Talk:Smoking/Cessation

Lets avoid the appearance of giving legal advice. See disclaimers. Maybe it is time to make a Wikiversity-specific legal disclaimer. --JWSchmidt 03:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Some Neutrality or Disclosure and Balance is needed on this page.
This page is a little too pro drug paraphenalia for my taste. I think some balancing information informing potential bong users of the severe consequences of appearing to actively oppose law enforcement official deeply immersed in the drug wars would be appropriate. Lengthy probation and even prison terms for having been caught with a bong or other drug accessories are not unknown in the U.S. Mirwin 03:08, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Concerning possible adjustments
Thank you for your comments. I think it illustrates the problem referred to, that any idea to miniaturize smoking, even as a step toward total cessation as suggested by Hughes et al., may be derided or criminalized as "drug paraphernalia", something not to touch or discuss, while the 5.4 million die.

Remind readers of dosage issue
Since you mention bongs, try examining any website representing a "headshop" and notice the large crater-diameter of bongs, "pot-pipes" etc., i.e. they are built to accommodate hot-burning overdoses of a gram and more, each time a person "smokes". (You worry that bongs would be promoted in the proposed article, which is not the case.)

The kiseru and the midwakh should be mentioned precisely because they are small enough to permit a non-overdose smoking serving size. Let there be an emphatic reminder that it is never necessary or rational for any person, any age or gender, to smoke more than a 25-mg. serving of tobacco or any herb at a time.

Theory on the origin of this confusion
Bongs and other such overdose-glorification "paraphernalia" are TOBACKGO culture masquerading as a presumed cannabis culture, causing overdose-linked problems which are conveniently blamed on cannabis, in order to sabotage the emergence of any alternative to the overdose tobacco marketing strategy which forms the basis of that Industry's profit margin (None Dare Call It Genocide). (Apologies if that spelling and sloganizing sound frantic, but in my opinion the yearly death toll from this one Industry represents a daily, minutely emergency.)

I look to the Wikiversity as potentially an avenue to reeducate a betrayed public as to the basic definition of "smoking". Internet searches failed to yield evidence that the serving size miniaturization idea was getting mentioned anywhere at all, let alone on either English or German language Wikipedia. Various efforts to enter it on the "Tabakrauchen" TALK PAGE etc. were erased. Apparently challenging the entrenched overdose smoking dogma, the intentional product of a trillion dollars of cigaret advertisements, counts as a Point of View and violates Neutrality. Meanwhile articles on Tobacco, Cannabis, Smoking etc. droned on with illutrations, about "traditional" overdose smoking "culture" as if nothing else existed.


 * I agree completely that smoking is detrimental to health and kills many every year who could have lived longer with different personal choices. Indeed, Wikiversity is exactly an educational resource.  I hope you view my additions as adding educational value to the people reading/editing/participating at this resource.  Changing definitions is a bit problematical in that we frown on propaganda.  However, since you have disclosed where you are coming from and I presume are willing to help find and cite verifiable data to support our facts, statements, opinions, etc. I feel you are completely within Wikiversity editing guidelines.  I look forward to future interactions with you.  It would be nice if you registered a handle and used it so that ongoing conversations are a bit less confusing.  Very valid point you make that I ignored the miniterization approach to reducing or quitting and assumed the implments you provide construction instructions for are identical to my perception of a bong.  Hopefully we can keep improving this article so it serves its educational purpose for people like me.  Thanks for your efforts so far!  See you around.  Mirwin 02:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Forgive my evasiveness about signing inbut until this idea is a bit more disseminated and I am less isolated I feel vulnerable to their sending a James Earl Ray-gun after me and my body winding up in a river somewhere. After what they do to their friends (5.3 million a year...)


 * Actually more anonymous with a signed in handle that has no personal information on the associated intro/user/talk page. IP addresses are logged unless replaced with a handle and can be traced.   Further, you should be aware that there are many priveleged users who can at whim check and track ip addresses and handles through the database.  Sorry, but effectively the privacy policy is that given software constraints and legal requirements we cannot guarantee or truly provide "privacy".  Best we can do is help legal authorities should some type of illegal stalking occur and there are allegations floating around the net that even that may not be effectively organized.  If you detect any potential problems please consult a custodian immediately.  Mirwin 19:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your concern. I was a little incoherent because of running out of time on the library computer.  Actually I'm not that scared because it's a room full of over 100 computers-- how would they find anyone? -- Today (18) it seems I got in your way trying to blue up the links -- I had gotten the idea I'd just do it myself.

A few further items for the article might include notes on some herbs (Larrea tridentata can live 11,000 years) and more advice for downcuttin' smokers including related to their occupation. Check out the Talk page "Bioethics and Tobacco" where JWSchmidt did a nice job of interviewing. Also since you are interested in computers, check "List of Protologisms by Topics" where I was trying to use the occasion of making up names to describe machines to teach apes fire-preventive forestry. Thanksagain64.107.1.233 20:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Avoidance of legal advice posture
Perhaps that paragraph can be rewritten as political advice instead of legal.

