Comment by thewebguyd
5 days ago
I don't think deeper is the right word. Nicotine has a physical addiction element that social media does not. You cut off social media, you at worse face some boredom and FOMO.
And PM's earnings are mostly from developing countries at this point. In the US alone, the adult smoking rate has fallen nearly 73% from 1965 to now, so clearly the regulations are working.
We need to do the same for social media. People didn't quit smoking because they suddenly got more disciplined. We just made it inconvenient. The biggest start would be get rid of algorithmic feeds and "recommendations" keep it purely chronological, only from people you explicitly follow.
Nitpicking maybe, but nicotine isn't the main thing that makes cigarettes addictive and it's not that bad by itself. Gwern has a long article on nicotine that's worth a read [0].
More importantly, why do you think society should make smoking inconvenient - more costly, more illegal or anything like that? If I'm not blowing smoke in your face, why interfere with my desire to smoke? If it's about medical bills, just let me sign a waiver that I won't get cancer treatments or whatever, and let me buy a pack of smokes for what it should cost - a few cents per pack, not a few dollars/euro.
[0] https://gwern.net/nicotine
If I can smell it, I don't really care if you're blowing it directly at me or not, it's still a pain. If you want to smoke in private in your own home and then wash your clothes after so no one can tell you're doing it, I guess that's fine, but I don't see why it also has to be cheap?
I admit I sometimes smoke near people, even if I try to move to the side. At bus stops I try to be 5-10 meters away from people, but often I don't do it and it inconveniences people. Sorry, truly. I will try to be more mindful. When I switched to e-cigs for a while a couple of years ago, I started noticing the smell of tobacco smoke. After I switched back to cigs, I stopped noticing it. Smokers don't notice it that much as they're around it often. It's not always smokers being inconsiderate, it's not realizing how it smells to others. If you let me smell the clothes of a smoker and a non-smoker, I wouldn't be able to tell the different if my life depended on it. Although I only smoke outdoors and wash my clothes regularly, so I hope my base smell isn't that offensive to non-smokers.
So yeah, this comment really reminded me to not light up whenever and "try my best" to walk a few meters away, but to really think if I'd inconvenience people.
On the other hand, if I'm alone on a street and you're walking towards me so I just pass you for a second, I can't imagine that the smell would be that bad from just a casual walk-by. When I'm passing people, I hold in my smoke till I pass them.
Even if I agree that smoking outdoors is inconsiderate and annoying to others, I could still do it at home or in dedicated areas (smoking sections in bars with good ventilation, ofr example).
> I don't see why it also has to be cheap?
If we agree on the previous points, then why not let it be cheap? Tobacco is cheap to produce. Most of the price of cigarettes is artificial, to cover medical costs and whatnot. Let's say I sign a waiver that if I get sick, I either pay through the nose or don't receive treatment at all. Would you be OK with letting me buy tobacco at it's original cost (no subsidies, no artificial fees)?
Or, as a thought experiment - let's say tobacco didn't have any smell and there were 0 negative effects of second-hand smoke. Like, you wouldn't know it if I smoked near you unless you saw me. Then what would be the justification in making smoking artificially expensive for me?
4 replies →
> You cut off social media, you at worse face some boredom and FOMO.
I wish this was true but I know tens of people that quit smoking and (besides myself) know 1/2 of another person that quit social media. drunk at NYE two years I offered $10k to a group of 25 people to delete all social media apps from their phones for 60 days - still have that $10k in my account. I think quitting social media is around the same as getting off hard drug addiction (like hard, hard, hard one - opioid, heroin etc...) and maybe even tougher that that - for most people.
> People didn't quit smoking because they suddenly got more disciplined. We just made it inconvenient.
I want to believe this! I just haven't personally experienced this at all (I am in my 6 decade on Earth so plenty of time around). I don't know single person that stopped smoking because they could not burn one inside restaurants/clubs/... or because it costs $18/pack or any of that. 18 year old person has very little "regulation" when it comes to smoking. Little inconveniences to move 25 feet away from the building isn't much of a deterrent IMO.
I am subjective on the matter of social media, I know that. But I am educated in its evil and would for instance never let my kid be on any social media as long as she is under my roof. This has already cause significant challenges for her (and my wife and I) but also it is an amazing learning experience to overcome silly social obstacles...
I think it's also partially due to smoking being more and more considered disgusting, not just inconvenient. The peer pressure of "don't do this very stinky disgusting thing around me" must have at least a little to do with declining smoking rates. Back in the 80s, most people didn't have the guts to say "Hey, don't smoke around me, it's gross!" but plenty of people do today.
We need to culturally consider Social Media use to be disgusting or at least something to be ashamed of.
The irony is that social media trends are making smoking cool again.