. As a result, we say "smoking causes cancer", and at a population level this is true - and on the side of a lot of cigarette packets!

I'm going to keep this response fairly brief because in lots of way we are agreeing. For instance, I would never tell someone that smoking would be certain to give them cancer, but I would say that it causes cancer and that they're more likely to get it if they smoke. The two aren't mutually exclusive, and as you note, I believe that Wikipedia should be interested in the effects of smoking at a population level, chiefly because as an encyclopaedia it should be providing information on the place and effects of something in a society, not dispensing cod-medical advice. It's the difference between saying "not wearing seatbelts causes head injury" and "if you don't wear a seatbelt, you have an associated increased risk of head inury of 78%". Both are right, but the latter is close to meaningless unless it's part of a conversation. I would argue that it's disingenuous to remove causality from the equation where healthcare risk and the impact of behaviour on it is concerned.

Thank you for putting your sources on the table - what I had in mind was scientific research looking specifically at the issues we're discussing. Interesting though Hume et al undoubtedly are, I feel their views on causation would be better brought to bear in that article before they're applied unilaterally to others! Anyway - as I said in my first post here, I don't think the association between smoking and suicide is established enough to use "cause" with yet (unlike depression and suicide, for instance), so don't have strong views on how it features in this article. Nmg20 15:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Nmg20, thank you for your considered and considerate reply. I have nothing futher to add on this section. (new User attached)124.168.22.131 16:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Polonium 210 (Po210))

As I understand it, Po210 has a half-life of something close to 138 days. I wonder then how there is enough of it left in aged tobacco to be a problem for smokers. Even more importantly, where is this stuff coming from? Are we running our fertilizers through nuclear reactors or something?

The claim does not make sense to me.

Health_effects_of_tobacco_smoking#Radioactive_components_of_tobaccoGzuckier 22:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

There is an answer to that. It is my understanding that since the nuclear test ban treaty came into effect the largest US souce of polonium pollution is probably the burning of coal in conventional power plants. According to the Wikipedia Fossil_fuel article In 2000, about 12,000 metric tons of thorium and 5,000 metric tons of uranium were released worldwide from burning coal. Polonium is one of the daughters of radium produced by decay of uranium which would seem it could be generated in the body by breathing anything above it in the decay series. Regardless of polonium levels thorium is also carcinogenic. Trilobitealive 18:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Natural radioactivity works such that radioactive elements in mineral decay into lighter nuclei. That's why there's radon in the atmosphere and radioactive potassium-40 in our bodies. Polonium is naturally produced from uranium, an element that's actually quite common. The danger in smoking with respect to radioactivity is in the delivery: directly to the lungs. Yet I can't see the point in fretting about radioactivity, when smoke contains benzopyrene, a pollutant that has been shown to reliably induce cancer (in animal tests). --Vuo 11:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

From The New York Times on December 1, 2006: "The [tobacco] industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium. Exactly how it gets into tobacco is not entirely understood, but uranium “daughter products” naturally present in soils seem to be selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive polonium. High-phosphate fertilizers may worsen the problem, since uranium tends to associate with phosphates..." [2] --Howrealisreal 15:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh come on! Seriously. SOmetimes it becomes increasingly obvious the whole anti-tobacco thing is mostly about popular piling on and taxing something. SO now we are supposed to believe the tobacco plant is actually an evil devil plant that has evolved to selectively absorb damaging radioactive materials from the soil, and manage to convert it into a more deadly form identical to the original save that its half life is increased so it stays radioctive in signifigant quantities despite a long aging process in tobacco? Tihs is done selectively. Meaning if there are nutrients in the soil that could lead to the further survival of the tobacco plant or its greater health, its roots have evolved to preferentially absorb deadly radioactive particles instead. Some lies are so incredibly obvious, everyone believes them. 88.153.200.32 04:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that the tobacco plant, like every other known lifeform is not capable of nuclear transmutation of elements. It is true, however that phosphate fertilizers tend to contain uranium, which decays (by a well-characterized process) into polonium. Most elements are absorbed (at least to some extent) non-selectively-- if they are similar, they will frequently enter the body via the same mechanisms, even if one is toxic. This is why barium chloride is poisonous to calcium channels. That tobacco plants contain polonium (after processing and curing) is demonstrable: studies such as this have demonstrated it. Even a cursory PubMed search on polonium and tobacco will yield many similar results.

While I'm all for looking at tobacco objectively, free from anti-smoking zealots and tobacco company shills, it would be foolish to the point of suicidal to ignore the actual science here. Kajerm 18:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I have found multiple, reliable sources which supports Po210's radioactive effects in tobacco smoke. I don't know how to change/add references, however. If someone can point me in the right direction I would be more than glad to do cite them.DPham4 22:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Although I don't have any sources for this, it is true that a lot of tobacco is grown on pitchbend fields where uranium was mined in the tobacco producing areas of the United States, because the land was fairly cheap and tobacco produced a lot of money in the post-war years when cigarettes became more popular. As to the question of half-life, despite the 138 day half life, that simply means that in any given sample, after 138 days half of the sample will be decayed to a lower atomic weight (that will likely be less radioactive). So, if you have one gram of Po210, then after 138 about half will exist as the isotope. After 276 days, about 1/4g will remain as the isotope, and so on. It doesn't take much exposure to alpha and beta rays to cause considerable damage to internal tissue. TeamZissou 03:35, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

DPham4, belatedly (and the rest of you with your multiple reliable sources): to add references, see WP:REF, and bear in mind WP:CITE and WP:MEDRS. I'll outline the process here in brief:

(1) Search for an article on PubMed [3] - you can search using the author names, years, titles, publications - just take the sources you've already found, punch them in, and if they've been published anywhere, they will be on pubmed.

(2) Copy the whole reference starting with the author's names and ending with the PMID.

(3) Come back to wikipedia, find the point it supports, and edit the section to include <ref>--paste the article reference from pubmed here--</ref>

(4) You will need to remove the extra line spaces and the "link to article" text, and most importantly, remove the colon from the PMID. So PMID: 17130626 will NOT work, but PMID 17130626 will.

Happy hunting. Nmg20 00:45, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The math in the New York Times article about Polonium in cigarettes is extremely incorrect. A quick google search reveals a number of articles criticizing the claim of the NYT, and the top result showing a correlation between the polonium content and health problems is part of a water filter company website. The best summary of the concept was thus: You are bombarded with more radiation by riding on a camel, than from smoking a camel. The concept of polonium in cigarettes is just being harped on due to the recent media play that the element has been receiving. Sensationalist journalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.190.68.75 (talk) 16:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Smoking paradoxes

In the section talking about beneficial effects of smoking, it is refered to as "smoking paradoxes". The only reason it is called that, is because the anti-smoking cartel is surprised it has any benefits at all. Dullfig 03:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Sources for your assertion? I'll try to find an easy online reference for the alternative thesis that it is has been called a paradox for many years because there are some recognizable minor transient benefits in the face of the overwhelming actuarial data demonstrating smokings's huge health risks. The NIH has death rate tables but they're bulky and difficult to read. Regards. Trilobitealive 12:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Clinical Investigation and Reports

Impact of Smoking on Clinical and Angiographic Restenosis After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Another Smoker’s Paradox?

David J. Cohen, MD, MSc; Michel Doucet, MD;; Donald E. Cutlip, MD; Kalon K.L. Ho, MD, MSc; Jeffrey J. Popma, MD; Richard E. Kuntz, MD, MSc

That's reference 32; the one that's referenced right where the text says "Smoker's Paradox". Gzuckier 19:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

That is just one of the references on the paradox itself. I was asking about the assertion there is an anti-smoking cartel and that they were surprised smoking has benefits. I would say from the historical perspective there was more surprise that smoking had significant provable health risks. (I personally remember watching TV commercials where doctors discussed the health benefits of asbestos cigarette filters.) Until around 1950 there wasn't much general public interest in anything but smoking benefits. In fact it was 1964 before there was a surgeon general's report on smoking's negative consequences. IMHO there are many small but easily recognizable benefits but it was only when we started having the capability of looking at large numbers of outcomes the true direction of the risk/benefit ratios emerged. Trilobitealive 23:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

In general the health benefits are minor comparable to the risks, as only a small specific subset of the population will actually feel the benefits. The reason for the long delay in recognizing its health risk has to do with the delayed onset of negative consequences, which is not the case with the positive consequences.DPham4 12:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

One reference (or two, or three) does not a catch-phrase make. The first poster is correct. It is not a paradox that smoking has benefits - the paradox would be if it were the only cocktail of drugs that did not have a benefit. The term "paradox" should be deleted. What does it contribute? Also, the job of an encyclopedia is not to employ the terms of those connected with the topic at hand. Rather, it is to describe them. So, you could write, "some say that it is a paradox" - not, "it is a paradox." The former is what "objectivity" looks like, and what an encyclopedia entry should look like. 211.29.0.163 18:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I really hate the phrase "Smoker's Paradox". Something having both positive and negative effects isn't a paradox; it just means the effects have to be weighed relative to each other when deciding whether to have a cigarette or not. Even if it was previously assumed that smoking had only negative effects, the discovery that it also has positive effects doesn't create any paradoxes. Anyway, all pharmaceuticals have positive and negative effects, but we don't have entries about the "Aspirin Paradox" or the "Methotrexate Paradox", and for good reason. 71.232.98.66 15:45, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Footnotes

I had to add back the footnotes. What happened to them? There are people who want to see the links to the original sources without having to wade through the edit page. Trilobitealive 03:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Notes, References, Statistics and studies, and Further reading sections were blanked by 65.65.246.88 in consecutive edits on December 12. [4],[5],[6],[7]

Imaninjapirate reverted the last of those edits, restoring the Further reading section. [8].

