Most modern users of tobacco measure their intake via packs per day, or at least thats the norm. Most smoke cigarettes throughout the day at regular intervals.
Yet if you read old books set up to the early 20th century it seems most users were pipe smokers, and they would smoke a pipe after dinner or at most once or twice a day. This is a far cry from a two pack a day smoker, when did use patterns change so drastically? Were there pipe users who smoked 20-40 times a day?
I’m wondering if this was because of cigarette company marketing efforts to make it seem normal to smoke like a chimney.
cigarette smoke is deeply inhaled and then nicotine is taken in your system. usually pipe and cigar smoke is not inhaled deeply.
there are people who might smoke a pipe for hours of a day. also a pipe might hold the amount of tobacco as that smoked in three or four cigarettes, cigars also hold much more tobacco. there are cigarette smokers who might have only one or two cigarettes in a day.
there is lots of variation. smoking culture in the USA is very different from that 30 to 60 years ago.
As a half-pack a day smoker, I think you might be trying to equivocate a pipe full of tobacco to a single cigarette, which would be erroneous. One can cram much more than a single cigarette’s worth of tobacco into a pipe. My grandfather smoked a meerschaum pipe and I can assure you that he had that thing lit and belching its noxious fumes more than once or twice a day.
Let’s start with: Do you have any studies which show your claims to be true?
The only people I know who smoke overnight are male menthol smokers with insomnia. Menthol smokers, on average, do have their first cigarette sooner after waking up than non-menthol smokers (Collins & Moolchan, 2005) and experience stronger cravings (Wackowski & Delnevo, 2007), suggesting there is something “more addictive” about menthol cigarettes.
I’d suggest that this means that people who, in the past, might be casual, occasional users of tobacco are overwhelmingly now entirely nonsmokers. So what you have left is the people who are strongly addicted and smoke a lot. There have always been tobacco stained fingertips of heavy smokers, but now there aren’t as many true “social smokers” (although there are certainly some) who only use occasionally.
Also, when I’m entering data into the computer to record a patient’s “Pack Years”, I can’t enter less than 1 in the “packs per day” field. Lots of patients tell me they smoke half a pack or a third of a pack, or one pack a week, but they all look in the computer like pack-a-day smokers. So I wouldn’t trust data collected from hospitals or doctor’s offices on this point.
Pipe smoking and cigarette smoking are largely different things.
Smoking a pipeful takes more than a few minutes, maybe 10-20 (depending on a number of variables). The smoke tends to be somewhat harsh, which does not lend itself to smoking repeatedly throughout the day. It is generally not inhaled, or at least not inhaled fully.
Often different tobacco types are selected for pipes vs. cigarettes, and the tobacco is cured differently. Cigarette tobacco tends to be milder, and is optimized for quick absorption of nicotine, with its effect being felt in 7-10 seconds. It is very effective at creating, and satisfying, nicotine addiction, to a degree generally not seen in pipe smokers. Smoking cigarettes easily can lead to smoking repeatedly throughout the day, where pipe smoking typically does not.
The differences arise from the fundamental nature of the product, not marketing efforts. Marketing certainly seeks to exploit the situation with cigarette smoking, but it doesn’t cause it.
I don’t know what you mean by 24/7 smoking. Surely the overwhelming majority of smokers sleep through the night rather than getting up every so often to smoke.
My grandpa smoked a pipe but only at home. I suspect it was too much of a hassle to carry the pipe and the tobacco tin around. And when you’re finished with a pipe, you need to dispose of the burnt crap and the bowl needs to be cool before putting it in a pocket. Cigarettes are more portable and it’s easier to dispose of the butt.
Grandpa also spit after smoking his pipe. I don’t know if that was just him or if pipe-smokers need to spit.
I haven’t known many cigar smokers, but the ones I’ve known never smoked a whole cigar at one go, so they’d either have to carry around a half-smoked cigar or toss it half-smoked.
Cigarettes are just way more convenient for someone addicted to nicotine.
I think you are looking at this through the rose colored glasses of authors (mostly British) form the Victorian Age. In reality many have smoked all day long since we learned how to smoke. I saw in both the Smithsonian and in Jamestown skulls they found from settlers and tobacco farmers that have notches worn into their teeth from where the pipe was in their mouth all day long. Maybe in polite society gentlemen did not smoke that much. But certainly some portion of the population did all the way back to the 17th century.
