Sorry, Mike, I just don't agree with your version. I smoked sometimes 3-4 pad for a few months before I found ecigs(stress related). And I would say over the years I averaged around 2 pad. I did this for over 35 years. But technically, I started at the age of around 10 when lighting cigs for my dad.
Sometime in the early 2000's I noticed a change in the way I responded to cigarettes. Before this time I knew I could quit and did several times throughout my life. The reasons at that point for returning to smoking were never because of a physical need. After, I'd say 2002-2003 ish, I found I could not stop like I had in the past because of a physical addiction. Something had changed with the cigarettes even tho I had not changed brands, etc.
Anyway, all of this says to me that BT did 'something' to how they processed their tobacco. I have often said that I thought BT took a lesson from the drug dealers in how to hook their victims good. This is what I believe because it happened to me.
And to further say to you....if nicotine in and of itself is the evil addictive drug you claim then why are people now coming forward saying they never smoked cigarettes, and have used ecigs and have started to use nicotine in them and they still say that they can easily walk away from it without feeling like they are hooked? Nicotine is no more addicting than its cousin caffeine. The worst that has happened to me when I stopped caffeine was to have a headache for a couple of days, with no jonesing.
I myself never considered quitting till the late 90's or early 2000's and never really tried.
I just new I wasn't getting any younger and other parts of my body were showing signs of age
related stress. No one I know nor myself ever experienced a time nor discussed the issue
of cigarettes suddenly having a change in properties such as you describe. The only place
I have heard of this is on forums such as this and very rarely at that. I do know that smoking
rates were back then and still are falling. If cigarettes were intentionally made more addictive
the evidence doesn't seem to bare it out.
When we talk about smoking addiction. We know that individuals adjust
there intake and thus their usage quite quickly. This usage rate may remain
quite constant even over long periods of time. Generally most will increase
their usage over time but, very gradually. In my twenty's I smoked perhaps
a pack every 2 to 3 days. In my late thirties or early forties a pack a day.
By my late 50's two packs or more sometimes a day. One usually doesn't
jump from say a pack every 2-3 days to a pack or more a day just like
that. Of course this is a generalization and there are extremes at both
ends. Everyone is different to one degree or another. I know smokers
who used to smoke quite a bit that now may have a occasional smoke
at social gatherings or not at all. Go figure. There is no one size fits all
definition at the individual level. therefore one must rely on studies at
the population level to get a picture of what is going on. If one references
the very materials the ANTZ use to demonize nicotine (it in fact demonizes smoking)
and how bad it is one finds the very evidence that refutes their claims
that BT deliberately made cigarettes more addictive. Smoking rates have
been and still are going down. Before vaping came along the smoking rates
appeared to have bottomed out and stabilized. They certainly were not going
up.
Regards
Mike
