Health
Why Is Anyone Still Smoking?
In this episode, Alec Baldwin explores the persistent phenomenon of smoking, despite the numerous health warnings and social stigmas surrounding it. He speaks with Dr. Lin Kuzlowski, a tobacco use exp...
Why Is Anyone Still Smoking?
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Interactive Transcript
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This is an I Heart Podcast.
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Introducing IVF Disrupted, the Kind Body Story, a podcast about a company that promised to
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revolutionize fertility care. It grew like a tech startup. While Kind Body did help women start
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families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.
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You think you're finally like in the right hands? You're just not.
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Listen to IVF Disrupted, the Kind Body Story, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, and so I pointed the gun at him and
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said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old, and a centenarian rediscoveres
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love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101 year old woman fall in love again?
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Listen to Heavyweight on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of The On Purpose Podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down
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with the one, the only Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I
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felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This **** was not given to me.
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I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose, Rejay Chetty, on the I Heart Radio app,
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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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I love that you created this system that revolves around you creating pockets of peace.
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World Mental Health Day is around the corner, and on my podcast,
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Jess Heel with Dr. Jay, I dive into what it really means to care for your mind, body, and spirit,
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from breaking generational patterns to building emotional capacity.
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I'm gonna walk away feeling like, yes, I'm gonna continue my healing journey.
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Listen to Jess Heel with Dr. Jay from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app,
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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is Alex Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from I Heart Radio.
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These days, a pack of Marboros could set you back $13. If you actually want to smoke them,
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you've got to stand in a designated area 25 feet from the building's entrance,
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and the package will contain the most dire warnings of illness and death.
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Overcoming these hurdles requires a true commitment to the habit.
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It's enough to ask, who is still smoking?
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My guest today, Dr. Lin Kuzlowski, is here to shed some light on this question.
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Dr. Kuzlowski is an expert on tobacco use and nicotine policy,
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and is Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus of Community Health and Health Behavior
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at the University at Buffalo. He is also a founding member of the Society for
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nicotine and tobacco research, and has contributed to four US Surgeon General's reports on smoking.
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I wanted to know if Dr. Kuzlowski was ever tempted to pick up a pack himself.
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I certainly tried to be a smoker, so in high school, I experimented in college.
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I had roommates who were devoted heavy smokers. I tried to smoke.
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There was no moral sense of God in the way. I just kept getting sick from smoking, so it wasn't worth it
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to me. But so it's fair to say, I was tempted. I tried. I experimented with packs of cigarettes and
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pipes and cigars and so on, but I never became a regular smoker.
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I smoke never heavily, never habitually. I'd smoke usually when I was shooting a film,
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because filmmaking is such a boring process. You work for 10 or 15 minutes, and you go away for
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an hour while they get ready for the next angle and so forth. And I smoked out of boredom on the
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sets of films and so forth. And whenever the project was over and I went home, quote unquote,
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I stopped smoking because the people in my life wouldn't tolerate that.
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So when you were smoking how early in the morning, did you have your first cigarette?
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Probably in the afternoon. When I was doing films and shooting, I didn't have the taste for it.
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And one thing I did for a period of time, I smoked cigars to give up cigarette smoking.
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I would be on the road shooting films traveling. And I'd be making films and I could smoke cigars
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there unrepentantly, because my wife was miles away. And I'd fire up and there was a period when I
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was smoking three of these big fat boomers every day. But I want to ask you in terms of
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I can probably guess what the order is in terms of the number of people who are consuming the following.
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But I was wondering from your research and from your work, are they all equivalently bad in their
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own way? And I'm talking about cigarettes, pipes, cigars chewing tobacco.
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It's very different in terms of harms. Right. And cigarettes are at the pinnacle of risk.
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And cigars, if you inhale them or pipes, if you inhale them, are also pretty risky.
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So inhalation is a key issue with tobacco products. But the key factors I think about and talking
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about different types of tobacco use for it to be popular, it's got to get nicotine to the brain.
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Secondly, it's got a taste good. It's got to be pleasant for the user to be using.