The contention was, that fear of being accused of cannabis use may be preventing tobacco users from protecting their health by means of a viable idea, the anti-overdose utensil. (440,000 deaths in U.S.A. alone result not from smoking, not from tobacco, but from the 700-mg. overdose, and this article attempts to promote a remedy.)

Reward prudent behavior
Politicians could be confronted with a kindly suggestion that (a) laws be rewritten to reward and encourage true "CONSERVATIVES" who possess and use an anti-overdose utensil, because isn't the hot-burning overdose cigaret really "liberalism" at its worst?

Meanwhile (b) LIBERALS should applaud the libertarian (same thing?) idea of the government letting citizens alone, especially since they are truly acting responsibly and practicing harm reduction. The result might turn out to be a hundred-billion-dollar reduction in government medical costs permitting liberal health programs to survive.Treedesigner 02:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting political slants. Unfortunately with U.S. moving towards universal health coverage (A good thing IMO) a complete return to caveat emptor might also result in an upward trend of fashionable smoking and government paid for cancer treatments to extend the dying of lung cancer patients.  Pragmatically I do not think any total solutions to the health issue of lung cancer and other diseases from smoke weakened immune systems are really feasible in a large diverse democracy like the U.S.   Only slow incremental trends with adequate metrics and honest feedback loops seem effective in approaching large societal problems.  Mirwin 02:17, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: adequate metrics and honest feedback loops: here's how the present system stifles both (more discussion at Introduction to Bioethics, Talk Page: Bioethics and Tobacco):

1. Burning Temperature
No measurement to date of the actual burning temperature in an enclosed screened crater, 1/4" (6 mm.) diam, as compared to other (i.e. larger) diameters found in "head shop" equipment, "regular tobacco pipes" (supposedly pipe-smokers of tobacco don't inhale), and to the decades-long published figure of 1500° F/860° C in the tip of a hot-burning-overdose "regular" commercial cigaret. (Researchers fear repercussions if they published anything showing how unnecessarily hot cigaret are?)

2. Absence of feedback
Shown in the fact that no politician, public servant or anyone occupying an important, well-paid post in government or business can afford to admit that they have any personally learned direct knowledge of how to use a miniature smoking utensil, or of using same, for fear their name will be linked with illegal cannabis or worse. What would happen to a U.S. Representative who was found to be in possession of a smoking utensil which permitted servings of 1/28 as much herb as found in a legally sold commercial cigaret? Same goes for doctors, ministers, lawyers, school personnel, etc.

There is so far no personal testimony to my knowledge by any admitted user of such equipment who has enough eminence or credentials that a reading public would take his or her testimony seriously.

3. Recent quitters
On the other hand, though the US voting public has not elected anyone president since FDR who was publicly known to be a current cigaret smoker, as recently as early 2007 Senator Obama allowed public notice that he was quitting smoking literally at the last minute fefore entering the race. Commentators noted that he was chewing Nicorettes. With $30 million campaign money not to be booted away frivolously, he had plenty of motivation to succeed in stopping the habit and apparently did so. (There might be reason for concern about relapse if he doesn't win the election.)

In September 1989 former Education Secretary William Bennett was allowed to quit a 1-1/2-pack-a-day habit in order to accept the post of-- DRUG CZAR. (Har har, it was o.k. for an Education Secretary to be an addict, but I guess Drug Czar was too blatant?) Judge Bork hurriedly quit smoking in time to be nominated to the Supreme Court. An NPR reporter saw him reach absentmindedly into his pocket...

By contrast the first Ginsberg was forced to withdraw from a Supreme Coiurt nomination due to disclosures that he had used cannabis a decade earlier! In 2006 the selfsame Bill Bennett on his right wing talk show said, "We had a nominee for the Supreme Court and it turned out he was smokin' dope with his students!" Notice the uncivil derogatory language that is taken for normal by talk show listeners, if the subject of cannabis comes up, and consider that any professor, scientist, public health spokesman who mentions a "suspect" smoking utensil could expect to get this treatment any day from Bennett, Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity et al. preaching to millions of ditto-head listeners. (How does Bennett know whether cannabis is dope or not. I thought dope rhymed with opiate, right?)

I can't agree that our diversity is to blame. Quite the reverse-- a conspiracy is to blame, a successful conspiracy to implant the hot-burning-overdose 700-mg. cigaret as the one and only permissable,normal "regular" smoking method, combined with a "drug war" with the hidden agenda of discrediting any alternative-- smaller dosage-- smoking method by linking it to "drugs". This is a modern equivalent of a half-century ago when persons and ideas could be discredited by being linked in some way to Communism.

Gateway drug theory
This is an extremely important support for the entire pro-cigarette Drug War, because superficially it often appears to be true.