Other users edited to restore categories and interwiki links, so I restored the other sections to their pre-blanked state in this edit [9]. Please double-check to make sure everything has been properly restored.

-- Chondrite 07:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

thank you. I'm such a noob I can't put up a reference without being able to check to see that its format is minimally workable. Trilobitealive 12:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

"Smokers"

I had a small question (actually it might be a big one,but never mind): What is the definition of "smoker?" Is a smoker one who smokes on occassion-maybe the equivilent 1 or 2 cigarettes a day or even a week? Is it someone who smokes 3 packs a day? The guy who always has a cigar in his mouth? I mean, maybe that's too broad a definition, but it seems as if this article is unclear about such things. Generally, people think of "smokers" as people that are addicted to cigarettes, but as someone who smokes "only" one or two a day (yeah yeah, even that much is bad for me and all that shit, I know), I still consider myself a "smoker." Is this an important distinction, or not?

reply... A smoker is someone who smokes; how often is irrelevant. Stop kidding yourself! if you smoke... you're one of us! J.S 17.04.07

"Slutting" or "smoking"?

In the first paragraph it says "Tobacco smoking, usually referred to as "slutting"," is this correct, the term slutting. Shouldn't it be smoking?

If you look at the history of the page you see people(some logged in and other not) changes the term the whole time(Or at least thats what I think I see with my limited knowledge of the wiki software :P)

I also googled for "smoking slutting" and found some websites that claims smoking is called slutting or reference to smoking as slutting.

I'm going to leave it at the moment as is, because I like calling the people at work that smokes "sluts" :P. But I do feel we need to change it to the correct word.

Regards, Openhazel 09:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

To do: sectioning health risks

I think that the "health risks" section is spaghetti-like to read. Sectioning or enumerating the diseases would help readability. I would suggest: COPD or "tobacco disease", cancer, cardiovascular effects, effects of particulate matter on lungs, other. --Vuo 19:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

Are you fucking kidding me? This article is pure propaganda garbage!

Seriously, how can that happen on wikipedia?

I don't smoke, I never did, and I don't intend on doing. Still, I find it incredibly frustrating to see people preaching their thoughts and forcing them onto others.

What the hell is up with all the countless sections on "arguments against smoking" from all religions? What the hell is that supposed to mean? To scare the christian/jew/muslim/whathefuckever smoker out of smoking?

I am all for asserting the health risk of smoking. But that's certainly not the case here. The anti-smoking creed is systematicly enforced in every fucking paragraph. Every fucking image is anti-smoking (at least the subtitles make them so). Every section too. Even the "benefits from smoking" is anti-smoking, when it redundantly reassure the reader inumerous times that "the danger far outweight the benefits" (as though that's not done enough throughout the whole article).

Seriously, this is the most POVed article I've ever seen here. My not being a smoker and still have got pissed at it should tell you how much it is so.

Please, do an objective article. Talk about the cultural aspect and history of smoking, for crying out loud. Talk about the history of the smoking industry. And, yes, talk about the health risk, but without preaching it, and confine it to ONLY ONE section, because that's enough!

As for all the redudant propaganda garbage, it seems they have their own articles already. So put them on "see also", for fuck's sake! This article is already too big as it is, anyway!

By the way, I advise all the check out the articles on cannabis smoking and Cannabis (drug) and contrast with this one to seem how much POVed it is.

What would you all think if I added a section with arguments from all religions against pot smoking? That would be crazy POV preaching, wouldn't it? Exactly.

I entirely agree, as a quite well read and well informed smoker, I was very disapointed to see the content of this page. It is certainly biased, and inacurate both in stated fact and omission. The result is a calling into question of 'any and all' content on the Wikipedia site. I had up until finding this article, found Wikipedia to be an excellent learning and reference source. I have added a few excellent sources of contrary information, in the 'Smokers' rights sites' section which may help provide for a more balanced article. JohnSmithW 14:36, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think it's a good idea to start working on the article to add "pro-smoking" material. Two wrongs don't make a right — two opposite biased opinions side by side don't make a neutral point of view. I would focus on the propagandistic, unscientific wording ("Tobacco smoke contains over 4000 chemicals"). The real risks of tobacco smoking shouldn't be concealed in "anti-smoking arguments" and the real acceptance of tobacco around the world shouldn't be concealed in "pro-smoking arguments". These are facts that you can color to argue for a point of view, but on Wikipedia, you must not do so. --Vuo 18:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I whole-heartedly agree. I explain further in the other section here talking about this. EDIT: Vuo, you seem to have missed the point. Nobody is advocating a side-by-side comparison of the benefits and risks. You're putting words in peoples mouths. Re-read the article yourself. The point is that again and again, in every paragraph, across the entire page, everywhere I read garbage about the health risks of smoking. There's more to smoking then that. The health risks should be confined to one section, albeit a large one, and the rest of the article should discuss things neutrally. Seriously, even many articles on hard drugs are more neutral then this. Are people incapable of talking about smoking without blurting out a health risk five seconds later? Harpalus 05:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

You all seem to realize the fact the the article is grossly one sided, and yet months after your posts on this talk page, it's still that way. If this were the "God" article or one more controversial, it would have most likely been fixed inside the day. How hard is it to simply at least delete the completely unrelated "Religion and smoking" area, and a few others that are pointless in the context of an article about the act of smoking? 75.73.41.34 23:18, 16 July 2007 (UTC)RGermanicus

I've never seen such a rediculous article in all the time I've been reading Wikipedia, I thought this article was supposed to be about Tobacco smoking, not all this other looney rubbish.

The fact of the matter is that this article is purely biased in the Anti-Smoking lobby's favour this article needs serious editing and fixing up to even bring it back to some respectability, let alone NPOV.Trumpy 14:31, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Differentiating health related effects between Cigarette and pipe/cigar smoking

The article lacks a differentiation in the health effects of cigarette vs. pipe/cigar smoking. Even the original Surgeon General report (Smoking and Health - 1964) and subsequent reports (The Health Consequences of Smoking - 1967 as well as the ’68 and ’69 supplements) as well as other studies show a significant difference in health effects between the methods of consuming tobacco. I am new to the Wikipedia experience so am not sure how to modify the article (or if I even should). However, I would suggest that in order to keep with your NPOV policy, such distinctions should be noted. Bey3 23:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)bey

74.8.112.195 19:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)I agree. The 1964 report did find a link between pipe smoking and lip cancer, but no difference in all-cause mortality between pipe smokers and nonsmokers. It's easy to look at the plain dangers of cigarettes and extrapolate them to all other forms of tobacco-- but the evidence has not borne that out. The smoking and inhaling of the smoke of tobacco seems to be where the majority of the risk comes from. Other forms of tobacco usage do carry risks, but not on the same order of magnitude as cigarette smoking. Reply. Yes. There is a different health risk with cigarettes and cigar/pipe smoking. However, the main point is that C. Everett Koop advises people that both types of smoking are extremely dangerous to your health.

the question of the possibility

Is it possible for a man to smoke 100 cigarettes a day? If it is possible, how long will such a man live?

My grandfather reputedly smoked at least 100 a day for decades. He had an appalling smoker's cough, retching every morning with a build up of phlegm on his chest. He stopped smoking one day when he saw an anti-smoking advert in which a bin full of blackened lungs was emtied onto a table. He lived for another 25 years or so after that, eventually dying peacefully at the age of 70-something.

The problem, (so I am told by my sister, who is a doctor), is not that smoking kills - that's just a slogan - but that smoking can be extremely hazardous to the health of a significant percentage of the population. My grandfather was lucky not to be one of that significant percentage who suffered serious side effects such as lung cancer, so he could smoke hundreds of cigarettes for years and just end up with bad phlegm. He was also lucky that he could just turn his back on the habit when he wanted. Others would die of lung cancer within just a few years if they tried the same and be unable to give up no matter how much pain they were causing themselves. GDallimore (Talk) 15:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Islam

it's my first time to use this site for search. it started with me searching for the word 'smoking' and ended up with me readin an interesting racism paragraph about islam and hash. i'm a muslim living in the middle east and never saw anybody smoking hash! i think a good encyclopedya should be based on facts, reliable sources and references, not western movies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.189.142.251 (talk • contribs) 22:35, 24 March 2007

The statement you're referring to is In Muslim countries, where cannabis products smoking occupies a social niche analogous to that of alcohol drinking in the West, hookahs are sometimes loaded with hashish or opium. The statement should be more precise, but it's not racism. In some Muslim countries, there is a tradition of smoking cannabis, but this sweeping generalization should be corrected. More interesting is this: why it is racist to say someone smokes cannabis? --Vuo 07:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I have changed 'Judeo-Christian' to read 'Abrahamic' instead. This is because Islam is not covered by the original term, but information is suppplied. Arthbach 11:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I originally put in the "Judeo Christian" heading because I couldn't think of a better term. -Amatulic 17:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Smokers Attitudes

The smokers attitudes sections seems way out of line. A Page on tobacco smoking should not be biased one way or the other. This section makes assumptions that smokers usually have no regard for their health, and gets even more extreme correlating smoking tobacco to traffic violations, cheating in school etc. I should be mentioned that some smokers do not thoroughly consider long term risks of smoking, but relating it to fatalism and total loss of control is absurd. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.104.16.14 (talk) 01:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC).