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Often non-users don't like it, but users like the taste of it and smell of it. And third,
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it's got to be a convenient product. So if you go back to the 1800s when the US was a largely rural
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society, the most popular form of tobacco was smokeless tobacco, chewing tobacco. Wet snuff, moist
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snuff. It got nicotine to the brain. It tasted good to the user. And it also didn't burn the
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barn down in an agrarian society. So that was a real advantage. But at the end of the 1800s,
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something called the germ theory of disease became common. And public spitting got outlawed
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in major cities all over the country. So spitting became very inconvenient. And it's hard to use
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chewing tobacco if you don't have an opportunity to spit. And the late 1800s cigars started to
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become popular. But also an interject that back in those days there were spittoons everywhere.
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Yeah, no. Places to spit. There's a wonderful account by Charles Dickens, a visit of the United
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States when chewing tobacco was king. And he was grossed out by all the spitting that he saw.
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But generally, Ulysses S. Grant, former president Ulysses S. Grant, died of very public death in 1885
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of jaw cancer. It was the New York Times of supporting daily on the state of his health.
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And people got afraid of cigars because here you have this major figure dying of a very painful
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jaw cancer. That set the stage for cigarettes. Cigarettes started, if you will, as a safer kind of
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smoke. It was think of it. It was so safe. You could inhale it easily. So in the early 20th century,
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that was the first time that there was a national marketing of cigarettes. Previously, there had been
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local brands of cigarettes. But then they became national brands like camel and lucky strike and
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Chesterfield. And cigarette use started to take off dramatically. So physicians in the 1920s almost
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never saw a case of lung cancer in their patients. In the 1930s and 40s, they started to see lung cancer.
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And this is co-instead with the rise in cigarettes. Now, marketing, modern marketing, emotionally
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based marketing, imagery based marketing became important in the 20th century. And cigarettes was the
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biggest funder of advertising agencies. And there was no better marketer of cigarettes than movies.
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Companies were paying to get their products placed in movies. Now, I know Alec you were interviewed
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in the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and you talked about major actors who influenced
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you. And you spoke about their colorful stylized performances. I'd like to mention four people that
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you mentioned in order, Jimmy Cagney, James Cagney. You mentioned his performance in white heat.
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In that performance, Cody Jarrett doesn't touch a cigarette. Turns out that Cagney,
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dislike cigarettes, he had been forced to market them in early films. Cagney was a pipe smoker.
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Cagney died at 86. 86 years old. Keep that in mind. Let's go to the next actor you mentioned.
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Humphrey Bogart, I would say that for Humphrey Bogart, a cigarette was a kind of supporting actor in
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his performances. I mean, you can't imagine many of his performances without a cigarette being a
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player in it. Humphrey Bogart died of a soft-geal cancer at age 57. 57. Next to you mentioned Gary Cooper.
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Who died at 60. Gary Cooper advertised Lucky Strikes in the 1930s. In one of his print ads,
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he says, ever since switching to Lucky's, my throat has been in fine shape. Now, if you think of it,
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that's a bit of a health claim that an irritating product is a more dangerous product.
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Clark Gable used praise Clark Gable's performance in the misfits. Two days after the misfits wrapped,
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Gable had a heart attack and he was dead 10 days later at age 59. Now, that comparison is just
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meant to get one's attention. That's not scientific data. But you've got Cagney dying at a
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ripe old age of 86. And these major figures dying much too young. Let me talk a bit about the
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percentage of smokers in the United States and how that rose. In 1940, young men at about 20 years old
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80% of young men were smoking in 1940. 80%. If you jump to the most recent data provided by the CDC
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in 2021, looking at a similar age group, people 18 to 24, only 5% are smoking. So, thank of it.
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When 80% of people are doing it, that's a very trendy activity. But the social pressures of change,
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smoking has become much more stigmatized. And the bands that have become commonplace on indoor
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smoking and government buildings and many states, that adds to the inconvenience of smoking.
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Dr. Lin Kuzlowski, if you enjoy conversations with experts in public health, check out my episode
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with Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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There's no other disease that can actually kill you by a respiratory route, that is, that people
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have for them don't have any symptoms. When we realized that, it became clear that we really
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needed to do mass. But yet people who want to be ultra-ly critical will say, oh, he flip flops.
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If you don't change your mind with the evolution of the new information,
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then you are really guilty of something that's not good.
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To hear more of my conversation with Dr. Fauci, go to here'sthetheng.org. After the break,
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Dr. Lin Kuzlowski gives a risk assessment for smoking traditional cigarettes versus vaping.