Re: article
 * Children interested in cannabis are often induced to wait to meet a dealer in a place where side-stream tobacco smoke and other hazards are present, and the consequences are blamed on the cannabis.
 * The dealer appears and announces that no cannabis could be gotten, but (opiate, crack, meth etc.) is available instead, and youngsters are easily bullied into trying a "substitute". One fears to antagonize the dealer for fear that no alternative dealer can be found, so buying a substitute drug is one way of assuring that there will be a source of cannabis at some later time.
 * In U.K. and other places, the dealer may offer you a hit of cannabis mixed with tobacco, a real gateway drug-- and the following drug involvements will be blamed on the cannabis rather than on the tobacco.
 * Children exploring cannabis are often indoctrinated into the belief that if they allow themselves to get hooked on nicotine, they can hide their cannabis use behind a stinkscreen of cigarettes. A joint can be carried discretely in a cigarette pack etc.

Much more material needs to be added about weight gain because, increasingly in the last decade since children and adults have increased their screen time at these computers, fear of weight gain, especially among women, is one of the remaining pillars protecting against the collapse of the oberdose tobacco marketing system.

I would like to add a paragraph drawing on observations by the Chicago journalist Salim Muwakkil about Harold Washington, who gained weight and died of a heart attack months after quitting smoking. (Published in In These Times about 1987-8.)

Medical cannabis patients and "the gateway drug to $igarette smoking"
"Your comment [on Cannabis Health News Magazine] is awaiting moderation."

Please draw Mr. Kennedy’s attention, and that of SAM, to the issue of H-ot B-urning O-verdose M-onoxide “rolling papers”– the “heavy use” which causes the “harmful effects” listed on their website which they attribute to the cannabis. Have you noticed that as the controversy over cannabis heated up in 2012-13, thousands of pictures of a “joint” appeared at the top of cannabis-related articles (sneak $igarette ads to benefit Big Tobacco)?

For that “gateway drug to $igarette smoking”, the 500-mg-per-serving “joint”, vaporizers and miniature “one-hit pipes” can be substituted, with a 25-mg-per-lightup serving size! If SAM is sincere about “reducing” cannabis use, Dosage Restriction Equipment is the way to go.

An article is posted at wikiHow.com, “Make Pipes from Everyday Objects: Socket Wrench One-Hitter etc.”– please review, sign in, edit, improve, add useful pictures, etc.

Anyone who wants to move to CO or WA but can’t afford the huge money to start a cannabis dispensary, should consider opening a One-Hit Head Shop, make and sell a complete line of “pen vapes” and “one-hitters”, sifters to produce a 1/16-inch particle size of dry herb for use in such equipment, and other accessories. (Any legal problem with equipment demonstrations and user education can be met by also carrying a line of unambiguously legal sifted herbs such as peppermint and oregano.)

Cannabis users can contribute to addressing the deadliest health crisis of our time, $igarette smoking with 6,000,000 deaths per year worldwide, by (a) helping addicts to substitute cannabis for tobacco, and (b) helping them substitute low-dose equipment for the $igarette format. Whether they support this approach will show whether SAM is sincere about harm reduction.Treedesigner (discuss • contribs) 18:32, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

media comment on AlterNet.org, October 31, 2016
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/mothers-protect-your-families-making-marijuana-legal-california

Gretchen, please don't fall for the lies that (a) cannabis is a "drug", (b) the remedy includes "reducing youth access".

What needs to be reduced is the fear-driven need to resort to easy-to-hide Hot Burning Overdose Monoxide $igarette format (alias "Joint", or "Blunt" with addictive nicotine hidden in the wRAPPer) because of the danger of being caught possessing a Vaporizer. The heat shock and 4221 combustion toxins in a Joint inflict health and character damage routinely blamed on cannabis by prohibitionists.

Children need to know how to administer a 25-mg single Vapetoke instead of lighting up a 500-mg torchjoint. A new combination needs to be popularized: the "one-hitter" now widely available for less than $10, along with a flexible drawtube attached over its butt end so that a user can perform Vaporization safely a suitable distance from her/his face by holding a lighter flame or other heat source far enough below the screened narrow crater to assure that vaporization-temperature heat (300-400F) enters upon the load of sifted herb.

"Hold flametip low, suck smooth, slow, don't start any glow till after 19 seconds or so."

Immediately afterwards breathe 30 warm wet W's in and out of a breathbonnet (breadbag). One or two such tokes suffice for 129 minutes of supurb creative activity (have workstation ready, or go out and do some gardening). Children should know about alternatives to the phony "relax and wait for it to do something to you" culture associated with monoxide Joint $moking.

PS the number #1 danger to protect children from is life-shortening nicotine tobackgo $igarette addiction psychosis. Any substitute is better, if you fear cannabis, try basil, marjoram, oregano, pennyroyal, peppermint, sage, savory, spearmint, thyme.*

_____________________________


 * See Herbal Alternatives section of this Smoking Cessation article.