I agree, the section should be removed from the article. Hempeater 22:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree too, it's just more bias and has no place in this article. Trumpy 14:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

A biased article

From what I have read on this talk page, some questions have been raised on the neutrality of this article. After having read the article, I too have found it to be slightly biased. This article is about tobacco smoking, not for making attacks on smokers themselves.

Being a smoker, one might argue that I am biased myself. But I know I am aware of the multitude of health warnings thrust at me every day. It is impossible to not be. When it comes down to it, smoking is a choice. Addiction is no excuse. If one wants to quit, then it is completely within their power.

This article portrays them as mindless automatons who are slaves to the smoking propaganda machine...

202.172.109.127 06:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, no. My view, which is unfalsifiable, is that humans have no free-will and therefore no capacity to excercise choice. What is falsifiable, and more or less accepted, is that humans don't always have the capacity of free-will. Drug adictions are one such scenarios. DPham4 02:57, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

DPharm4, you've been reading Bertrand Russell, haven't you? You're view is indeed falsifiable, and more or less accepted means nothing. At all.{unsigned|211.29.0.163}}

Does this mean Bertrand Russell means nothing at all?

Someone should tell the philosophers. Nmg20 23:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Effects on Health Services

Surely the article discussing the wider social and health service cost of smoking should mention the fact that the tax rates on tobacco products often far outweigh the cost to health services. In the UK for example, the cost of curing smoking related ilnesses is between 1.4 and 1.7 billion GBP per year (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/smoking/86599.stm). This article also states that in the financial year of april 1998 to april 1999, the Gov't will have taken 8.9 billion GBP. In todays figures thats just under 11 billion GBP. My own calculations place the figures, based on current number of smokers in the UK, current tax rates and average consumption per smoker to be near £14 billion.

The figures may not be exact, but the fact remains that the amount raised through ciggarette tax is between 5 and 10 times the cost to the NHS. I did not have the fugures for other nations with public health services but I've no doubt that the same picture applies there. Surely the fact that the tax on ciggarettes considerebly outweighs the cost to the health services should be mentioned in this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.136.125.97 (talk) 18:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC).

Smoking is bad for your health and four lungs.You can get cancer by smoking everyt day.

^I was unaware of that, thankyou for informing me. I was also unaware that I had four lungs, cheers for the information.

You were rightly unaware because you don't have four lungs. DPham4 03:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Added NPOV Tag

The consensus on this talk page seems clear, and I agree, that the neutrality of this article is in serious question. I don't have much to add, but I put the NPOV tag on the article for anyone else who wanders by. Adbaxter 15:11, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue on whether the consensus is clear beyond saying that one post here from the middle of May saying Bertrand Russell is wrong about free will and another from March which starts "Are you fucking kidding me?" don't represent consensus. They represent people shouting. For an article to be tagged NPOV, it has to not meet the criteria set out in WP:NPOV, and you should post in the discussion page why you feel that this is the case. Vague claims to consensus without a shred of evidence don't cut the mustard, I'm afraid, so I'm removing the tag until you provide something we can discuss. Nmg20 16:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll do my best to record what I feel is wrong with the article and make a few suggestions for improvement. Preface: I'm not a smoker and don't particularly like smoke, but the article hit me as wrong when I first read it and I feel it needs a considerable overhaul.

A: Lack of history on the subject. I came to the page originally intending to find out some history on smoking. The lead makes mention of its rise in popularity but the article does not treat the history of smoking at all. Rather, after describing a couple ways smoking occurs, it dives right into deleterious health effects. How does this relate to NPOV? First, the title of the article is Tobacco Smoking--not Tobacco Smoking in Modern Times and not Health Issues with Tobacco Smoking. The fact that the article jumps right into telling the reader that smoking kills makes a statement that the health effects are the first and foremost issue anyone should consider when thinking about smoking. The lead to the article (when not vandalized) is very good--it introduces a bit about process, history, biology/chemistry and then health effects. The article at large should follow this example.

B: Weasel words. Frequently the article slips from presentation of facts to declaration as authority, and also uses scary numbers to get its point across. Here's a few examples:

From "Methods of Use": "Cigarette smoke contains 60 different carcinogens, pollutants that increase the risk of cancer. A large number of artificial additives are added to cigarettes, particularly to enhance taste (see List of additives in cigarettes)."

This information is unnecessary in the Methods area. "60 different carcinogens" means very little, considering no source and no information about how much is there. Further, the article is already dedicated to the health risks of smoking--is it necessary to hammer it home yet again in a description of how cigarettes are used?

From "History of Health Issues": "Cigarette-shaped hard candy packs were even sold to children."

The word 'even' is an example of the steadily building tone of the article here. It adds a subtle bit of outrage to a factual occurence.

From "History..." again: "In the 1950s, manufacturers began adding filter tips to cigarettes to remove some of the tar and nicotine as they were smoked. "Safer", "less potent" cigarette brands were also introduced. They were so popular that, as of 2004, half of Americans preferred them[15] in spite the fact that the idea of a "safer" cigarette is a myth. Cigarettes that offer, "low tar and nicotine" simply cause the smoker to smoke more or to inhale more deeply to get the same level of nicotine. According to The Federal Government’s National Cancer Institute (NCI), light cigarettes provide no benefit to smoker's health.[16][17]"

First, the article steps into authority here instead of letting the facts do the talking. "In spite of..." is not encyclopedic. Further, one of the studies cited here states in the abstract that low-tar cigarettes offer no safety benefits, but filtered do.

C: The "Smoker's Attitudes" section. From what I can tell on the talk page, this section has been stripped down and is better than it used to be, but it still presents NPOV issues. The section makes considerable generalizations, and the source noted does not cover half of what is written there. Further, the source, while it seems trustworthy (a faculty member at a university) only vaguely references "studies." Which ones? Finally, the whole idea of a "Smokers' attitudes" section is out of line. It feels very condescending.

D: In the "Health Benefits" section, we get this gem: "While smoking is synonymous with damaging one's health, health benefits have been observed in smokers, reducing their risk of several diseases. It should be noted that the increased risk of terminal illness from habitual smoking is still widely believed to outweigh the benefits and should not be taken as evidence that smoking is healthful or beneficial overall."

"Let the facts speak for themselves" is a WP:NPOV policy.

E: Gateway drugs. The article references tobacco as a gateway drug unflinchingly. Yet even the gateway drug page shows there is considerable debate about the accuracy of this idea. No treatment is given to the opposing view there.

F: The religious viewpoint section. The Native American viewpoint is given in brief, but deserves expansion. The Islamic one is particularly awful, straining to find some way that the Koran speaks against smoking, and not finding it. The two quotes have absolutely nothing to do with smoking.

Again, I'm not trying to say there isn't good copy here or that a lot of the info in this article shouldn't be kept. The article is informative in many areas. However, it lacks balance. There are not even any discussions of neutral subjects, like history, while the whole article is taken up with a Health Benefits section. Serious improvement is needed. Adbaxter 19:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much - as a response to a slightly tetchy post, that was pretty much wonderful. I'll go through your points in turn, if I may.

(A) History of Smoking. I accept that the article is a little light on this, and - shock, horror! - I agree that the main article could usefully follow the pattern set out in the intro.

(B) Weasel Words. The examples you give aren't actually Weasel Words - but again, I'd be happy to see the "60 carcinogens" bit moved or even cut to the health effects of tobacco smoking article. The only snag is that I think the article should retain some mention of the fact cigarettes contain carcinogens - but as soon as you drop "60" in favour of "many" or "a number of", you're actually falling foul of WP:Weasel...!

It's probably best just removed. Unless cigarettes are somehow different than the other forms of smoking, it's just irrelevant information in the context. On a slightly related note, the hookah section uses some odd word choice..."luxurious," "rich," "delicious" and the like. Probably needs revision as well.

Quite agree about the "even sold" - although I remember Joe Camel going up on billboards within twenty yards of most schools in the country and so do think it's pretty outrageous, the onus is on those who feel that way to find someone citeable saying so!

My point here is that the fact is outrageous enough, especially when surrounded by all the information that it is. The tone of the article doesn't need to say it.

Can't agree that "in spite of" isn't encyclopaedic. Given that it's clear these cigarettes weren't safer, I don't think the current phrasing is bad, although it could be tightened up.

I think the issue is the phrasing here - what I take it to mean is that numerous marketing gimmicks were employed to get people to believe cigarettes weren't as bad for them (=were safer) as before, one of which was cigarettes dubbed "safer". Of all said gimmicks, only the addition of a filter made smoking safer (while making passive smoke less safe, of course!).

The key is the switch between "light" and "filtered." One of the sources talks exclusively about light cigarettes, and the other source states in the first paragraph that filtered are better. The quick switch between the two in the article implies they are the same--different names for the same concept. This does not appear to be so.

(C) Yep - this is pretty horrible. Unfortunately, what it needs is a philosopher, and that I am not - although if people want to message me with requests or put fact tags in the article for particular studies about smokers' beliefs, I can look them up on pubmed - I'd be confident of finding the original research cited in any webpages, for instance.