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I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago now. We're getting a little bit older and
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it just kind of felt like the window could be closing. Bloomberg and IHard Podcast present
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IVF disrupted the Kindbody story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility
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care. Introducing Kindbody, a new generation of women's health and fertility care.
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Backed by millions in venture capital and private equity, it grew like a tech startup.
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While Kindbody did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned
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and angry patients. You think you're finally like with the right people in the right hands,
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and then to find out again that you're just not. Don't be fooled. By what all the bright and shiny,
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listen to IVF disrupted the Kindbody story starting September 19 on the IHard Radio app, Apple
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Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of heavyweight,
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I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101 year old woman fall in love again?
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And I help a man at tone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I
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pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. And he got down and I remember feeling kind
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of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve
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my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming
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all the time. Being more able to look at people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone.
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Listen to heavyweight on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of The On Purpose Podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down
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with the one, the only Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I
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felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. How do you think you misunderstood?
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I'm not this evil mean person that people think that I am. I'm too compassionate. I have sympathy for
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that **** my man. Put so much heart and soul into your work. What's the hardest part for you to
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take that criticism? This **** was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Even when I was a
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rapper, I'm a beat the best pole dancer in here. When was the moment you felt? I did it. I still
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feel comfortable. I fight every day to keep this level of success because people want it,
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take it from you so bad. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on The IHard Radio app,
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Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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What's up everybody? This is Snacks from Travner's Podcasts and we're bringing you the horror every
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week, all October long. Can you get off this mud? I'll be bringing you all my greatest
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we'll be talking about our favorite horror Halloween movie and figuring out why black people always
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got to die first. As the umbral reliquary invites any and all food brave enough to peruse,
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it's many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and
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narrated by yours truly, with a full episode read and a commentary special. And we'll cap it
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off with horror movie Battle Royale. Jason versus Freddie, Michael Myers versus the AID
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thing with the little tongue monster. October we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the
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Travner's Podcasts from the Black and Fick Podcasts network, On The IHard Radio app, Apple
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Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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And smoking related diseases killed 41 million people in the US, UK and Canada between 1960 and 2020.
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Dr. Lin Kislawski has spent his career studying the deleterious effects of smoking. Working with
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the statistics must be no easy task. So I was curious to learn how he found his way to this line of
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study. My doctoral dissertation, which was conducted in 1974, looked at the relationship between
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coffee drinking and nicotine use, coffee drinking and cigarette smoking. So I had an early contact
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with cigarette research and my mentor at Columbia University Stanley Schachter, a very noted
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psychologist. He, I would say he was my beloved mentor and he was a very heavy smoker.
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And he got into smoking research initially because he was interested in the issue of
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why does smoking seem to calm people down when they're in stressful circumstances?
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What was his answer? Well, that's actually kind of interesting because what we looked at,
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I was involved with those studies, that it turns out that under stress, your urine becomes more
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acidic and you excrete more nicotine from your blood. And so that under stressful circumstances
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more nicotines leaving your bloodstream. And so you need to smoke more to maintain your doses of nicotine.
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And I would say the Schachter, a very heavy smoker, as soon as his eyes opened in the morning,
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he knew he was addicted to cigarettes. And so I learned a lot from him.
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So throughout your career, smoking has been the bulwark of what you've done, correct?
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Yeah, largely. My first job was at Weston University and it was harder to do the kind of
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smoking research that I wanted to do there. And then I got a job in Toronto with the Addiction
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Research Foundation to become head of their behavioral research on tobacco use. And that was a
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perfect environment where I had physician colleagues, pharmacologists colleagues to collaborate with.
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So in Toronto, that was the focus of my research.
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So when you start the Department of Health behavior at the University of Buffalo,
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I mean, one would assume even somebody that doesn't know much about the infrastructure of academia
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and the protocols of academia, you don't just walk up and go, hey, I got this idea. What were you
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working on? They thought was important. Well, I think the reason I got that job is that I had
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long experience as a department head at Penn State. I'd been department head for a department
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of bibe careful of health at Penn State for over a decade. And so that experience as an academic
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administrator, as well as having significant research credentials, was what wanted them to recruit me.
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They were trying to get the new School of Public Health and Health professions accredited as a
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School of Public Health. And they needed to create that new department. And in terms of public health,
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tobacco use has been one of the major public health issues of 20th century.
