Cigarettes and smoking

I smoke, I admit it, I like it...

Kitty doesn't... she hates it for many reasons, the main one being that her mother smoked her whole life and died of emphysema a few years ago, Kitty watched her drown in her own lungs... a horrible thing to see...

She also hates the smell, the nastiness, and more.

I understand that, I generally don't smoke around her, she respects the fact that I do and doesn't preach at me or anything. Another thing we agree to disagree about.

This morning our conversation steered to cigarettes and the way they've changed since their invention years and years ago. We discussed the fact that there are many ingredients in cigarettes nowadays that weren't there years ago, we agree that the additives that tobacco companies add to their product are more likely the causes of most of the cancers and diseases these days rather than the tobacco... years ago, for example everybody smoked, around their children, in their homes, on TV... and you didn't hear much about cancer or breathing problems associated with smoking... it wasn't until "someone" decided they were "bad" for you that a "conspiracy" seemed to be born... and the tobacco companies seemed to be in on the conspiracy of making cigarettes even more addictive and adding poisonous ingredients to harm our health. I'm not kidding... I think it's a conspiracy!

I did a little research on the added ingredients and was not surprised to find some of the things I found... makes me want to grow my own tobacco or at least go to the "natural" forms of the nicotine sticks I love so much.

Here's a small example of some of the things I read:

There are more than 4,000 ingredients in a cigarette other than tobacco. Common additives include yeast, wine, caffeine, beeswax and chocolate. Here are some other ingredients:

Ammonia: Household cleaner
Angelica root extract: Known to cause cancer in animals
Arsenic: Used in rat poisons
Benzene: Used in making dyes, synthetic rubber
Butane: Gas; used in lighter fluid
Carbon monoxide: Poisonous gas
Cadmium: Used in batteries
Cyanide: Deadly poison
DDT: A banned insecticide
Ethyl Furoate: Causes liver damage in animals
Lead: Poisonous in high doses
Formaldehyde: Used to preserve dead specimens
Methoprene: Insecticide
Megastigmatrienone: Chemical naturally found in grapefruit juice
Maltitol: Sweetener for diabetics
Napthalene: Ingredient in mothballs
Methyl isocyanate: Its accidental release killed 2000 people in Bhopal, India in 1984
Polonium: Cancer-causing radioactive element

Why, if there's not some sort of conspiracy, are these things and more, added to a cigarette?

Makes you wonder...