(D) I absolutely can't agree, I'm afraid, with removing the disclaimer from the Health Benefits section, simply because these words or ones like them appear in pretty much every single one of the studies cited - and I should know because I added most of them[10]! It would therefore to my mind be misrepresenting the studies cited to remove it.

Again the phrasing is at issue. Opening with "smoking is synonymous with damaging one's health" is POV. In no way are the concepts "synonymous." They are very strongly linked, but to many people, smoking means something completely different. Suggested rephrase: "Some studies have discovered health benefits correlated with smoking. These studies observed a reduction in the occurance of some diseases, but all such studies stressed that the benefits of smoking did not outweigh the risks." Clearly, the studies would all have to say as much, but with that phrasing, it's the doctors who are talking, not the editors of wikipedia.

There's a cite now with "Smoker's Paradox," but I would be careful about promoting the catchphrase. Is it commonly used in the medical profession? Also, as a style note, is WP supposed to use i.e. and e.g.? I kind of think not...

(E) Again, I think what's needed here are a whole heap of fact tags, and if particular claims can't be backed up, out they come.

(F) Perhaps I'm being unreasonable, but religious views on smoking seem to me phenomenally minor. I've read the New Testament a couple of times, and can't remember Jesus saying anything about not lighting up every now and then. However, given that the fact tag on the Islam section is only from May, they probably merit a little bit of time before removing them. Nmg20 01:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Easily merged into a historical perspective on smoking once an effort is made towards one.

Glad we could be civil about all this! I can tell you're working hard and want these articles to be useful. Just be careful about hopping on the soapbox--the facts do all the talking for smoking. Adbaxter 04:25, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely! I've had a go at rewriting sections of the article - I haven't yet reordered the article per what we said under (A) above, as I'd like to give these changes a chance to get integrated / chopped and changed first. Also added a lot of citation requests to the gateway drugs section - which I hadn't read properly, and which is a bloody mess.

One thing: I don't think I was getting on a soapbox anywhere in my edits to the article - none of the sections I've changed were my work originally, and I'm well aware of WP:SOAP. Nmg20 11:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I think mos of Adbaxter's first assessments of the article was right on the money, except maybe that the religious views of Native Americans (who as a group are about as homogeneous as "Asians") shouldn't be expanded, but rather deleted or rewritten. Here are just some of problems:

• The article is not just "a little light" on history, but quite frankly has no history section at all. There is really only the one half-sentence in the lead and a brief, but rather misplaced mention of the introduction of machine-rolled cigarettes in the late 19th century. "History" in the section "Health effect" is a very patchy and rather misleading history of the views on the health effects of smoking (in the UK, Germany and the US). There's no mention that a lot (if not most) physicians in early modern times considered smoking to be beneficial to health or that smoking has been a part of Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. Most arguments against smoking and its effects on health before the 20th century were primarily of a moralistic nature, and it was not until the late 1960s that the anti-smoking movement actually actually began turning the tide against pro-smoking opinions. That the occasional pre-modern author and physician proved to be right a few centuries down the line doesn't necessarily mean they actually had credible proof to support their claims nor that they were taken seriously in their own time.
• Most of the article reads like an anti-smoking pamphlet. The adverse effects of smoking should by no means be swept under the rug, but the article presents an excessive amount of detail and plenty of tedious statistical analysis about exactly why it's bad for one's health. At the same time it mentions almost nothing about either why people continue to smoke or the positive aspects of smoking, like sociability or the artistic qualities of various types of smoking tools and associated paraphernalia.
• Overall, the article makes very few attempts to be engaging and interesting. That it has more information on tobacco packaging warning messages and Jewish law and history on smoking than it does about any type of smoking in culture and the arts pretty much says it all.

By the way, why are we even considering slapping a bunch of fact tags on controversial and complicated topics like gateway drugs? Information of this kind should preferably be considered guilty until proven innocent and removed on the spot.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:48, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Picture

Is that photo of a baby smoking a cigarette, holding a can of beer really necessary? It looks like a joke photo and isn't really of relevance to the caption below. Is it vandalism? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DearCatastropheWaitress (talk • contribs)

How many people?

I came to this article to see what percentage of people smoke, and that information doesn't appear to be there. — Chameleon 07:14, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

That's because it's almost impossible to determine. What counts as a person who smokes? Having smoked once? Smoking habitually? Smoking, but only when others are present? DPham4 19:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

there should be a category linking all 4,000+ chemicals in tobacco smoke

there should be a category linking all 4,000 + chemicals in tobacco smoke.

A general article on smoking

Several people have expressed a desire to have a general article on smoking, but as you can see by the link, it is only a disambiguation. The only concern expressed is that there needs to be a disambiguation (dab) page, but this can easily be achieved by creating smoking (disambiguation). This would allow duplicated material to be covered in the main article, and relieve the pressure slightly on specific articles. Thoughts? Richard001 08:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

A proper article on smoking in general has now been started.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:51, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Health effects

Why is this section just as long as the main article? If we are going to use summary style the whole point is to get the information from the daughter article and present it in a more concise form. Both this article's 'summary' and the main article are 27kb of text (in terms of the main body), this one being slightly longer, which is an unacceptable situation. The health effects article is long enough, so this article needs to cut down to at least half its current size or it may as well stop pretending it's summarizing and just merge it all here. Richard001 10:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE AMERICAN CONTENT

In respect to your post about how Tobacco smoking is not only in the Americas - please recall that the Tobacco Genus is Native to the Americas and that Tobacco Smoking is a custom that comes from the Americas.

Your removal of content is wholely unwarranted and should not be done again.

--Mrtobacco 03:47, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Smoking in the Americas appears to have been for ritual purposes. It was the introduction of smoking to England by Ralegh and Harriot that turned tobacco into a recreational drug.

76.208.42.86 03:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC) David Harley

Changes to taxation section

I've made some edits to the taxation section, as follows:

• Added citations for UK average price and black market. Changed figures on black market cigarettes as percentage of cigarettes smoked to match source
• Added additional source for cigarette costs by state in the US
• Removed claim that "The average price in New York City has exceeded $7 per pack". My source contradicts this, and it would be wrong to leave the claim in when it is clearly contradicted by the previous statement
• Removed claim that "Some nations are reluctant to increase tobacco taxes because they fear the reduction of tobacco tax revenues and increase in smuggling, thus reducing the small amount of money they take in and increasing difficulties in funding anti-smoking campaigns". Have been unable to find any source for this statement, and I believe the vague nature of the statement will make a valid source difficult if not impossible to find

I was unable to find sources for either the Australian or South African price claims. --Careless hx 17:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

l. I don't know about New York, but I see cigarets for sale at $7 in Chicago. Men at L-stations offer singles for 50 cents. A pack of 20 700-mg. squares is about a half ounce so the price per ounce rolled and squared is $14. (In a harm reduction utensil that's 1120 single tokes, @ 1-1/4 cents each. Even with the taxes.)

2. Taxation is a double-edged sword. By paying a mega-bribe to the government the cigaret companies acquire huge clout and can demand certain favors. According to the R. J. Reynolds website "in 2006, US smokers paid $32,555,000,000.00 in tobacco taxes and settlement payments." On the drug.sense.org website, a clock on 2007 drug war expenditures had reached $36.5 bil by Sep. 19 (yesterday). Most of that money was spent to arrest and persecute cannabis users. Let editors now decide if it is relevant in an article about tobacco smoking to point out a possible motivational link in that (a) if marijuana were legalized and users unpersecuted, tobacco sales would drop precipitously, or (b) if marijuana were legalized, anti-overdose utensils now widely banned as "drug paraphernalia" for cannabis would be available to use with tobacco (28 separate tokes from each cigaret, dooming their profit margin).Tokerdesigner 19:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality

That the article is very clearly anti-smoking has been brought up many times, but no one has really tried to address the issue. I don't enjoy tagging articles, but the state of the article right now is just horrendous. The article is close to 100k and the overwhelming majority of the content is dedicated to health effects, social problems, legislation, taxation and religious condemnation. There is still no sign of a proper history section and barely anything on smoking culture. There's more information about modern warning labels than how tobacco smoking sprad all over the world in the 16th century. The article is also clearly misleading about the history of smoking and gives an impression that smoking has been universally condemned since it first spread outside of the Americas.

The article has too much focus on the medical and moralistic aspects of tobacco smoking and ignores almost anything that might seem positive about it. This is a very clear case of undue coverage and is not a fair or accurate representation of the phenomenon.