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For me, the arc of smoking, I mean, I remember when I first came into this business,
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people lit cigarettes on the set of the TV show at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. We'd be on the set of a
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soap opera that I was doing the first job I had was one of the old school soap operas.
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And I could name a handful of people who were smokers. And those people who were not smokers
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didn't really say anything. They didn't really complain. Now you wouldn't hesitate to
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scold someone who's smoking publicly. I'll never forget there was this line that someone said,
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they said, they're moving me outlaw smoking only outlaws will smoke. You're really going to alienate
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them in a very strong and very kind of aggressive way. So in the 1980s, if the Addiction Research
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Foundation in Toronto clinicians who were working with people with cocaine dependencies and
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opioid dependencies in their clinical sessions, they would often share cigarettes.
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The clinician and the patient would share a cigarette. Now, after a decade's work, that stopped.
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That notion of it was appropriate for a clinician to be sharing a cigarette with
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somebody with alcohol or opioid problems that was recognized as a noteworthy.
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In 1980, it was commonplace. So for me, the next turn of the wheel, if you will,
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is these labels on cigarettes, which should become increasingly dire over the years of gone by.
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I mean, they might as well say, you know, if you smoke one of your eyeballs is going to fall out.
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I mean, they make it a stark and as dramatic as they can. When those first came on, I recall that
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the tobacco industry fought it tooth and nail. They didn't want those warnings on those cigarette
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packs. Did that have a big effect on people? The warning labels?
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Yeah, in general, yes. I would say the United States is behind many other places in the world
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in terms of warning labels. Where are the warning labels more effective as far as you're concerned?
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Canada, the United Kingdom, they have graphic images of diseases and
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and so on and so much so that it was sure it still happens in Canada that when they first came
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on the pack, some smokers were buying little pouches or slip cases that they could put their
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packs in so they didn't have to look at the image of it. But no, there's no doubt that the
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strong warning labels do help remind smokers that it's a problem to be smoking.
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Yeah. I mean, I was always wondering because I thought here's a set of words on the side of a box
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and you got a cigarette in your hand and you're just somebody who smoking as is natural as breathing
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or drinking water if you're a real smoker, it just doesn't even occur to you. And here's a bunch
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of words on a box. How much of an effect is that really going to have? But it had some effect.
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Yeah, actually, there've been in the US, there've been some, I would call negative effects to some
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of the warnings. You asked about the risks of different products. It turns out that
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smokless tobacco products like moist snuff the thing you put between your cheek and gums.
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That's much much less dangerous than cigarettes. Really? Think about it. If you're not getting stuff
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in your lungs, that alone is going to knock off the majority of things that kill you from smoking,
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lung cancer and respiratory diseases are the majority of things that kill you from smoking cigarettes.
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And with the first warning labels on smokeless tobacco products,
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they included a warning label that the industry supported. And it was, this product is not a safe
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alternative to cigarettes. Now, it turns out that the way consumers interpreted that warning,
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this product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes. They interpreted it as saying they're
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just as dangerous as cigarettes. When, in fact, they're much less dangerous than cigarettes.
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I said, let me give you a good example of that. I would bet you would think that oral tobacco
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like that is a major cause of oral cancer. I would assume, yeah. Turns out cigarettes are a
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bigger cause of oral cancer than those products. Why? Just because of the nature of the toxins
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exposed in the mouth and so on. People don't know that. I would have assumed otherwise.
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Yeah. And it turns out there are gross misunderstandings about the risks of different,
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but I mean, for example, if you talk about vaping products, e-cigarettes, that public understanding
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of the harms of vaping products has gotten more mistaken and more mistaken, that a few years ago,
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about half of people were saying that vaping is equal in harm or more harmful in cigarettes.
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It turns out that 83% of smokers think that vaping is as dangerous or more dangerous in cigarettes.
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And why do they think that? I'm not entirely clear why they do, but they're wrong. It turns out
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that again, when you get all of the carcinogens out of smoke, and that's what you're taking to your
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lungs, you do your lungs a big favor, still an addictive product, but it's much less dangerous
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than cigarettes. There's a lot of studies now showing that it's a useful tool for adult smokers
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to give up smoking to switch to nicotine vapes. Well, I'm going to get to vape right after this
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next point, which is that so in the next advancement, if you will, we have the labels, then you have
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the outright banning of smoking. You start having smoking as nothing. In my places, yeah.
