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4. Tobacco, that most underestimated of drugs
Introduction
This piece is about tobacco, the most underestimated drug in the world. Why?
Tobacco is the most integrated of all drugs in the culture of present-day humanity.
At the same time the consequences of its use are the most underestimated and concealed.
Tobacco came to Europe via Spain and Portugal in the 17th century as a result of the discovery of South America, and spread from there throughout the rest of the world. The explorers had seen the native South Americans smoking the leaves of the tobacco plant and attaching a ritual significance to this.

Source of pleasure?
Most tobacco users can recall their first experience with the drug.
The first cigarettes are generally described as foul, sick-making and repellent. Fair enough, since the human body has a natural reluctance to inhale smoke. The first meeting with the poisonous materials in tobacco smoke evoke a violent physical reaction. Thus babies and young children react with aversion to tobacco smoke in their surroudings.
How does it come about that some new users, despite this aversion, still persevere?
That is the result of cultural influence. There is a strong association between tobacco use and adulthood, which is what the youth wants to achieve as quickly as possible. Advertisers take advantage of this. In this way starting to use tobacco has acquired the significance of a sort of "initiation" into adulthood. We know that as well from some primitive societies, where youths must demonstrate their adulthood by some act of achievement: killing an animal, making a survival mission, withstanding a painful experience or whatever. Tobacco has succeeded in gaining a similar role in modern society. In fact we are much more primitive than we think! Many young people fall into this trap. They allow themselves to be talked into it, switch off their intelligence, overcome their aversion and start smoking tobacco, usually cigarettes or shag. What is their resulting experience? It's not a question of taste: tobacco smoke tastes of nothing, it just irritates the mucous membranes of the air passages and there are no taste buds there! Indeed the nicotine in the tobacco deadens the sensation of taste. Smoking is thus more a question of hurting yourself a little, a sort of masochistic experience. When smokers talk of taste they really mean: it does more or less "pain" in the lungs, or it smells differently.
It is the experiences, the social culture and the strongly addictive substances in the tobacco that soon make young people dependent. And once addicted usually means addicted for life. All these things make nicotinism public disease number one. There are few people that start smoking after their 20th birthday. In fact tobacco use is adolescent behavious carried through to adulthood. A real adult does not smoke.
Effect of tobacco on the body
Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 different substances including some which are radio-active.
At least 40 of these are proved to be carcigonenic, others play a part in the origin of cancer. In addition there are caustic substances in the smoke, such as formaldehyde, ammonia and cyanide gas. These substances are irritating to the air passages and limit their self-cleaning capacity. Tobacco smoke also contains a substantial proportion of carbon monoxide. That limits the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity, leading to diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Tobacco smoke contains nicotine which, being chemically related to heroin, is what causes the physical dependence. The addictive power of tobacco is indeed about as strong as that of heroin. That means that once you have started you soon have the feeling of not being able to manage without - and stopping is ten times as difficult because the dependency is not only physical but psychological and social.
Since nicotine is quickly broken down in the body, the withdrawal symptoms begin soon after the last dose. Which is why a smoker gets up in the morning with a powerful urge for tobacco, and soon after the last cigarette starts longing for the next one. The withdrawal symptoms include restlessness, stress, shaking, and lungs that cry out for the "hit" of tobacco. A user thinks that a cigarette has a calming effect. In fact that feeling is a result of the withdrawal symptoms being pacified; nicotine has in fact an accelerative effect on the body and thus causes more stress. This is the vicious circle in which users are caught up, and which is characteristic of every addiction.
In the short term tobacco use means an immediate attack on physical condition and performance, as a result of the effect of carbon monoxide on the oxygen carrying capacity. Sport and tobacco use is thus a contradiction in terms.
Headaches and migraine can also be caused by active or passive tobacco use. Tobacco is also a "starter" drug. Via tobacco, which itself does not cause a kick other than the physical reaction and the feeling of "belonging" (that is the component of social dependence) a way is quickly found to the use of other addictive products. This is because the combination of nicotine and formaldehyde in tobacco smoke has an effect on the brain which causes an accelerated need for other addictive or stimulating substances.
The product Zyban which is shortly to appear in the Dutch pharmacopoeia takes advantage of this effect.