Peter ^Isotalo 18:19, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I do agree that there's too much article space given to the negative effects of smoking, in relation to the history of the practice. Yes, there is much work to be done. However, editors should note that in a neutral encyclopædia, only the facts must be represented - and the (proven) fact is that smoking is extremely damaging to one's health. It is absolutely necessary to write about all these perfectly valid facts. Therefore to label the article as it stands as "anti-smoking POV" is not an accurate label: the facts are simply stated. However, with regards to the overall balance of the article, yes - more elaboration on the history and "smoking culture" is needed. EuroSong ^talk 23:27, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

The factual accuracy is not the problem, but the undue weight given to facts favorable to anti-smoking activists. POV is usually not a problem of flat-out false statements, but of only giving readers one side of the story. This article does this with a vengence.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Peter, I couldn't agree more and I have been attacked many times for trying to remove some of the heavily anti-tobacco work in this article. If I touch it again - they'll attack me like mad. --Mrtobacco 20:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

What undue weight? If there are pro-smoking facts that the encyclopedia could present (religious traditions, maybe?) then present them. The weight given reflects the facts available out there. -Amatulic 21:01, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Smoking is about more than drug addiction and chemical processes in the body. The article covers almost only a perspective that is relevant to those who see smoking as a stupid, smelly and costly habit. I've already pointed out that there's not one word in the article about how smoking has influenced culture and the arts and the history section is blatantly misleading as to the historical views on the health effects of smoking. I'm not talking about including actual arguments for smoking, but rather that the article should present a broader and more multi-faceted view of the phenomenon. Normally, I wouldn't put up the NPOV-tag for a mere lack of coverage, but in this case, the slant is so extremely anti-smoking and lacking in alternative historical perspective that I felt it was motivated.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:09, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, that was kind of my point. Pardon my sloppy use of words, by "pro smoking" I didn't mean facts that promote smoking, but facts about religious traditions, cultural influences, etc. We already have articles on the dangers of cigarette smoke. An article about cigarette smoking should include a broad perspective, I agree. I'd like to see more on history, origins, traditions, even philosophical views (Ayn Rand, for example, has written about smoking as symbol of man's elevated status or some such thing). -Amatulic 16:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

My version should be the nearest possible to NPOV without having to drastically re-write the article, no more poorly sourced libro-fascist POV garbage flooding the article--—(Kepin)^{RING THE LIBERTY BELL} 17:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the rather drastic removal of 2/3 of the article is really the answer to our problems. The article does need a section on the negative effects of smoking, even if they might not need be as a comprehensive as they used to be.

Kepin, do you think you could at least try to summarize the more relevant material that you deleted?

Peter ^Isotalo 06:38, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I reverted User:Kepin's edits in full, which is always unfortunate, but come on. You're going to remove information such as the Quranic view of tobacco as "nanny state liberal health-0-fascist garbage"? You want an article about smoking to mention nothing about health effects at all? This is scarcely credible. Eleland 22:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Eleland, you're going too far and are missing the point - the article needs to be balanced.--Mrtobacco 03:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

It also needs to be broad in scope. A tobacco smoking article without a health effects-section is not kosher. We could come a long way by trimming (not deleting) the health effects info and moving a lot of it to health effects of tobacco smoking.

Peter ^Isotalo 06:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Peter you're still missing the point - YES a health effects section should be in there but it should not be the PRIMARY FOCUS OF THE ARTICLE. As it was/is, the article is only about the health effects of smoking. There is hardly one paragraph that has not been hit with a "smoking is bad for you" blurb. I vote that we make a new page called "Smoking Health Effects" and move all of that stuff to one page (we can reference the daylights out of it but let's put it all on one page to clean up this article).--Mrtobacco 14:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

We don't vote on article content: see WP:CONSENSUS. Again, I have no particular interest and involvement in this issue, I just saw the craziest edit summary I've ever seen and had to check it out. Moving on, the practice of WP:SPINOUT, creating a new article on a sub-topic, is natural and normal, however it doesn't lead to elimination of all info from an article - you leave a summary which is proportionate to the issue. In my understanding, health concerns relating to tobacco are numerous and very widely discussed, and clearly should form a major focus of the content. Whether that means 2/3, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4; I can't say. But not zero. Eleland 15:12, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

It's obvious that smoking is bad for you, so why should we be putting in 'health benefits'? There aren't that many! Auroranorth 11:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

With respect, because there are citable and verifiable facts that there may be/are health benefits. Although possibly the sub-section header could be different (feel free to suggest), but the push to NPOV this article is long overdue and the balance is needed. Pedro |  Chat  14:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It's far from obvious that smoking "is bad for you". There's this 20-year time lag to start with. It is, in fact, a complex and highly specialized argument to say "smoking is bad for you". --Vuo 14:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Vuo. Howevever looking at the prose and the references I'm wondering if the "Health Benefits of Smoking" should be renamed to "Potential Health ...." or "Possible Health....". My concern is that not enough of the refs actually cite a direct health benefit without equivocation. I'd be bold but as we have a conversation going other input would be handy. Pedro |  Chat  08:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

"Smoking is bad for you" is too fuzzy to say anything about, however, "smoking is bad for your health" is rather obvious. It can't be questioned without resorting to some sort of POV or plain ol' cherry picking.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

We learned in health class that smoking does help people lose weight, as well as some other stuff. I know there are benefits, even though I would never smoke and I am strongly against it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.126.67.144 (talk) 05:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I learned in health class that people shouldn't have sex, and that drinking will always lead to dying in a horrible car accident. I also learned the value of disinformation in promoting the greater good. Almost everyone who tries to quit smoking "cold turkey" ends up gaining a more than a few pounds. Smoking to lose weight = retarded. But, if you smoke and are quitting, expect to gain some weight until you regain the lung capacity to work it off.TeamZissou 00:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Can we at least get some concensus here?

Seems to me that there is a lot of different comments here, is there any chance that there might be any idea of agreement?.Trumpy 05:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I propose that we have a set amount of text allocated to each side of the argument. Perhaps 2000 words max for each section? --Mrtobacco 14:58, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a debating club. We don't give equal amount of space to "each side of the argument", but judge information on how relevant it is to a certain topic. Right now we have tons of info on the (negative) social and medical aspects of smoking, but nothing about history or how it has affected human culture. It's really not all that complicated; just start adding information that isn't related to lung cancer, legislation or religious moralism.

Peter ^Isotalo 06:12, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how that justifies tagging the article as NPOV. Most of the things you refer to are already discussed or linked to in the Tobacco article, which includes the topics you list above as part of its scope. I'm going to remove the tag unless you can demonstrate precisely how the current article violates Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and exactly what we can do to remove the tag. —Viriditas | Talk 06:41, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Please read the extensive discussion under the heading "Neutrality" and "Added NPOV tag". I've already elaborated in quite some detail on the skewed perspective of this article.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:36, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Peter, I read the discussion before I commented here. Please read Wikipedia:NPOV dispute, in particular the section entitled 'How to initiate an NPOV debate". It is extremely bad form to add a NPOV tag without explaining why or how the dispute can be resolved. You should not point people to a large and unwieldly discussion to hunt for and interpret your reasons. Please also address the problem with enough specificity to allow constructive discussion towards a resolution, such as identifying specific passages, elements, or phrasings that are problematic. Requesting expansion of the article to include material that already appears in other articles is not representative of a NPOV dispute. —Viriditas | Talk 22:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Read my post from July 18 for a very extensive and detailed list of problems. As for material already existing in other articles, I have trouble understanding how content in other articles solves the skewed and very narrow presentation of facts in this article.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Please don't tell people to read other posts when dealing with a NPOV dispute. The link I gave you above details exactly what you are supposed to, i.e. create a new section and briefly summarize the problem with a proposed solution. The content you describe in the discussion already appears in other articles, so moving it here would be one solution to the problem that you see. I'm going to remove the tag from this article 24 hours from the time you added it if you don't follow the procedure for NPOV disputes. Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 07:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Just try to actually improve the article instead of trying to use some phony breeches of protocol to make the article look less problematic than it is.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly what you are supposed to do. Instead you slapped a tag on the article, hoping someone, anyone, will improve the article to your personal specifications, which you will not reveal at this time, which means the only way the tag will be removed is when you feel like it. That's not how we use tags. Please follow the instructions outlined at Wikipedia:NPOV dispute. Start a new section and briefly describe the reasons you added the tag and how it can be removed. It's really very simple. Until a justifcation for adding and removing the tag is made, the tag should not appear in the article, so I've removed it. —Viriditas | Talk 01:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I've re-added the tag. The problems are the following (as already pointed out):

• The article is dedicated almost exclusively to the negative medical and social effects of tobacco smoking. There is virtually nothing related to
• The history of smoking prior to the rise of the anti-smoking movement in the 20th century is almost entirely ignored.
• The history of the health effects of smoking is seriously misleading by representing early resistance to smoking as though they were part of the modern medical discourse. This is not true, as most arguments against smoking before the late 19th and the 20th century was based on moralistic reasons.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

History of smoking and related issues appears in Tobacco, Cigarette, and Smoking. It would be extremely easy to add summary style paragraphs to this article to meet your objection. As for the history of helath effects, I would like to see specific examples of misleading information. Please do not tag and run. —Viriditas | Talk 09:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You can't reduce this issue to a few misleading sentences, since what is being presented isn't outright false, but has merely been selected, intentionally or not, in a tendentious manner. The biggest problem is not about the information that is included, but what's not included. Almost every single section of the article is presented from a view treating smoking as a threat, not just a form of recreation, a source of personal pleasure and comfort or a cultural inspiration.