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In increasing number of places and people have to go into a special room, then they get rid of
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those rooms. They disappear. They had them at airports for a while. Here's the smoking room,
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and you saw everybody in a cloud of smoke inside some little chamber. I've lived in New York,
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you know, nearly all of my adult life, and you see people go from, they go outside,
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and they want to smoke so bad, and it's pouring rain, it's freezing cold, they're hunched over,
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then they drive them away from the entrance of the building. The signs appear everywhere.
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You cannot smoke within a hundred feet of this entrance or 50 feet, so people have to go down.
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They have to walk down to the side of the building and blah, blah, blah. I mean, we've made it
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as difficult as possible in many parts of the country. Is it having an effect? Is smoking
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in a downward trend now in the 2023? Oh, definitely. I mean, it's a whole bunch of things
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that have ganged up on smoking to diminish it. I mean, the indoor smoking rules have had a big
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effect. Remember when there were television ads for cigarettes? Of course. There was a period
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when there was an equal time law that you could get anti-smoking ads on TV. It turned out those
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anti-smoking ads had a big effect on discouraging smoking. So much so that the companies were kind of
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happy to get off TV because that equal time anti-smoking ad would go away. Then that battle was over.
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Yeah. Now, obviously, in the business I've worked in for several years, there's been a lot of push
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to cut smoking that it was a bad idea and a poor role model for a lot of kids. But that idea,
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the social stigma in Hollywood and TV, pretty much banning it. If you're going to smoke a cigarette,
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you better be playing Edward R. Murrow in order to be smoking a cigarette in the scene.
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In my business, that had a profound effect, I think, which they wanted us to be role models in
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some way. And you were role models. But let me say something about a watershed in the United States.
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And that was the 1964 Surgeon General's report, which came out declaring smoking as a cause of cancer.
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Within days of the 1964 report being released,
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Carlton cigarettes were advertised for the first time. Carlton were ultra-ultra-low-tower cigarettes,
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one milligram tar, 0.1 milligram nicotine. And if you will, that was the start of an ultra-light,
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light-boondoggle that came about right after the 1964 report. The people were thinking,
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I'm better off smoking a light cigarette than a full-flavor cigarette, I'm better off smoking
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an ultra-light. And it turned out, it took years of research to show that that wasn't the case.
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And that one of the key features in creating a 1 milligram tar cigarette is to take the filter and
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punch a whole bunch of holes in it. They make it 80% diluted with air. So within the smoking machine
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takes a puff on the cigarette, it's trying an 80% air with each puff and that's diluting it.
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Now what does a human smoker do with a cigarette that's 80% ventilated? Some push it a little
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bit further in their mouth and their lips cover the vents and that gets more smoke to their lungs.
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Or they take bigger puffs or they take more puffs. So in the early days of this tar derby in the 60s,
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70s and 80s, standard smoking machine tests were conducted by the government. And it turned out
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that people don't smoke like smoking machines. They take bigger puffs if they want to, they take
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more puffs. And I had colleagues who did research on smoking machines that show you could have
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one cigarette that in a standard run and a smoking machine gave you 17 milligrams of tar,
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one seven, 17 milligrams of tar. But if you adjusted the machine to simulate a heavy smoke,
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big puffs, lots of puffs, you get 70 milligrams of tar from the same cigarette.
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So that one of the key issues with cigarettes is that what you get from it depends how you puff on it.
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It's not like a pill. It's not like with a bottle of beer, if you don't miss your mouth, you know how
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much alcohol you get from a bottle of beer. With a cigarette, it's a race between what's going
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in the air and what's going in your lungs. And people can compensate. And they did.
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There's games you can play with smoke. And so that people from with ultra light cigarettes could
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get as much as they were getting from bull flavor. And that's actually one of the reasons why
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light and ultra light designations were removed. But people still know what a light and ultra light is
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because they can feel it from the taste of it. They taste different. I'm wondering if I could say a bit
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about cigars. Please. The 64 report came out. And a few days later, the president of the American
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Medical Association was on the today show saying, if you can't give up cigarettes, you might switch
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to cigars or pipes. You'd be better off because in the 64 report, cigars and pipes got a clean bill
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of health. It wasn't seen as a major cause of disease. And the reason for that was that the
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epidemiology at the time was based on people who were so-called primary cigar smokers. They'd
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never smoke cigarettes. They'd only smoke cigars. And those primary cigar smokers tend to do not
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inhale cigars. So-called secondary cigar smokers, people who were cigarette smokers switching
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cigars, they tend to maintain the habit of inhalation. And that's a key issue in terms of the
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health risk. The other thing about cigars, as you know, smoking big cigars sometimes,
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that sometimes it could take as much as an hour to smoke a big cigar. Yes. You could smoke
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six cigarettes. Hopefully it does take an hour. You could smoke six cigarettes in the same interval.
