I am glad you addressed my concern by going over the health effects of nicotine distinct from plant combustion/smoke. I particularly liked your line about “tobacco may be more analogous to tea or coffee than to alcohol.” But I am unconvinced that this addictive substance has a net positive effect on well being.
My impression is that, much like caffeine, the body acclimates and suffers withdrawal without regular doses. Additionally, to get the same effect, an increasing treadmill of doses is required. This withdrawal and dependence seems to leave the user worse off than they were before substance use, (jittery, anxious, irritable) unless the use is regulated and occasionally paused. This is exceptionally hard with addictive substances.
In the case of caffeine, I have heard it argued that even if you arrive at the same net outcome of awareness, productivity and happiness total, there is a lot of utility in being able to control when one is awake, productive, and happy. This makes sense to me. But I don’t think nicotine allows that same control except for a few abnormal individuals. Rather, I expect abuse and over-dependence to be the normal state of affairs. This seems net negative. Even if it had a neutral effect, people would still be spending money to maintain neutral utility.
Non-addictive nicotine would change my mind, and I would be potentially interested to apply it in my own life.
Thanks for reading and commenting! I’ve deliberately avoided the term “addictive” in this discussion, as usage of the term in both formal and informal discussions is so broad and loose that I’ve found it to be more confusing than illuminating. Phillips has a couple of wordy but informative discussions arguing that the word is more like the opposite of an applause light than a term that cleaves reality at its joints.
I’m not aware of much evidence that nicotine use is harder to control than caffeine use in the sense you describe. If anything, the fact that 80% of people in the US use caffeine dailyand only about 15-20% use nicotine seems to point in the opposite direction, although there are obviously many other factors affecting those numbers.
Also, I think the utility calculation on whether the promotion of THR is net positive and cost-effective is pretty robust to changes in the net effect on a potentially larger group of new non-combustible users, even if that net effect is negative. This is mostly because the health costs of combustible use are so high. In other words, as long as there’s a reasonable substitution effect (lots of smokers dropping smoking as they start using other products), it likely outweighs the net harm to non-smokers that start using non-combustibles.
Just want to circle back around and say that I appreciate your points and have updated to be more in line with your position. I am still unconvinced by your strongest claims, but agree with most of the base assertions. For example I think nicotine is a lot less addictive and abuse is much less harmful than I previously thought. Some minor points that contributed to causing me to re-evaluate:
All the users who had self control to stop due to cancer warnings/social stigma did stop; leaving those with worse self control to continue making cigarettes look much more addictive on average than they necessarily are.
Comparing the community of users with other communities: Highly addicted smoker’s lives are not falling apart, unlike other addictive substance users.
Now my support hinges on a complicated calculus over how many and how bad the most abusive users are, how good and general the positive use is, how cheap combustibles are versus cartridges, and other specifics. But in principle we now agree.
I am glad you addressed my concern by going over the health effects of nicotine distinct from plant combustion/smoke. I particularly liked your line about “tobacco may be more analogous to tea or coffee than to alcohol.” But I am unconvinced that this addictive substance has a net positive effect on well being.
My impression is that, much like caffeine, the body acclimates and suffers withdrawal without regular doses. Additionally, to get the same effect, an increasing treadmill of doses is required. This withdrawal and dependence seems to leave the user worse off than they were before substance use, (jittery, anxious, irritable) unless the use is regulated and occasionally paused. This is exceptionally hard with addictive substances.
In the case of caffeine, I have heard it argued that even if you arrive at the same net outcome of awareness, productivity and happiness total, there is a lot of utility in being able to control when one is awake, productive, and happy. This makes sense to me. But I don’t think nicotine allows that same control except for a few abnormal individuals. Rather, I expect abuse and over-dependence to be the normal state of affairs. This seems net negative. Even if it had a neutral effect, people would still be spending money to maintain neutral utility.
Non-addictive nicotine would change my mind, and I would be potentially interested to apply it in my own life.
Thanks for reading and commenting! I’ve deliberately avoided the term “addictive” in this discussion, as usage of the term in both formal and informal discussions is so broad and loose that I’ve found it to be more confusing than illuminating. Phillips has a couple of wordy but informative discussions arguing that the word is more like the opposite of an applause light than a term that cleaves reality at its joints.
I’m not aware of much evidence that nicotine use is harder to control than caffeine use in the sense you describe. If anything, the fact that 80% of people in the US use caffeine dailyand only about 15-20% use nicotine seems to point in the opposite direction, although there are obviously many other factors affecting those numbers.
Also, I think the utility calculation on whether the promotion of THR is net positive and cost-effective is pretty robust to changes in the net effect on a potentially larger group of new non-combustible users, even if that net effect is negative. This is mostly because the health costs of combustible use are so high. In other words, as long as there’s a reasonable substitution effect (lots of smokers dropping smoking as they start using other products), it likely outweighs the net harm to non-smokers that start using non-combustibles.
Just want to circle back around and say that I appreciate your points and have updated to be more in line with your position. I am still unconvinced by your strongest claims, but agree with most of the base assertions. For example I think nicotine is a lot less addictive and abuse is much less harmful than I previously thought. Some minor points that contributed to causing me to re-evaluate:
All the users who had self control to stop due to cancer warnings/social stigma did stop; leaving those with worse self control to continue making cigarettes look much more addictive on average than they necessarily are.
Comparing the community of users with other communities: Highly addicted smoker’s lives are not falling apart, unlike other addictive substance users.
Now my support hinges on a complicated calculus over how many and how bad the most abusive users are, how good and general the positive use is, how cheap combustibles are versus cartridges, and other specifics. But in principle we now agree.