Cigarettes are Amazingly Non-Toxic!

What I don't get about secondhand smoke is how toxic non-smokers seem to think it is. They act like it's mustard gas. Holding their breath as they walk past a smoker. Faking a cough around a smoker.

Sure, cigarette smoke looks something like the exhaust from a tailpipe or an industrial smoke-stack. But it also looks like the smoke from a scented candle or incense. And if you ask a non-smoker whether they'd rather breath in a room with a lit candle or a lit cigarette, they'd scoff at you for being ridiculous. In fact, the comparison is ridiculous.

Let's look at it this way, millions of people smoke 20-60 cigarettes a day. Some of them die because of it, but most of them live: 40, 60, 80 years after they start.

How many years do you think you'd last if you stuck your face over 20-60 lit candles a day and inhaled all its smoke? Now what do you think is really toxic? And you're still going to light a candle everyday and leave it, burning, smoking, gathering, while your guests and your children all sit for hours in that room?

And you still can't suffer passing a smoker, for a second, outside, where the smoke dissipates into the air, without holding your breath and making a big deal about it?

Or what about people who live in a city that's smoggy? Compare smoking a cigarette to putting your face over the exhaust vent of an oil refinery that's pumping out smokestacks 24 hours a day, and tell me how toxic you think cigarette smoke is.

The fact that someone can smoke a million cigarettes in their lifetime, and have odds of surviving heavily in their favour, is astounding! (2 packs of 25 per day for 60 years equals 1 095 000 cigarettes)

Tell me the survival rates of someone who inhales pure smoke from a million candles or sticks of incense, and then we can really start comparing toxicity.

Smoke looks like car exhaust, but is less toxic. Smoke looks like candle smoke, but is less toxic. Smoke also looks like someone exhaling on a cold winter's day. What about that?

Well, our breath is high in CO2, which is one of the toxic compounds found in cigarette smoke. Now let's compare chain-smoking for 60 years to breathing in a paper bag. Wow. Looks like your own breath would kill you after a couple of minutes, while I'm just lighting my second cigarette.