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So when somebody says, I just smoke two or three cigars. You got to consider how bigger those
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cigars, how much puffing are they doing? Are they inhaling? And to the extent they're inhaling,
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to the extent they're getting a lot of tobacco in their lungs, it's not a harm-reducing product
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to be smoking cigars. The other thing about inhalation, I actually did research on this when I was
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in Canada, people can reliably tell you whether they inhale cigars or not. They know whether they
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inhale or not. Tobacco expert Dr. Lin Kuzlowski. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend,
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and be sure to follow here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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When we come back, Dr. Lin Kuzlowski tells us what he believes is the best way to quit smoking.
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I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago now. We're getting a little bit older and it
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just kind of felt like the window could be closing. Bloomberg and iHeart podcast present,
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IVF disrupted the kind body story. A podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility
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care. Introducing Kind Body. A new generation of women's health and fertility care.
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Backed by millions in venture capital and private equity, it grew like a tech startup.
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While Kind Body did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned
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and angry patients. You think you're finally like with the right people in the right hands,
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and then to find out again that you're just not. Don't be fooled. By what all the bright and shiny,
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listen to IVF disrupted the Kind Body story starting September 19 on the iHeartRadio app,
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Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of
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heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101 year old woman fall in love again?
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And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I
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pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. And he got down and I remember feeling kind
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of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my
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problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming
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all the time. Being more able to look at people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone.
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Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down
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with the one, the only Cardi D. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day.
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I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. How do you think you misunderstood?
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I'm not this evil mean person that people think that I am. I'm too compassionate. I have sympathy for
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that **** my man. So much heart and soul into your work. What's the hardest part for you to take
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that criticism? This **** was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Even when I was a stripper,
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I'm a big the best pole dancer in here. When was the moment you felt? I didn't. I still
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feel comfortable. I fight every day to keep this level of success because people want it,
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take it from you so bad. Listen to on purpose with Jay Chetty on the iHeartRadio app,
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Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? This is Snacks from
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Traviner's podcast and we're bringing you the horror every week, all October long.
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Kickin' off this mud, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear inducing horror games from
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Risen and Evil to Sava Deel, me and Tony bringing back fireteams on left for dead too. And we
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just gonna be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror
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Halloween movie and figuring out why black people always got to die first. The umbral reliquary invites
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any and all food brave enough to peruse. It's many curiosities, but take heed. All sales are final.
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Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly with a full episode read and a
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commentary special. And we'll cap it off with horror movie battle royale. Jason versus Freddie,
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Michael Myers versus the AED thing with the little tongue monster. October we're doing it Halloween
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style. Listen to the Traviner's podcast from the Black and Fick podcast network on the iHeartRadio app,
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Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
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Here's the thing. The data is sobering. Smokers who start early in life and keep smoking can lose
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up to a decade of life expectancy. I wanted to know for those who were interested. If Dr. Lin Kuzlowski
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thought there was a best time in their lives to quit smoking. There's early as possible.
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Right. 30 is a benchmark that if you can do it by 30 and I think that needs to be promoted more
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widely. Right. Proper jaw and epidemiologist at the University of Toronto recently
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reviewed a lot of epidemiological studies and has come up with a very simple summary of the
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health risks of smoking. The evidence shows that at least one in two smokers dies prematurely
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and they lose on an average 10 years of life. If a smoker can stop at age 30, they go back to the
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longevity expectations of a never smoker. If you can get people to stop at age 30, that's great.
