Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

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> It’s really amazing just what extent people went to in order to smoke.

My parents' generation, the boomers, weren't really aware that smoking was bad. Even if some knew, I feel like it was mostly hidden from them. Look at any movie they'd watch in the west when they were young, people would be smoking everywhere: inside offices, inside cars, public servants at the town hall, etc. Smokers everywhere.

Once the studies eventually came out showing how bad it was, addicted people kept smoking but there's been way less new smokers.

Now I see my kid's gen (so the grand-kids of the boomers): hardly anyone is smoking. It's not a thing among that generation.

As to the gen Xer who used to smoke: most of friends in that segment are now vaping.

Addicts are typically going to be addicts: be it alcohol or tobacco. We're getting a handle on it for the boomers are now dying left and right and it's been a long time smoking ain't being portrayed as being cool anymore.

A fun smoking story.

My dad, as navigator, flew 32 missions in B-17s over Germany. Many of his buddies were chain smokers. The problem was, you could not keep a cigarette lit at 30,000 feet. The crew all wore oxygen masks, as they'd die without one.

So what the smokers would do is, take a deep breath and unhook the mask. Then blow on the cigarette while lighting it. The cigarette would burn like a torch. Then take a deep puff on the cigarette. Put the mask back on and take another deep breath, while the cigarette sputtered and threatened to go out. Take the mask off and then blow on the cigarette to get it going again (like a torch).

My dad would laugh and laugh while he relayed this desperate dance to smoke.

I've never seen this story in books/movies about B-17s. So here it is for posterity!

Endurance, a documentary novel about the Shackleton adventure, detailed a list of horrible things they endured: their leather clothes and sleeping bags rotting, subsistence on penguin meat cooked over penguin-fat-fueled stoves, frequent visits to the borderlines of hypothermia and frostbite...

But it seemed like The Day The Tobacco Ran Out was the hardest of all for them to endure.

> My parents' generation, the boomers, weren't really aware that smoking was bad.

As a boomer, I say "baloney".

For starters, my dad grew up in the Depression. His schoolmates called them "coffin nails". Doctors routinely prescribed "stop smoking, you fool".

In 7th grade, one of my teachers (incidentally, a Holocaust survivor), smoked constantly. He'd also spend half of class time coughing up a lung. My best friend in high school smoked constantly, and told him his doctor told him his lungs were damaged and he better quit. He kept smoking.

But the worst was when I was 8, and toured an agricultural museum at K State. There were two jars with lungs in them, one from a non-smoker, and the other a smoker. The non-smoker lungs were pink and looked healthy. The smokers - black! All black! It was horrific.

Besides, anyone who cut open a dead body knew instantly if the deceased was a smoker. No sane person would conclude the black, scarred lung was healthy.

All the boomers knew the bad effects of smoking. They just thought they were invulnerable.

it also did not seem to impact lifespan for them

dying in your 60s was par for the course until second half of the 20th century.

lead petrol, cigs, war, asbestos, lead paint in children bedroom

The boomers quit smoking decades ago.

I grew up mostly in a rural town, unwittingly away from lead gasoline fumes.

In the first half of the 20th Century war was the leading cause of a great many men and some women dying in their 20s and 30s .. and to a lesser degree at later ages (if in occupied territories, etc).

Dying young drags "life expectancy" figures (especially those calculated "from birth") but doesn't necessarily impact the likelihood of dying (say) "within the next 5 years" if you're already (say) 55.

Eg. Many people that survived war in the early 20th Cent still managed to live to a ripe old age past their 60s.

Kids today may think they're smarter than boomers because they don't smoke. But instead they smoke marijuana. There's nothing smart about that.

Combusted cannabis doesn’t have the cancer outcomes associated with combusting with nicotine. Same for second hand smoke.

Cannabis is not laced with perfumes and additives as a rule, as commercial cigarettes are. Cannabis has properties that pair well with physical and cardiovascular activity, unlike cigarettes, even when smoked.

Cannabis habits in youth are also displacing booze and associated lifestyle risks and lifelong impacts (early and unplanned kids from intoxicated hookups, drunk driving, among others).

There is a spectrum of outcomes, moving towards outcomes that are less harmful and provocative of third parties symptoms is better for everyone involved (hospitals & taxpayers too). That’s about being more informed and empowered not smarter. Perfect is nigh impossible, harm mitigation and outcome maximization is what we’re doing, refining the window over time.

yeah its awesome, the only side effect is mental illness and dementia

It’s a little bit smarter because cannabis smoke airs out in a relatively short period of time, compared to tar from cigarette smoke permanently ruining basically everything it touches.

If cannabis smoking also offsets alcohol or other drug use, that seems like a win. I have never seen a person get violent after smoking cannabis, much the opposite.

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