I’m a smoker. That said, I’m no
sympathizer with either the pro or anti tobacco arguments, because they’ve both
lost the plot, and most of the science.
If you look up the chemical definitions of nicotine and vitamin
B3, you arrive at the fact that B3 is oxidized nicotinic acid. B3 is also known
as Niacin.
Pretty straightforward; that’s why you have receptors for
nicotine, that’s how you get addicted to tobacco. Like any addictive substance,
it’s a close analog of a chemical the body uses regularly.
This is one of those minor details which
nobody has seen fit to mention in the “debate” about tobacco. I hate to think
how many trees have had to die to repeat everyone’s lobby, and still blithely
leave out the basics.
B3 is an essential vitamin.
There’s a very rare disease called Pellagra, a deficiency in this vitamin. The
symptoms are “insanity and death”. So, if you’re dead and insane, you might
have a deficiency.
B3 is called “brain sugar”. It does
affect the brain. Lack of it can affect the mind very adversely, causing
hallucinations, in extreme cases. So it is reasonable to believe that there is
a need for a level of supply. Smokers, obviously, meet that need by smoking.
They also probably over-supply, and add a cocktail of some pretty strange
chemicals which have nothing to do with B3 in the process.
I’m not a doctor, or a tobacco lobbyist, or a chemist, so I’ll
stick to what I do understand and not hypothesize about things I don’t. I’ve
got a few theories, but please understand they are theories. Scientific
method requires verification, and it’s for good reason.
I am, however, a gardener and
horticulturalist. I’ve grown and cured my own tobacco, and you don’t use carbon
products to make it burn. Sugar is the traditional curing method, and it burns
a lot hotter and more evenly. Burnt sugar, as far as I know, is an easy
metabolite for the body to process, because it naturally oxidizes carbohydrates.
The irony is that you don’t even have to
burn the stuff. A simple inhaler, with B3, just heated using a safe, almost
burn-less, low yield element like a battery wire, would do, to achieve the
cigarette effect. No pollution, no ashes, no forest fires… not such a bad idea,
at least in theory. It could be used as a calmer-downer without the added
baggage. This would also make it something you could use without generating
your own smoke screen. You would also benefit from lack of the useless oxides
setting fire to a cigarette creates.
Whatever you might think about passive
smoking, the fact is that young kids, asthmatics and hay fever sufferers don’t
need smoke, too. Neither do you.
The irony of smoking is that the actual
smoke coming out is what you don’t inhale. What you take in is
the nicotine, and whatever happens to be attached to it in the process of
combustion. Everything else just burns away.
Now the theories:
1. A lot of people suffering
from addictions and mental conditions smoke. This may reflect a need for extra
B3 to calm the nerves, quite literally, because both traumatize the nervous
system in the most unambiguous way. Wouldn’t it be an irony if tobacco became
an agent for anti-addiction treatment? (Choline, another B group
vitamin, is a known anti addictive. There may well be a whole regime of anti
addictive therapies in the B group. Here’s a thought: let’s look.)
2. Tobacco was once considered an anti-stress
agent. Most smokers would agree. Given the stress levels in modern “society”,
some form of safe de-stressing agent is probably a good idea.
3. Recent research
indicates that nicotine and serotonin have some sort of relationship, nicotine
supposedly stimulating serotonin production. I don’t know if that’s been
proven, or if it’s correct, but doesn’t it suggest another way of regulating
serotonin levels? Like maybe in conjunction with other medications? I’ve read
it affects dopamine, too, so there may be a further use for it in that regard.
4. At the very
least, we might wind up with a safe, properly researched, no
spin, therapeutic calming agent.
As usual with my stuff, don’t just take
my word for it. Check it out, see what you think.