It's pretty much the equivalent of writing an article about beer that consists of almost nothing but liver disease, alcoholism, violence and other social problems related to alcohol.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so more content about smoking as recreation, then? My answer is the same. This already appears in other articles and can easily be added summary style. I can easily do this and remove the tag, but I suspect that will not be acceptable to you. This is precisely why you need to outline the NPOV dispute with examples and solutions. You cannot expect every editor to simply cater to your view. State the problem and the solution so that others can fix it. Unless of course, you are actually going to do the work. Otherwise, what's the point of tagging the article? —Viriditas | Talk 09:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Tags are intended to alert readers and editors alike that an article has problems, and this article is pretty problematic. I don't know why you would suspect me of exacting shrubbery demands, but I can assure you that I would not slap another tag on the article if you actually added those summaries. Hell, I'll even copyedit them if needed.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:33, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, then how about prioritizing the tasks? How do you suggest that I arrange the two shrubberies start? Why don't we split the tasks up between us? —Viriditas | Talk 12:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I would love to help out adding content, but I can't be everywhere at once. I'm quite willing to help out proof-reading and copyediting, but I don't think it's justified to demand that I fix the problem myself merely because I've pointed it out. Here are the most urgent problems, though:

• A history section. Even the most general of summaries would do it.
• A section dedicated a bit more specifically to the cultural aspects of smoking. The section heading "Effects of the habit and industry on society" seems to be a rather obvious (if accidental) way of collecting information that tries to equates the practices of smokers with that of the tobacco industry.
• Sections on everything but health effects shouldn't be so darned obsessed with describing only the negative effects of smoking. And I can't tell you how annoying it is to see that so much of it is written from a rather obvious "but think of the poor children!"-perspective.
• The section on health effects is basically as long as health effects of tobacco smoking and makes up something like half prose of this article. This is not in the least reasonable and can't reasonably be considered proper use of summary style. And, again, the history section is outright misleading about how smoking has been viewed throughout history. Not a word about physicians in early modern times considering smoking beneficial. Not a peep about the lack of solid medical evidence before modern times.

I noticed TeamZissou removed the neutrality tag, and I'm going to revert that move, but I must again insist that something be done or I will reinsert it. I will again point out the parallel to an article about an alcoholic drink where at least 90% of the content was focused on problems with violence, premature death, alcoholism, restrictive legislation and how damnable drink corrupts our children.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Since there is already a health effects of tobacco smoking that I evidently forgot about, I withdraw my action to remove the NPOV tag, as this article should be 70% history and culture and 30% biology instead of the opposite. After reading it and the health effects... article, there should definitely be a shift in focus which this article fails to provide. TeamZissou 18:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't know why you were able to successfully communicate what Peter has attempted to convey, but I get it and I agree. —Viriditas | Talk 09:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Much of the history section can be adapted from smoking, which has a very good and well-sourced historical outline which does also cover cannabis and opium. JFW | T@lk 21:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 09:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Reading the history of the debate, it seems as if you all are working through the issues. However, it seems as if a considerable amount of health content still needs to be summarized and redirected. This would address both POV and length concerns. Mind if I take a stab at it? Phyesalis 08:37, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I have found homes for the excessive, yet detailed and valuable, content under health effects, namely Tobacco industry and Health effects of tobacco smoking. I'm going to spend the next couple of days going over those two pages to see if there's anything here that will be valuable to the pages. But then, I'm going to come back and start pruning. Phyesalis 09:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Good work so far, IMHO. Thanks. Nmg20 12:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I've reworked the intro of "health effects" to be a history of establishing a link between smoking and health effects. I moved a large portion of material to "Advertising" and to the second section of "health effects". I've also deleted some unsourced material and one fact with no viable or identifiable link. If the material does not have a ref. and does not relate (regardless of how it pertains) to the section, consider my deletions challenge to the material per WP:citation. This article is too long to be messing around with irrelevant unsourced material. It adds bytes and degrades the entry's quality. Reader's Digest bit - totally irrelevant. If someone wants to find a reliable source that comments on this fact, bring the info back in - but please put it in the appropriate section. The intro to health effects isn't it. Maybe "Advertising". Phyesalis 07:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

On the section Link between tobacco use and use of illicit drugs

There was a request of citation to the common knowledge claim that most tobacco and also marijuana smokers don't actually try other drugs, usually. I tracked down the request of citation and the controversial word was "many", as in "many people". This also alarmed me quite a bit, as if even a wikipedia editor got the impression that "many" wasn't justified, it must really mean that the section gives a very false impression that smoke implies use of other drugs, at some point in one's life. And that this is what is meant for gateway theory. Of course, it is not. Editors on wikipedia should understand that even if we accept that gateway theory at face value, which is also debated according to the "correlation is not causation" chief principle of statistics, this does not mean that there is an inevitable degeneration of the habits at some point in life. It means, just to make an example, that if for the average population the statistical risk to try a certain drug is, say, 1.5%, then the risk for, say, a marijuana user is 2%. But it is still an obvious fact that 98% of marijuana smokers (as 98.5% of the average person) won't actually take that drug anytime anywhere. It is a correlation over small and already correlated fractions, not a correlation between large independent fractions. A citation shouldn't even be needed for this elementary truth, but I provided one as requested by that editor and never complied with, with one line of text with some of the numbers that can be traced back from the reference. --Gibbzmann 01:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - your citation should be provided, given the disinformation campaign regarding tobacco and drugs. I remember in 1987 when the anti-tobacco lobby (Pharm mostly) first started that link and the "Drug Czar" who came into power a few years later picked up that sword and held it up for the world to see (even though it wasn't true) :( --Mrtobacco 15:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment - but please don't post the above without sources, as it's WP:OR - original research. At the moment the claim that tobacco is a gateway drug has only one source supporting it - that's enough, but only because there are no real sources opposing the claim (the RAND paper is not really research, it's comment). If you can find sources casting doubt on the claims - saying what you do above and backing it up with evidence - you're good to edit away. Nmg20 20:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Nobody is planning to post original research here, and nobody has. Mine was an explanatory comment in this talk page about why I inserted in the text the published data. Published statistics are not original research, of course. If anything, they corrected the false impression that the section was giving that smokers become addicted with illegal drugs with very high probability, which is not even what any gateway theory would dare to purport. This was not explained clearly. It was a misrepresentation of the gateway theory. If I have to state my personal opinion, RAND is a legitiamte reference for that part of NIDA which is a comment and it is not numbers. To state it more clearly, one is not questioning the existence of a statistical correlation. If there is one, and well documented, that's a fact. On the other hand the conclusion that that correlation implies causation is in and by itself a comment, which can be countered by a comment with different interpretation of the data, even without any additional research. Let's say, for example, that there is also a correlation between drug use and the social status of a person. I could, in principle, document a statistical correlation between doing certain jobs and the probablity to become addicted to drugs. Such correlations are very likely to exist, in fact. At that point I could conclude with a comment, saying that certain jobs are gateways to become addicted to drugs, and those jobs should be contrasted. This part of the research, which is an extrapolated conlusion from the data with an hypothesis about their causation, can be challenged by publishing a comment, without the need of additional research. --Gibbzmann 23:49, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Well played, logician... Well played. TeamZissou 02:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

This is not a game. --Gibbzmann 02:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

No playing around here, sir.

TeamZissou 05:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing up your intentions. In the past, editors coming onto the talk page here and on a number of other smoking-related articles and uttering the magic words "correlation does not prove causation" has been a precursor to edits which have tended to remove every instance of the word 'cause' from articles.

Ultimately, your whole first post was your summary of basic statistics, and I interpreted it as a precursor to a similar summary going into the article; I'm pleased that isn't the case. I've added a few requests for citation where facts and figures in the recent and not-so-recent edits are currently unsourced so we can now work to tighten it up. Nmg20 22:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

OK - I just went through the SAMHSA reference in detail, and I have some reservations about how it's used in the article currently. Nowhere does it give details for cigarette smoking as a gateway drug; all it talks about is current cigarette smoking and its links to use of illicit substances in the last month - where the rates were 20.4% in smokers vs. 4.2% in non-smokers (figure 4.7). Their definition of 'illicit substances' not unreasonably includes marijuana, meaning that they don't appear to talk about marijuana as a gateway drug at all.

Currently, the claim "the ratio of cigarette smokers to cocaine users is twenty to one and that of cigarette smokers to heroin users is one hundred and fifty to one" is used to support the assertion that "a substantial majority of people that smoke marijuana and/or cigarettes without ever becoming addicted or even trying other drugs" - and I don't see that anywhere in the report. So if I'm looking in the wrong place, please say so.

There's some fascinating data in the report - but it's all on availability, perceived risk, initiation rates, socioreligious factors, etc. I don't see anything at all which can be applied to the question of new-onset illicit drug use, and a significant chunk of data which *supports* a link between concurrent smoking and illicit drug use; I hope this makes clear why I'm so wary of people taking published statistics and interpreting them here. Nmg20 23:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I can't see how numbers can be wrong. There was a plea for citation at one point, I simply provided it. What do you say, by looking at those published numbers in that report, is the statement that "a substantial majority of people that smoke marijuana and/or cigarettes without ever becoming addicted or even trying other drugs" false or true? Is it a fact or is it not a fact? Do facts have place in Wikipedia or do they not? Does it contradict the gateway theory? No, it doesn't contradict it. It explains it, if you can make a minimal effort to understand that. If that report is not OK as a citation at the point where it was plead for, that means that editors put their labels just to weaken the statements that they don't like (which are plain obvious as common knowledge by the way), and when they are provided the citations that support that sentence they start (I'm guessing) trying to remove the sentence altogether. This is no joke, no politics, I work in Science. I have no motivation or agenda whatsoever here about smoking, drugs and whatever. I care a lot for people don't risking their health at any time. But not at the price of making an encyclopedia a pamphlet. Numbers are numbers, Science is Science. Truth is truth. If you can prove that the statement above is false given the data I'll nominate you for a price in Science. --Gibbzmann 08:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Numbers can't be wrong. The data are the data. What is wrong is taking numbers and interpreting them to support a point when they don't support that point.

