Tea cigarettes?

[Arkimedes]

My mate has been smoking recently, but she claims that she's only doing it for the pleasure of smoking itself and not out of addiction.

Out of concern for her health, I suggested she should just smoke paper or tea (or possibly coffee?) but is this healthy? I've read accounts of people "sleeping to death" if you smoke tea and then tobacco within an hour because of a chemical reaction (which sounds feasible), but is there any danger of cancer or anything of the sort?

I dunno, I know it's not addicting (supposedly )

[er0k]

smoking paper is bad, period. inhaling anything with smoke is not going to be nice to your lungs

[Arkimedes]

Would it cause cancer? If so, would it cause cancer as quickly as tobacco?

I had thought a similiar notion, since it's bad to inhale too much smoke around a blacksmith's forge (it's a long story how I know this).

Is there any information on the risks of smoking in general (not just tobacco) available? I could only find risks of tobacco and marijuana.

[Arkimedes]

It's the strangest thing that she isn't addicted to the tobacco yet, but she insists on smoking "something". Once when she had the urge to smoke, to show that she wasn't addicted to the tobacco, I insisted she smoke paper. She smoked like a chimney, and then the urge passed after the first two "cigarettes".

It's the oddest thing!

But she won't give up smoking all together, unfortunately. Maybe I could try and talk her into quiting, though I'd suspect she just would continue to smoke merely behind my back

I'll consult a local physician from my handy-dandy yellow pages.

[HTRegz]

/me just wants to run and hide....

Talk her into quitting... I can't believe you're telling her to smoke anything.... It's obviously an addiction that she has... the first sign of an addiction is someone saying "I don't have an addiction I can stop anytime I want"... Good lord.... slap some sense into her and then slap some sense into yourself for telling her to smoke paper and tea and coffee..

[KorpDeath]

It's called an "oral fixation" and many people have this problem, it's as common as phobias. People who chew on pencils. pens. etc. She has to go through the act of smoking to curb her addiction. The rest you can look up yourself if you care about her.

Simply a psychological symptom to an underlying problem. Read pretty much any book by a behaviorist psychologist and it should shed some light on the subject.

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning.html

[nihil]

I agree with KorpDeath on this one.

There are two basic sorts of addiction, The "physical" and the "psychological".

I would not recommend smoking tea or coffee or paper.

If you go to your drugstore or health food shop you should be able to get "herbal cigarettes" which are allegedly non-toxic, or at least relatively so. They smell like burning garden waste!

Nicotine is highly addictive and with tobacco you also take in TAR and carbon monoxide

If you must smoke tobacco, smoke a pipe as it is somewhat less harmful than cigarettes, that have saltpeter in the paper to keep them alight.

Of course, for a young lady with an "oral fixation" I could suggest another alternative..............but I don't think we want to go there

[er0k]

especially since saltpeter umm... you know... fights the reason why viagra was invented

[the tree]

Originally posted here by nihil
If you go to your drugstore or health food shop you should be able to get "herbal cigarettes"

There are other places to get "herbal cigarettes" y'know. At least those would have less Polonium-210 and Lead-210 in them.

Get her chewing toothpicks or something.

[rcgreen]

The big recent news is that marijuana smoking seems to
pose no significant cancer risk, contrary to what we
all have assumed.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...k_played_down/

Prolly not a good reason to suggest substituting it for tobacco, though.
She could get busted and sent to jail.