Smoking/Cigarettes kill trees 19 ways worldwide
This is intended to be a summary of ways the hot burning overdose monoxide cigarette "format" promotes deforestation, and to support the advocacy of the smoking cessation article, which proposes replacing today's typical commercial 700-mg-per-lightup cigarette "format" with a mass-produced and -distributed 25-mg-serving-size screened microdose utensil, the flexdrawtube oneheater
- 1 "Mild" Firewood fascism
- 2 Forests replaced by tobacco crops
- 3 Wildfires
- 4 Building fires
- 5 Winter heating for cold-vulnerable addicts drives deforestation worldwide
- 6 Deforestation for clothing production
- 7 Junk food cravings associated with tobacco habit
- 8 Cigarettes provide repertory of gestures to teach children consumer waste habits
"Mild" Firewood fascism
The strong-flavored tobacco marketed for pipes and in cigars is generally considered too harsh to inhale, rather it is pumped around through the user's oral and nasal cavities in order to absorb nicotine directly into the brain through the mucous membrane.
In contrast, the "milder" tobacco used in cigarettes is designed to be inhaled. Users impatiently seeking a faster, more intense "effect"-- i.e. rise in blood sugar ("plea-sure")-- can suck hard ("cig-ar") in massive gulp-like "puffs", often driving the burning temperature to over 1000 degrees F., without causing a coughing fit, due to the protective mildness of the tobacco. That same mildness thus enables users to indulge in a very fascistic (latin "fascis", torch), dramatic, "fire-breathin" gesture (authoritarian leadership self-advertisement) designed to relieve inner anxieties by creating a feeling that one is defending oneself adequately by such show of toughness and control which will cow others nearby. There is nothing more addictive than a drug or procedure which relieves anxiety.
The mildness is achieved by a "curing" process which includes exposing the tobacco leaf to 160 F heat for up to a week (source: Peter Taylor, "The Smoke Ring", 1984). Especially in developing countries of the Third World, heat is provided by burning wood logs in massive fires inside "curing barns" resulting in extensive deforestation. (Two sources have estimated that an eighth of all lumber cut each year worldwide is solely for this purpose of curing cigarette tobacco.)
Forests replaced by tobacco crops
Since about 1619 European-origin planters in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and other places have known that the rich soil created by old growth forests is very favorable for tobacco-growing. Landowners "cleared" the land for tobacco crops, and received a cash bonus at the start by selling off the lumber. Over the past two centuries this resulted in devastation comparable to the more recently reported conversions in Brasil to crops which cattle will eat, or in Indonesia for oil palm planting.
Sources cite careless cigarette disposal as one of the three top causes of forest fires, along with neglected campfires and lightning. The supreme carelessness of how one "disposes" of a cigarette is "part of the act" of impersonating a certain kind of adult authoritarian fuehrerperson; it gets massively rehearsed and becomes a reflex actionperformed thoughtlessly-- "you're playing with fire".
Cigarettes (especially smoking in bed, when a user dozes off) are considered one of the top two causes of building fires, along with electric system malfunction. When a building is destroyed which could have seen another century of use, a replacement building is soon enough erected, at cost of replacement lumbering to obtain girders, rafters, studs, flooring, new furniture, etc.
Winter heating for cold-vulnerable addicts drives deforestation worldwide
Health deterioration in long-time habitual smokers results in an demand for home heating. Whether coal, oil, gas or nuke is purchased in a given instance, energy remains a single worldwide market, and any price rise for any kind of energy tends to create increased demand for now cheaper alternatives. In third-world countries this may mean someone puts the gas stove out of service, sets up the wood-burning stove in its place, and starts buying logs!
Deforestation for clothing production
Smoking-induced illness and poor health can affect habits regarding clothing, where smokers buy and wear more and thicker garments-- increasing the demand to grow more cotton which is planted on land obtained by clearing forest, grow more wool obtained by replacing forest with grazing crops that sheep are willing to eat, grow more rawhide to be made into thick shoes after forests are replaced by crops for cattle grazing. Smoking also imparts a disgusting stench to clothing which may then be hurried thrown away and replaced, adding to replacement fibre farming on former forest land.
Junk food cravings associated with tobacco habit
Smokers are prone to crave "fast foods" which are hurriedly swallowed to raise the blood sugar (~"pleasure") level-- much as nicotine also does but by a different chemical method. Leading substances in this category of deforestation-for-cropland include high fructose corn syrup and palm oil. (The "big gulp" hurried swallowing of sugar pop beverages mirrors the big puff cigarette hit, or as advertised to children, is a precursor to it.) The abrupt blood sugar increase is usually wanted to relieve anxiety associated with the sharp blood-sugar decline that predictably occurred a few minutes or hours after the previous "sugar-hit" (rise) . This is the famous "withdrawal" problem.
Cigarettes provide repertory of gestures to teach children consumer waste habits
Every child knows that a quarter to third of every cigarette winds up being thrown away. For a pack-a-day addict this can mean 7300 throw-aways a year (including a little of the tobacco, some plastic from the filter, and most visibly, paper, most often made from killed trees. Also 365 times the Pack is thrown away. Each addict has been indoctrinated, or has self-indoctrinated, to behave in a way that can infect other, especially younger persons. An attitude may develop that the triumphant gesture of throwing something away is a vital part of the anxiety-relief package-- in the case of nicotine smoking it also goes along with the nicotine-induced "alertness" victims are habitually counting on to defend against ever-feared psycho attack from enemies and rivals.
Cigarettes are associated with ecocidal sedentary habits such as car driving
The car is perceived as a convenient and relatively safe place to smoke; many cars are bought for this reason (hard to smoke on a bike, forbidden to smoke on the bus, car manufacturers provide every buyer with quasi-obligatory ash trays). The side-stream smoke from a cigarette matches the car exhaust psychologically and gives the smoker a feeling that they are a car driver in the command of something big, expensive and deadly. (Invading the lungs of bystanders, as a gun bullet invades their skin, it is part of the gesture repertory of impersonating adult authoritarian fuehrerdom-- along with the deadliness too, side-stream smoke contains five times as much carbon monoxide as "mainstream" smoke inhaled directly by mouth.)
Pollution and acid rain from cars kill some trees; drilling for petroleum kills others as acres are "cleared" for a host of structures around each oil well; trillions of young trees are plowed under each year to prepare corn ethanol crop land.