On the Gateway Question: the numbers in that report don't support the statement "a substantial majority of people that smoke marijuana and/or cigarettes without ever becoming addicted or even trying other drugs" because there are no numbers in the report which address addiction or experimentation with other drugs that I can see. All the data is, as I said above, on concurrent smoking and illicit substance use. In addition, the report provides no data on marijuana use and concurrent use of other illicit substances.

On Facts: I have no issue with the facts in the report - as I said above, it's a fantastic resource and I'm grateful to you for posting it. However, it does not support the claims you are trying to use it to support, and no amount of emotive "do-facts-have-no-place-in-Wikipedia" rhetoric will change that: the issue is not the facts but your interpretation of them.

As I said above, it may simply be that I have missed the relevant sections of the report. My post above explains which ones I thought you were citing based on - if I have missed the right ones, please post up which I should have been looking at, ideally with direct links as in my post above, and I'll happily apologise. Otherwise, the article needs changed. Nmg20 13:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, either I'm not explaining myself or we have different views on encyclopedias. I'm not arguing that that phrase should stand exactly as it stands now, to fit your (aand others') perceived criteria of Wikipedia. But to argue that the phrase is false or not supported, well, I'd have two ways to accept it. Switch off my brain or conclude that much the rest of Wikipedia is false. But I'll come to that.

I understand your point, you're concerned that part doesn't meet some of the criteria. You see, I'm very much in favor of going by the formal rules as much as we can, but not at the price of renouncing clarity, fruition, and a little bit of margin of maneuver by th editors if that makes the argument clearer (the risk otherwise would be to have lists of numbers without words, which would serve Wiki's formal rules but would be useless for everybody who reads).

A silly example. Let's say, published data have it that the US population is 52% made of women. Then I put this info into some article on social issues saying that in the US there are 13 women for every 12 men. One editor could object that nowhere in the specialized literature is this phrase found. Of course, to judge on the removal of the phrase on that basis would be behaving as dumb people.

Now, why this long premise? Because one argument that you point out is weirdly contrived. Let's make things simple and set aside for one moment the part of the claim "or haven't tried" (which I myself might have not written down in the first place, had I been the original editor of that phrase). Let's focus on the "addicted" part and, for simplicity, let's restrict ourselves to tobacco vs heroin in the example. I could have written, probably most correctly (but I would have extrapolated) a ratio of at least 150 to 1. I was conservative, I left the bare numbers.

Now you claim, basically your core argument, the statistics regard people who have used drugs in the last month. I was astonished, honestly. I don't know if you have any idea of how things like life expectancies are calculated. They take a snapshot of the distribution of our ages, one day, and there you get it. Why? Because the proportions are always representative, even if the bare numbers change in time, and I'm struck an editor of a scientific article doesn't seem to know it.

I'll be clearer. What do the 46 million of smokers represent? Don't they represent the people who are smoking today, and have smoked the last month too? Does that not mean that the proportion remains correct? What do you propose, that we include all people that have used drugs before the last month? Granted, but then you must include also all the people who smoked (ever) before and quit. Because if they smoked and quit but did or did not use drug, they're still themselves part of the quota. Don't you agree? If they smoked for twenty years and quit ten years ago and never ever tried illicit drugs, shouldn't they be counted too? If you also want to count all time drug consumers?

If the right number of people who ever became addicted to heroin is (let's say) twice as that of the previous month, well, if you want to go back in time then you have to take also the smokers' sample by adding in all the people who had ever smoked before that time, which is also at least twice as many.

In fact, if Wikipedia is not making up stories in other articles about addiction, and about nicotine addiction as opposed to heroin addiction, if anything the relative fraction (of all smokers) of people who smoked and quit should be larger than the fraction of people who became addicted to heroin and quit (because the latter is more addictive). That's why, lest Wikipedia making up lies elsewhere, in my opinion the most correct statement would be a ratio of at least 150 to 1.

But because on Wikipedia we are unassuming, we'll compare tobacco smokers and heroin users in the last month (the known numbers) rather than tobacco smokers and heroin users of all times, and we'll say that the ratio is circa 150 to 1.

If something doesn't fit yet, feel free to ask and I'll try to be even more exhausstive, or consult briefly a manual of statistics.

And, by the way, there's no original research in no conceivable way, what I'm saying are known trivial facts of statistics. To argue that I am adding OR, I would take it as arguing that if I write 4 on Wiki instead of 2+2 I'm also making original research.

That should settle the part about being addicted. For the part regarding "or ever tried" instead, I could go a long way, using similar arguments (the first dose is more likely to be followed by a second one than the first cigarette is by a second cigarette). But, honestly, I don't have particular feelings. If you feel very strongly about it, we could keep the part regarding becoming addicted, which is contained in the cited numbers, and elide the part "or ever tried", which in fact must be deducted (albeit quite trivially). --Gibbzmann 06:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Look - I'm not willing to respond to these long essays you keep churning out when they consistently fail to address the single salient point here: you are saying something different to what's in the source. Your 52% women = 13 women for every 12 men example is two ways of saying the same thing and I'd have absolutely no problem with it. What you need to post up here are not theoretical discussions of how to interpret statistics, but where in the source support for your claims is.

And look, it's not that "I claim" the statistics regard people who've used drugs in the last month. Anyone can click on the link to the source I included in my original post and read it for themselves:

Use of illicit drugs and alcohol was more common among current cigarette smokers than among nonsmokers in 2006, as in 2002 through 2005. Among persons aged 12 or older, 20.4 percent of past month cigarette smokers reported current use of an illicit drug compared with 4.2 percent of persons who were not current cigarette smokers (Figure 4.7).

I have no idea why you're going off on one about life expectancies. It's utterly irrelevant to the edits we're talking about, and looks to me like an attempt to shift from a subject you don't seem able to address properly to one you feel on firmer ground with - regardless, I assure you I'm perfectly happy dealing with actuarial survival data, Kaplan-Meier curves, and running Cox regression analyses. If we're getting all show-offy.

So please, keep things brief - I asked very politely above, acknowledging that I may have missed it, where in the source your 150 to 1 claim came from. To that I add the question of where the source discusses addiction, which you've now added to the mix; searching for the word in the article turns it up once, in a sentence at the end explaining what SAMHSA does. If you can't point to specific numbers in that source which back up your claims then the sum you're actually doing is 2+2=5. Nmg20 08:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep it a bit shorter. I've put a lot of effort in it and not for myself, so next time be more attentive to other people's time please! Mine might have been an essay, but that doesn't allow you to only skip through it and claim that I haven't addressed your point, which I have. You still move on the topic of occasional use for example, which I already said can be changed. I have modified the section according to your concerns, which in part I shared since the beginning (I've said several times I just tried not to change the original too much given that it stood several months unchallenged). I've already said clearly that I was willing to drop the part of the claim about occasional use. You challenge me with that quote on illicit drug versus smoking, which you can put in at some point of the article and I'd be glad (I don't know how it would address cannabis however). But illicit includes cannabis which originally was on the other side of the story. On a side note, less relevant, I wonder if 80% is not a substantial majority for you. In any case, addiction and occasional use are well distinct, and I've gladly dropped already the issue of occasional use. In that quote for example the major contributor of the category "illicit drugs" is cannabis, which is less physically addictive than nicotine. So your quote doesn't address the question of addiction to what in the section of the article are "other drugs". Mine does. And in fact, it's not negating the correlations that are discussed afterward. I've changed the text accordingly. I'll rephrase what I said, which is not theory (as you claim) more than arithmetics, and please keep focusing on the issue of addiction and its definition. Fact: In the last month there was one person that used heroin and 150 that smoked regularly. That's the approximate ratio between (to put it simply) people who are currently addicted to nicotine and likely to heroin. You claim that doesn't support the claim that most smokers don't become addicted to heroin. How? I cannot see how, given that it's just what it says. Your argument is that it just regards the previous month. Yes, so? The proportions don't change. If in the last 10 years there were 2 regular heroin users and not one, there have also been 300 regular smokers and not 150, because the proportions in statistics don't change. This is not theory, it is how and why you do statistics. That's the whole point of doing statistics in fact. There would be only one way to decrease that ratio from 150 to 1 to a much smaller ratio. Assuming as fact hat heroin is much less addictive than nicotine, and so there were more people (on average) who quit heroin than who quit smoking. In any case I believe in its current form the text is literally correct. We can also drop any mention of marjiuana if you like, in the end the article is about tobacco. --Gibbzmann 15:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Yup - we all put a lot of effort in to our work here, and so far as I know none of us get paid for it, so I quite appreciate that you've spent time on your edits. I think from here it's perhaps best if we work on the article and go from there; my main reservation with what you're saying is that I feel you are linking valid statistical methods with completely invalid assumptions about your underlying data. When you say "that's the approximate ratio between people who are currently addicted to nicotine and likely to heroin" (my emphasis), I think you're well beyond the bounds of data interpretation. Heroin use is not "likely" to equal addiction unless the source or other sources say it does.

