I would call myself an occasional smoker. Every now and then - maybe once a week, maybe three times a week, maybe once a month, maybe not at all for a month - I will smoke a cigarette. Hand-rolled, with Zig-Zag papers, using bulk shag tobacco from a local tobacconist which I am told is imported from Norway and is completely additive-free.
I never smoke more than one cigarette a day, and I only inhale a little bit of the smoke into my lungs, keeping most of it in my mouth in the manner of a pipe or a cigar to savor the taste of the quality tobacco.
What is the health detriment of this versus the health detriment of smoking in the same fashion, but using say a Camel or Marlboro cigarette?
I know they’re both not good for you - trust me, I don’t need to be told that, I know it already. But surely one is better than the other. I’m under the impression that name brand pack cigarettes are loaded with all sorts of chemicals, both in the tobacco and in the paper. Surely this would be worse for my health than smoking tobacco with no added chemicals, rolled in a simple, thin Zig Zag paper?
I was that way for several years. A pack of smokes would last 2 months if I didn’t give them away at the bar. I could have walked away from smoking at any time. Then…I dunno…it took off, and now I’m a pack a day.
I know this isn’t what you asked, but dude - walk away while it’s easy and while your stuff still doesn’t reek.
That is a concerning story, but I wonder… what is the real rate of people progressing from casual smokers to habitual ones?
But anyway, barring the prospect of turning into a pack-a-day smoker, holding smoke in your mouth every few days doesn’t really affect your health much. Thing is, low doses of stressors typically stimulate the body and immune system. I don’t know what that amount is, but at a certain low level smoke will even make you a bit healthier. (This is called hormesis and an example is feeding some arsenic to poultry and pigs is a popular way to make them grow better.)
Don’t be paranoid about the small stuff, I’m sure you make many far unhealthier choices in your life.
I roll my own, and use filters. I can barely stand the taste of “ready-rolled” cigarettes - the taste makes me nauseous.
The main difference, as I understand it, is that ready-rolled cigs contain saltpetre and/or other additives to increase the burning temperature, ensuring that the cigarette doesn’t go out if it’s left aside in the ashtray or just held in your fingers. Presumably, this is done to sell more cigs. A side-effect of this is that the smoke you’re inhaling is substantially hotter, which increases the damage to your lungs.
Nova did an excellent show on cigarettes a while back. Most interesting thing I took from it was that there’s not really anything all that bad for you in tobacco. Its not good for you, but all the carcinogens get created from the burning of it. Chemical reactions take place at the 1000°F+ that simply don’t happen in anything else a human body ingests (breathes).
The point of the show was that even though companies were trying to make a much safer cigarette (the so-called ‘smokeless’ ones) anti-smoking groups would have none of it. They continued to simply insist on banning it. Although the big tobacco firms made progress they were forced to give up on the idea.
Point is that, IMO, rolling your own won’t make a bit of difference…
This may be a bit of a hijack, but wouldn’t a frugal smoker be able to save a bunch by rolling his own cigarettes, even if he used filters? (I remember that Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes once took a carton of cigarettes, cut all of them open and then weighed the pile of tobacco. I think he compared it against a bag of loose leaf tobacco and found that there was a big difference in the cost.)
Oh yeah, making your own smokes is increadibly cheaper. Every “Tobacco” store has some different tobaccos and gimmicky machines designed to facilitate the construction of your own, it’s just a pain in my ass and I don’t bother.
To continue this hijack, a bag of (cheap, dunno what kind Argent Towers uses) tobacco costs about $2, and comes with 40 cigarette papers. You can roll well more than 40 cigarettes out of one of these bags (although if you use the machine, which works quite well, you get a much fatter cigarette than I can manage rolling by hand, therefore fewer cigarettes).
That’s basically $1 a “pack”, plus the cost of filters. Even if the filters make it $2 a pack, that’s still at least $1.50 savings.
If you can roll a decent joint, you can roll a workable cigarette. Tobacco burns more evenly than marijuana, so it’s actually easier as long as you remember to pack the damn thing tight with tobacco. Of course, there are machines that do it for you, too, and I don’t think they’re very expensive (my WAG is you can get one of the better ones for $20 or so).