Tobacco use is almost a condition for the use of soft drugs, because hash and marijuana are commonly used in combination with tobacco. There tobacco serves as a carrier, and frequent use ensures that the air passages are prepared to receive the alien substances. The danger inherent in the use of soft drugs is for an important part a result of the associated tobacco use.
In the medium term, tobacco use causes physical discomforts such as tightness in the chest, expectoration, coughing, reduced sexual performance, wrinkled skin, increased use of medicines, longer reaction time, worse concentration, bad teeth, poor sleep, loss of capacity to taste and smell, chronically cold limbs, loss of fertility, bad breath, greater propensity for illness, damage to the unborn foetus, eye disease, impotence and lots more.
In the long term, tobacco use is responsibility for invalidity and premature death. The commonest diseases are: all kinds of cancer (lungs, stomach, throat, pancreas, bladder, kidneys, breast, leukaemia and others), and circulatory diseases such as heart attacks and strokes. These diseases often lead to serious disability, for example as a result of amputations and paralysis. Other lung diseases such as emphysema and bronchitis are also an effect, and these too can lead to early invalidity and death.
The collective effect of these diseases is an average reduction of the life expectancy of smokers by 20 years. A large scale research project involving English doctors who had been followed up since 1951 showed that 50% of the smokers reached the age of 70 as compared with 80% of the non-smokers.
In addition there is a significant deterioration in the quality of life, and in this the choice of light or heavy tobacco makes no much difference. Statistics show that of all the young people who start smoking now, half of them will die early as a result of a tobacco-related disease, and half of those will die around middle age.
In short tobacco is a real assassin, and smoking is, like unsafe sex, playing Russian roulette wtith yourself.
There are more than 80 deaths per day in the Netherlands as a result of tobacco use. Everyone has one or more victims among their acquaintances. Many young people lose one or both parents prematurely to tobacco. This is all equivalent to a national disaster. The world situation is even worse; the Western tobacco industry is very active in trying to get the developing nations addicted. The number of victims in those countries will rise from the present 3 million to 20 million in 2020.
Tobacco and the environment
Tobacco use is also responsible for significant environmental pollution.
All the poisonous gases from tobacco smoke, especially in the climatic conditions here, end up in the indoor environment where we spend most of our time. Because of this tobacco smoke is the biggest source of indoor environmental pollution by far. Did you know for instance that the burning of one cigarette indoors causes more internal environmental pollution than was encountered recently in the Dutch town of Lekkerkerk where poison was entering the houses as a result of underground pollution? The burning of two cigarettes in a living room causes a pollution of 1000 particles per square meter. On the busiest crossing in Amsterdam "only" 50-100 particles were measured. Airborne tobacco smoke is in fact more dangerous than the presence of asbestos fibres.
In short: smoking tobacco indoors is highly irresponsible, it is something like burning an open fire without a chimney. Air purifiers do not offer adequate help; they remove the dust particles, but not the dangerous gases in the tobacco smoke. Furthermore, the devices are expensive and consume energy.
Tobacco growing in developing countries makes an enormous contribution to deforestation and environmental pollution, partly as a result of the use of large quantities of pesticides. Often chemicals are used which have been banned in the rest of the world.
In many countries the tobacco leaves are dried on enormous wooden fires which have to maintain a high temperature for a week. You can imagine how much wood is needed and how much smoke is added to the atmosphere as a result.
Most of the small tobacco farmers are exploited by the tobacco multinationals.
So it makes no sense at all to claim to be supporting a cleaner environment and the development of poorer countries whilst at the same time smoking a cigarette. It is strange that the environmental organizations do not let that worry them.

Passive smoking
When tobacco is smoked, by far the largest quantity of smoke ends up directly in the environment.
Only a small amount remains in the body of the smoker; the rest is added to the air which has to be shared by the non-smokers.