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At age 40, it's 90% of a return to being a never smoker. At age 50, you gain six years of
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life if you start smoking and at age 60 is four years of life. I think there are a number of tools
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that people have to help them quit smoking. But I want to emphasize that those are tools and I
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think of changing a flat tire on a car. A lug wrench is a very useful tool for changing a flat tire
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but it's a lot of work to change that tire. Any of these tools you might use for rena clean is a
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prescription drug you might use to help quit smoking. Nicotine replacement products, patch,
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gum, lozenges, nicotine pouches, vaping, they're tools and it's an important thing for the smoker
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not to be satisfied with just cutting down a bit on smoking. Your goal should be to try to get
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off smoking completely and switch to those other products and then once you're securely off
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smoking, you can think about getting off those other products. So to the extent you can say,
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what do you think in the marketplace right now would you say is among not the best but among the
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best ways to quit smoking? I think for older adult smokers vaping products are among the best
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ways to quit smoking that they can provide the most satisfactory substitution for cigarettes.
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The other thing about quitting smoking is that repeated attempts, you get smokers get better at it.
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For example, I've known people who've given up smoking, they've been off for several months,
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they go to a gathering where others are smoking and they think that could just have one cigarette.
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They do, they end up there wrong. So the next time they try to give up smoking, they know better,
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they know better than to be fooled by the illusion that I could just have one. And then I think
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there's also a kind of no more nice guy effect that people trying repeatedly give up, they finally
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dig their heels in and have learned from what did and didn't work. I mean, I had one person tell me,
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I tried this and I was off smoking for a year. And I said, that's a pretty good technique to try
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again if you were off smoking for a year. Why don't we do that subscription for another year?
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But so I think it's important for smokers to keep at it. Now, the other thing about the
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health risks of smoking, the cardiovascular risks diminish very quickly within months once you stop
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smoking. The cancer risks are a bit of a different animal. The process of smoking is causing some
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cancer related issues to develop and it takes longer for you to get the benefit of stopping
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smoking with respect to cancer. But the key message is stop as soon as you can.
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We'll get to vaping now, which is, I mean, to me, I find vaping just kind of just exploded.
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And I live in New York and street level New York is nothing but food shops, coffee shops,
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and places to buy smoking paraphernalia and vaping. I was in a restaurant last night with my wife
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and a couple of friends. It's a very nice restaurant, actually, one that we go to all the time in
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our neighborhood. And some young guy was there, probably 25th in his late 20s and his girlfriend.
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And he whips out a machine, whips out the device, so it's vaping in the restaurant, which I don't
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think he was necessarily that wasn't permissible. But he goes ahead and vapes. And I thought, you know,
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what was the advent of vaping, meaning who developed this kind of stuff and to explain to people
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who think they know what vaping is, vaping is a delivery system for like a liquid form or some kind
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of other kind of form of nicotine. And they've extracted all the bad stuff for most of it.
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Yeah, the key thing is that the tobacco is gone in vaping and you can vape all kinds of drugs like
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cannabis with the vaping product if you want to as well. But the key advantage is that there's no
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combustion that you don't get the smoke and the tar and the globb and you don't get the complex
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ingredients arising from burned tobacco. First products were developed in China,
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but there've been a lot of different generations of products and the it's interesting. The
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I mentioned some of my college roommates smoked and the heaviest smoker I ever knew is my college
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roommate who smoked unfiltered black tobacco goal was. You could hear him when he walked into the room
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just by the sound of his inhalation. You could hear him walking into a room. He took such a big
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drag. I learned years later that he had switched to e-sigurats. So I called him up and said,
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how could this be? You were the heaviest smoker I ever knew. And he said, I love him. Actually,
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it was interesting. He could indulge in his sense of a kind of source by picking the right kind of
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vape product and the right kind of flavor he liked. But he was off cigarettes. And so that was very
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impressive to me to have that one testimonial from an old friend who was able to switch to vapes.
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He was the better for it. So is it safe to say that in terms of all the components that you
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regard and the metrics that you regard that vaping is much safer than cigarette smoking?
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I have no doubt about it. Right. Sigurats, inhaled cigarette smokes are at the pinnacle of risk.
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Smokeless tobacco products are much less dangerous than cigarettes. Nikitine vaping is probably a
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little less dangerous than smokeless tobacco. Nikitine pouches, you're really at quite low levels of
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harm. I don't want to suggest that any of these products are health foods, but they reduce risk
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dramatically. But vaping has its hazards as well. Well, the anti-debacco forces were very quick
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to jump upon lung problems that were being caused by vaping. They even gave it a name, Evali,
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of electronic vaping lung disease. It turns out that that arose largely from people smoking black
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markets, cannabis vapes that were polluted with toxins. That did cause lung problems.
