Tobacco’s healing properties

“…it certainly isn’t healthy to smoke tobacco, and the vast majority of the tobacco smoked in the world is certainly not part of any ritual, indian or otherwise. It’s just a dirty and rather pointless habit, but if anyone wants to smoke it that’s fine by me. The whole point of this site is to denounce Nicotine Replacement Therapy as a scam which the Department of Health already know from their own research doesn’t work any better than willpower in the long run. I’m also calling for Champix to be banned, because anyone with half a brain can easily see that it should be.”

by Chris Holmes

This message came in by email the other day:

Austrian Smokers rights wrote:
Tobaco is a wonderful indian ritual and healing plant: would you please take this skul and bones of “nicotine”; and replace it by Chmapix or NicVax the killing vaccines.

thanks
chritsine

Now, Austrian Smokers’ Rights have had a little pop at me before, for the same reason that the Ashtray Blog bloke did, who is a devotee of the electronic cigarette… because I had the temerity to suggest that nicotine is just a useless poison.  Poisons are usually denoted by the symbol of the skull and crossbones, so it seems appropriate.  True, the same symbol should be on the Champix packaging in my view – I’ll suggest it to Pfizer’s Head of Marketing next time we meet up for a beer.  NicVax I know nothing about – yet.  But the idea that a vaccine will fix a compulsive habit like smoking seems very dubious to me.

As for tobacco being “a wonderful indian ritual and healing plant”, that is an unusually positive view of it nowadays, to say the least!  But if Christine is assuming that I am anti-tobacco or anti-smoking, she hasn’t read much of this site and has missed the point of it.  I’m not pro-tobacco, but I am very liberal about what people do to themselves, even if it kills them.  Mountaineering kills people, but I wouldn’t sign a petition to get it banned, would you?

Just because something is used in a ritual doesn’t mean it has any useful aspect to it.  Humans and animals have both been sacrificed in rituals in the past, but that doesn’t make human or animal sacrifice a worthy thing.  Rituals are not necessarily a good thing anyway, because they are simply repetiton of an act without questioning it, which can lead to all kinds of mad mucking about: look at that daft nonsense with Black Rod and the opening of the English Parliament – how silly is that?

Tobacco might possibly inhibit the development of Alzheimers, and prevent endometrial cancer.  But the list of diseases it causes is far longer than that, so it certainly isn’t healthy to smoke tobacco, and the vast majority of the tobacco smoked in the world is certainly not part of any ritual, indian or otherwise.  It’s just a dirty and rather pointless habit, but if anyone wants to smoke it that’s fine by me.

The whole point of this site is to denounce Nicotine Replacement Therapy as a scam which the Department of Health already know from their own research doesn’t work any better than willpower in the long run.  I’m also calling for Champix to be banned, because anyone with half a brain can easily see that it should be.

My book is the first to explain what cravings really are, and why they have no connection to nicotine whatsoever.  It also explains how we hypnotherapists routinely shut down all kinds of cravings without any difficulty just about every working day of our lives, including smokers’ cravings.

I didn’t write the book for the Austrian Smokers’ Rights group, though.  I wrote it for any ordinary smoker who would like to quit but hasn’t found that easy, and anyone who is interested in hypnotherapy and the Subconscious mind.  So the skull and crossbones stay, no apologies.

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

 

 

4 thoughts on “Tobacco’s healing properties”

  1. How can the act of burning something – sterilizing it in the process – in any way be considered ‘dirty’?

    While I think the work you are doing is commendable, surely such descriptions of a smoker’s ‘habit’ (I prefer the word ‘hobby’) are simply adding to the hateful bigotry and discrimination to which smokers are being subjected?

  2. Well, I suppose that the contents of an ashtray would hardly be regarded as sterile or clean by anyone. But I’m not one of those people who gets outraged about smoking, so it doesn’t bother me either!

    I’m not sure smokers are being subjected to hateful bigotry, are they? Discrimination, yes – but usually that’s to move the smoke away from non-smokers, not the smoker themselves primarily. Having said that, I think the medical profession often discriminates in a judgemental fashion, and of course the insurance industry (but then they cherry pick with all sorts of discriminatory exclusions and special clauses, that’s not limited to smokers!)

    Hobbies are often compulsive habits, and compulsive habits (such as collecting things, for example) are often called ‘hobbies’. I’ve no problem with that – except, as I said in the book, if it extends to collecting severed heads in the fridge.

  3. Thanks for responding Chris.

    I once dropped the core of a pear into an overflowing ashtray, only for my smoking companion to state: “that’s disgusting!” Which I found somewhat amusing as the pear-core was clearly the most wholesome thing in the dish!

    As to hateful bigotry, I live in Vancouver, BC, where smokers are now banned from lighting up on beaches, in parks, and at bus stops. Bus stops! Lest our tobacco fumes sully the other passengers’ enjoyment of diesel. There are signs telling smokers that we must stand 6 metres away from any open window or door in case the smoke from my cigarette should waft through and give some unsuspecting filing clerk cancer. Apparently now there is third hand smoke that makes us unclean in the presence of babies.

    The hysterical nonsense that has been spouted in the oh-so-noble cause of denormalising smoking – and smokers – is, I think, more than enough to deserve the label ‘hateful bigotry’.

    I’ve recently purchased an e-cigarette, which I’ve found to be a very effective substitute for smoking. Sure it still feeds the compulsion, bue it doesn’t have the deleterious effects of smoking cigarettes. I still enjoy real tobacco but this is something that works! And how are many governments responding? They are trying to ban them! While giving Champix away for free – along with gums, patches, and pointless inhalers. As long as it’s made by Pfizer, Glaxo, or campaign-sponsor-#3, the nicotine’s good!

  4. Someone told me that the e-cigarette is banned in Australia on the grounds that nicotine is a deadly poison and kids might get their hands on it!

    Tobacco and nicotine replacement products made by drug companies are fine, though. It’s like they’re not even bothering to pretend it’s not corruption anymore.

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