Don’t have any statistics, but I’ve known quite a few pipe smokers - mostly older men - and they all lit up pretty frequently. It’s difficult to relate their smoking practices to Xpacks of cigarettes /day because of the way they smoked. A number of them would fill a bowl but only smoke about 1/2 of it before it went out, but then they’d empty it out before refilling and lighting again. Some of them wasted more tobacco than they actually smoked.
Cigar smokers don’t seem to light up all that frequently, but a lot of them go about chewing on a dead cigar from which they’re probably still getting a certain amount of nicotine. Again it’s hard to say how their actual nicotine intake compares with the standard of “packs/day”. I’ve known very few smokers of any type who only smoked once or twice a day. An exception is my former mother-in-law who smoked maybe 2-4 cigarettes a day for about 50 years. She never carried a pack or a lighter, always cadged cigs from her husband, myself or another “regular” smoker. She also never seemed to inhale deeply.
On the subject of roll-your-own, I’ve been doing that occasionally for years, went to RYO exclusively 3-4 years ago when the price of tailor-mades went through the roof. Again, it’s hard to make comparisons, because RYO’s vary in size but are usually a bit smaller than tailor-mades, but then I tend to smoke them down to a nub, which wasn’t the case with the others. 25 years ago I was smoking 2-3 packs/day of Pall Malls, today a 0.4 oz pack of Top or Bugler will last me about three days. I equate that roughly to an intake of 1/2 pack/day of tailor-mades.
Bottom line…people’s smoking habits vary so widely that it’s very difficult to make comparisons. Personally I think the XPacks/day standard that the medicos use is kind of meaningless. But I suspect there have always been more “regular smokers”, i.e. folks that light up every hour or so, than “occasional smokers” who smoke only twice a day or less.
SS
Nicotine is addictive. The more someone smokes, the more smoke he craves. Smoking one more before bed, waking up during the night and smoking one, and lighting up first thing in the morning is not just a habit, it’s a life style.
I’m sure the tobacco companies are glad of it. I’m sure Hollywood used to be in cahoots with them, too. Watch some Humphrey Bogart movies from the 40’s and 50’s. Smoking was a glamorous and sexy thing that movie stars did.
In the 19th century at least, chewing/dipping tobacco was the preferred method of consuming tobacco in the United States. Cigarettes didn’t become the preferred method until after the invention of the cigarette making machine.
Most people wouldn’t notice that when I wear flat-front pants, but I digress from the topic.
I only have anecdotes, but I smoke a pipe pretty frequently, and cigarettes less so. A bowl (it’s fun saying to your pals at a brewery, hey I’ll see you in a sec, I’m going out to smoke a bowl) lasts a good number of toking sessions. I’ve only known a few pipe smokers – me, now, and a couple of friends in grad school – but it’s not unusual for the pipe to be kind of always there. Not necessarily puffing away like a chimney (probably where the metaphor came from – can’t puff a cigarette like a chimney, really, or not much like a chimney), but on occasion spark it for a hit or two.
Cigs are disposable, pre-packaged – what were those … Lunchables – little things, and when you’re finished with one, there’s nothing left except to light another one.
Real life historical anecdote – Husserl gave himself nicotine poisoning from smoking his pipe very freely.
This is tobacco only – it sounds like weed talk, but where do you think the hopheads got all their lingo?
Most modern mainstream commercial cigarette smokers measure in packs per day. Most pipe smokers, cigar smokers, hand-rollers, smokers of specialty cigs that don’t come 20/pack, or users of snuff/chewing tobacco do not.
Most of the cigarette smokers I know do not do this. They smoke at certain “trigger points.” For my father, those were after each meal, whenever the phone rang, when he got in the car, or when he drank. Others have different triggers, obviously.
I’m a pipe smoker, and I think the once or twice per day is a misconception. Let me give you some background:
First of all, one of the allures of the pipe is being able to hand-tailor the tobacco to your personal taste. Some is much milder than cigarettes; some harsher; some flavored; some spiced; and so on. Another allure is the ritual of filling, packing, and lighting.
Smoking a pipe isn’t a quick few minutes on the back porch – and pipe smokers like my uncle would refill without even allowing the pipe to go out. I’ve known pipe smokers whose total tobacco smoke intake was greater than a 2-pack-a-day cigarette smoker (although most pipe smokers don’t inhale), and then you have guys like me that average a couple of bowls a month. I’ll go two or three months without smoking it at all, and then go on vacation somewhere and smoke every day for a week.