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In other countries, there's a non-issue that once they got rid of that black market vaping product,
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it hasn't been an ongoing issue. But the field has continued to latch on to this,
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oh, you can get lung problems from vaping based on this bout of lung disease a few years ago.
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But inhaled cigarettes are at the pinnacle of risk. They're the highest threat.
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And they take a big jump down. And things like a pouch that have no inhalation at all are much,
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much less risky. I will say that in my lifetime, borders are a couple of different realities as
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far as smoking is concerned. My father was a cigarette smoker. He was a pipe smoker. He quit
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cigarettes to smoke pipes. He died at the age of 55 of lung cancer. My smoking. And I will say that
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with, unless I was completely inebriated, unless I was completely shit-faced on some drugs and alcohol,
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which was certainly accompanied by a good amount of smoking, my drug use and drinking.
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But when I was in my right mind and I smoked, I knew it was wrong every time I did it. Every
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single time I put a cigarette in my mouth, I said, this is wrong. I shouldn't do this. I remember
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saying to myself, okay, this is a stupid idea. Click and I'd light up.
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Even a long time ago, people called cigarettes coffin milk.
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Right. But I was going to say, I'm many years in sobriety. I'm clean in the sober, 37 years.
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And the only reason I mentioned is because this idea of addiction, of finding a way to cure
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the addictive mechanism, the addictive synaptic, whatever it is that happens in human beings,
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as it relates to smoking, as it relates to eating, of course, smoking compounded with obesity.
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People who are not even morbidly obese, but who are significantly overweight and
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smoke, I mean, that must be a double whammy for them, correct? Sure. I mean, it turns out that
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heavy smokers have a worse diet than non-smokers. Heavy smokers are more like to eat more fried foods,
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fewer fruits and vegetables. There are a whole bunch of things going on with heavy smokers that
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contribute to health risk. You were mentioning before the name of a drug that I don't recall what you
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said. Renniklin. Now, what is that? It's a drug that's FDA approved smoking cessation aid.
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That addresses addiction. It's treating addiction, yeah. It's a drug that's shown to help you stop smoking.
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That's a little bit, a little bit too ambitious to claim. I mean, that in terms of nicotine replacement
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products like nicotine vape, it's a harm reduction technique. You're replacing a very toxic form of
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nicotine use with a much less toxic form of nicotine use, but the addiction doesn't go away.
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It might be decreased. That's a dream, isn't it, to address that addictive component in the
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human brain and human behavior? There are other factors too. It's not just the addiction, it's the
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environment you're in. For example, if you have a spouse who smokes and isn't giving up,
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good luck trying to give up smoking yourself, I mean, that's a powerful social factors. If you have
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co-workers, who are your best friends going outside in the wintertime to smoke, you've got
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social pressures to continue to smoke. But go back to that figure of 5% of 18 to 24-year-olds
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smoking in the United States now. That's a nice low number compared to the 80% in 1940.
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So there's been progress, there's been huge progress.
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My thanks to Dr. Lin Kuzlowski. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City,
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reproduced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese and Maureen Hobern. Our engineer is Frank Imperio,
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our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin, here's the thing
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is brought to you by I Heart Radio.
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Introducing IVF Disrupted, the Kind Body Story. A podcast about a company that promised to
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revolutionize fertility care. It grew like a tech startup. While Kind Body did help women start
spk_0
families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients. You think you're finally
spk_0
like in the right hands. You're just not. Listen to IVF Disrupted, the Kind Body Story,
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on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein,
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and on the new season of Heavyweight, and so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke.
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A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old, and a centenarian rediscoveres a love
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lost 80 years ago. How can a 101 year old woman fall in love again? Listen to Heavyweight on the
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Shetty Host and the On Purpose Podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one,
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the only Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest
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depression that I had ever had. This **** was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me.
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Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
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your podcasts. I love that you created a system that revolves around you creating pockets of peace.
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World Mental Health Day is around the corner, and on my podcast, Jess Heel with Dr. Jay, I dive into
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what it really means to care for your mind, body, and spirit from breaking generational patterns to
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building emotional capacity. I'm gonna walk away feeling like, yes, I'm gonna continue my healing
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journey. Listen to Jess Heel with Dr. Jay from the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the I Heart
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Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart Podcast.