(addendum)Can I just reiterate, before we both go back to the article, the point I made several times above? While we may disagree about its use here, the source you've found and added to the article is a terrific one, and the article is markedly better for it. That point deserves reiterating over the drier technical discussions we've been having... Nmg20 00:21, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Apparently it doesn't matter anymore. I personally believe the last edit should be immediatelly reverted. It has substituted sourced material with speculation and OR. I will not do it anyway, I just want to sit and watch how far into the unscientific (or at least biased) editing attitude Wikipedia will go. I guess my answer to your question about why I used the word likely doesn't matter anymore. I guess I won't even look for an equally precious reference as the one before, to discuss this part. What I find amazing is that apparently something that is true in the US is true all over the world. I'm particularly referring to discussions of many social issues, not the medical of course (they are stated as thruts, despite they might be false in several countires). Anyway, because you found my reference interesting, go look for the 2005 report instead. Look at the data for heroin use! It has nearly doubled in one year. Most of all other data are much more constant. Tobacco consumption hasn't changed of course in the meantime, in such short time. Now, explain that! I'm not questioning that there are correlations and must be mentioned, and are an important part of the equation (I didn't even dream of changing that part). But this is far more complicated, it is also a human affair. That's why I was trying to save the part that clarified (written by one other) that there are also other social issues. But evidently people are convinced that to just stress the link of one vice to another in a neverending chain is a way of stating a scientific, social and medical truth. From the point of view of strategic editing, this is only gonna cause a war with other editors, who might have had little to say about a more detached editing than this last one. --Gibbzmann 15:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Please amateur editors stay out of Wikipedia! No matter how good and nobel your intentions are.

How can you spot an editor who is a complete amateur?
I've just corrected one little part of the section on costs for society. You read it, and back to back he puts two peer-reviewed studies, one supposedly putting the cost at $7 per pack, the other at $41 per pack. If that were true, it would mean that the peer-review system is an utter and complete trash. So, you smell that something doesn't add up, and in fact you find it (I won't go into the detail, but the first source is not even peer-reviewed, it's instituional, which is very different). The two numbers quantify two different things, something the editor forgot to mention.
But my next thread is what I really want to talk about in a minute. Crosswords-level editors of this page, it seems, really want to show how NOT to present neatly the dangers of smoking, making sure everybody will be confused one third of the way through the article. What a service for Wikipedia and society. --Gibbzmann 01:43, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The current status is embarassing. I wish to thank the anonymous editor for that.

I've noticed that an anonymous editor has stumbled upon this (to him) "website" to practice the skills that he lacks in real life. I'll make a guess he hasn't published once in his life. I'm disgusted by the low standards he has left this article in, it's like an hurricane has passed. It is unnerving that he has removed sources and left it to others to put others in, about claims that he makes (he must have read them somewhere but didn't bother to let us know).

I propose a revert edit, but I want to hear what other editors have to say.

I'm just taking a few gems (bear in mind almost none of these gems is sourced). If you don't have time, go for the last one of his gems that I'm leaving for the end! It is delicious editing (quotes from his contributions are in italics).
1) First gem. He finds no better word for an encyclopedia to describe an enthusiast: today some aficionados consider...
2) He then sees into the future. This is so much more delightful to read than any other POV or OR, it's the future: Due to the wide availability of high quality mass-produced and custom smoking pipes as well as a myriad of pipe tobaccos to suit any taste, the hobby is likely to persist for years to come despite growing anti-smoking sentiment.
3) Apparently, Wikippedia is likely to be read only in the backyards of American houses, so everyone knows what "in the country" stands for: Indiana would reduce its infant mortality rate (12th highest in the country)
(it's the start of a paragraph people! my note)
4) He replaces the right word with a much more obscure word: carcinogenic --> tumorgenic.
5) Apparently, radioactive particles would really - really - like to go there one day. But hey, it's just about waiting long enough dude: Radioactive and carcinogenic particles would not find their way by itself to the lungs, but a smoker inhales them repeatedly over a long period of time.
6) There was a sourced paragraph, very precise. Not enough for him, better to say "it is confirmed", then state something different, and finally remove the source altogether. That'll do it: It is confirmed that, in adults, exposure to secondhand smoke causes lung cancer, nasal sinus...
7)) He didn't like that it said "the same effect on non-smokers", so he changed it thus: the same affect on non-smokers.
8) Hey, we also learn that now it is not well established, rather merely It is commonly accepted in the scientific community that "correlation does not imply causation" . I see, so for a scientist tides can be equally said to be caused by the Sun instead of the Moon, because there's a correlation between when we see the Sun and when we see the tides. In the end, we have learned from this editor, not every scientist would really really agree that correlation does not imply causation, it is just a common belief of some.
9) It seems a recurring theme, he's under the impression that only Americans read Wikipedia. He is talking about China and Turkey and many other countries, but no need to specify further, soon after, when he says: It is also against the law (in 45 states) for people...

But here's the gem of all gems, when he explains how we happen to know that smoking kills.
- More men than women smoke. More men than women die of lung cancer. -
Wow, that's it!?! Decades of research, but it was just that easy since the start, right? My dear friend, a man has a risk factor that is one and a half times that of a woman. If it were (hypothetically) the other way round, in the US there would be more women than men to die of lung cancer, despite there being less women to smoke.
You all see why it is so wrong to allow such edits. Suppose for a moment it were the other way round about the risk factors among men and women. So, then an anti-anti-smoking stumbles in and writes "Despite the fact that are more men than women who smoke, there are more women than men to die of lung cancer". How are you gonna challenge it? You can't, if you put rubbish yourself in, you have to let it in, if you edit with no idea whatsoever of how articles should be written. I can see now why an editor like this one would say that Science bears just commonly accepted and not well established rules. --Gibbzmann 03:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, hey! -- Prefer an oligarchic online encyclopedia over a democratic one? They've made one just for you! On Wikipedia, if you can honestly improve something.........then.....why...don't you fix it? That's the point. People are the solution and the problem. Sure, brilliant experts could write an encyclopedia that might be "accepted-view" correct in almost every fashion, but could we have 2,000,000,000 articles that address topics as diverse or obscure as Wikipedia possesses, unlike any other accessible form of information previously available to the world?  :| Well, would we? Heck no. Just....fix it. Oh! Take a look at Darwikinism. TeamZissou 03:47, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

But is not creating consensus a part of democracy? Are not expert counsellors who suggest but don't make final decisions part of a democracy? If you read carefully how I started this thread, I was just asking (arguing why) for consensus of a huge revert of a contribution that surely was faulty but certainly not vandalism. The sense of it was that I could make all those little changes myself, but I was arguing it wouldn't be enough, and I didn't want to waste time if the best way to deal with it was a revert, and others agreed. I'm not opposed to recycle bits of that edit, but the good parts were so much less than the bad parts. At the same time I'm not that bold when I come accross hot topics.

I wish to thank the editor that did it and was bold enough to do it.

As to the general rules. Wikipedia used to have less content but on average better quality (in my opinion), but during this time the ruels haven't changed. I would argue Darwikinism is flawed. The reason being, the facts in the world outside are not changing that much (certainly not at the speed WP does), there's no landscape to which to adapt. The right selective pressure should be method and consensus also. It is up to the editors to oppose every edit that is not up to the right standards, even when one essentially agrees. That is what not everybody does. I will consider moving elsewhere. Wikipedia however still has a BIG function for internet users, and I think this is more important. --Gibbzmann 15:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Most articles on Wikipedia have improved (for example, the early versions of the elephant article vs. today). A few have been built to greatness only to backtrack a little over time. Some article that have followed the latter evolution have come back to attain featured status, and others will also improve when they're noticed by an impromptu group of informed and diplomatic editors at some point in the future -- that's how any 'fallen' article has come back. Like various academic disciplines, religions, arts, countries, etc., in any human pursuit there will be dark ages and periods of enlightenment. On Wikipedia, users who have paid attention have witnessed this happen in relatively rapid successions. And this is good and necessary.

My personal answer to many of the problems associated with presenting clear and accurate information, and presenting as much of human knowledge as possible, is a kind of "wiki-eugenics." Articles would be better and sustain less vandalism if admins would block more open IP's, ideological agents (look at histories of most Iran-related articles), etc.; or, if Wikipedia either actively supported open-source academic journals (to encourage experts and thorough, accurate information) and/or specifically sought teams of experts to create/edit content in particular fields for the sake of increasing accuracy and credibility. Britannica isn't remarkably more accurate than Wikipedia (see the Nature study), has far fewer than 2.whatever million articles, and is researched and edited by experts.

Anyway, the point is that Wikipedia progresses via process. Like a true democracy, one must fight and work hard to illicit change--sometimes even small changes. This cautious responsiveness protects valuable content and allows changes to gradually be evaluated. For example, you stated above that "tumorigenic" was more obscure than "carcinogenic," and should therefore be replaced by the term "carcinogenic." However, on that particular point I would disagree because the words mean different things. Whereas many of your suggestions were good and would make the article better, that one change would not. And that's the value of the sluggish, lumbering beast of Wikipedian process, because here we may discuss ways to present that info for everyone to understand, and we can decide to describe and differentiate both tumorigenic and carcinogenic agents and that's good. If an expert were writing this, those types of discussion would not occur, and instead of an article that more-or-less satisfies coverage of a topic, we could get an article so technical that most would not understand it or an article that was written for the perceived abilities of readers that is dumbed-down and not as informative.

I'll leave it at that for now. Besides, this talk section may not be the best place for such conversation. Cheers! TeamZissou 18:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)