The biggest source of poison by far is the smoke from a smouldering cigarette. And that is inhaled by everyone present, smokers and non-smokers. Thus non-smokers are also passive smokers - also a serious threat to health. A "light passive smoker" such as someone who shares house room or a working area with smokers, will soon absorb as much smoke as the result of smoking 10 cigarettes. Passive smokers are also vulnerable to smokers' diseases and it is also a threat to their health and their life. It is estimated that 3000 people per year in the Netherlands die prematurely as a result of passive smoking (source: ANSR), of these, 200 are victims of lung cancer (source: NKI). Obligatory passive smoking is therefore extremely antisocial; the passive smokers are deprived of access to the clean air that is essential for life, and their health is threatened. People with asthma or an allergy (10% of the population) are worst off. They can become really ill either immediately or a few hours after exposure. They are just prevented from taking part in every day life and descend into social isolation. Also babies, children and the unborn suffer serious physical and psychological effects from exposure to tobacco smoke. Smokers have many tricks to force non-smokers into passive smoking so that they can continue their habit undisturbed.
What unsafe sex does to our intimate life, so does alcohol to life on the move, and tobacco to our social life!
A few statistics
The number of fatalities due to tobacco use in the Netherlands is at the moment around 30,000 per year (source: RIVM). In comparison: 2500 due to alcohol, 200: drugs, 1200: traffic.
Tobacco is miles ahead of all the others.
In the Netherlands about 1/3 of the population above 15 years are smokers. A greater proportion of young people between 15 and 19 year seem to have adopted the habit - the proportion is up to 45% now.
There is even an increase from 7 to 11% in the case of children aged between 10 and 14 (source: Stivoro). In addition there is a considerable increase in the use of soft drugs, and these two go hand in hand.
Partly as a result of the increasing popularity of soft drugs, tobacco is back in the race to enslave more addicts; thus an increase in the number of victims can be expected in the future. The danger of the use of soft drugs is only partly as a result of the drugs themselves, but much more by the associated tobacco use.
The average Dutch smoker lights up 7500 times a year, around 20 times per day. The tobacco companies spend annually about 700 million guilders (220 million English pounds, 350 million U.S. dollars) on advertising and promotion (source: CBS). This is especially directed to young people.
An estimated 10% of the costs of health care can be attributed to the effects of smoking, which is more than 8,000 million guilders (£2,500 million, $4,000 million). This is about the same as the total of the salaries of all the employees in the health service. A study by the Swiss Health Ministry shows that the social costs of tobacco use in the Netherlands (medical expenses, cost of invalidity, pensions etc.) must be in the region of 15,000 million guilders.
The tobacco trade
Tobacco marketing is in the hands of large multinationals. Vast sums are earned with this trade in death and destruction. No means are eschewed to ensure a profit whatever the consequences. For example:
the tobacco industry is actively involved in smuggling as a means of getting round government policies
they deliberately conceal unfavourable results of scientific investigations
they increase the natural nicotine content in order to make tobacco even more addictive
they obstruct the work of independent scientists
Deception is also part of the standard arsenal. The producers in the developing countries are exploited and forced into inappropriate practices. And this is just what has leaked out to the outside world.
There is in fact no difference between the methods used by the drug trade and those employed in the tobacco industry. Ethically seen, one is the extension of the other. But considering the large scale of the tobacco trade this is in fact much more dangerous.
Once there was a slave trade, now we have a trade in enslavement by addiction.
Conclusion
Now the underlying physical mechanism has been revealed, the title of tobacco as "the mother of all drugs" is seen to be justified. There is a very clear association between the explosive increase in drug use by young people and the increasing tobacco use by the same group. And this all begins at age 12 or 13!
For non-smokers, who are exposed just as much to the combination of nicotine and formaldehyde (and a cocktail of other poisons) tobacco smoke is also a serious threat. And this is sufficient reason to make the choice: SMOKEFREE LIVING! The difficulty is that this choice is still not permitted by the minority group, the smokers.
They continue to pollute almost all areas intended for public use.
If they threaten their own health that is their own business, but let them keep away from the non-smokers! Every individual smoker is personally responsible in this respect, but that does not relieve the community from the responsibility of making social rules and seeing that they are obeyed!
Abbreviations used:
Stivoro: Foundation for Public Health and Smoking
RIVM: State Institute for Public Health and Environmental Hygiene
CBS: Central Statistical Office
ANSR: Association of Non Smokers' Rights
NKI: Netherlands Cancer Institute