eli5: If tobacco is a leaf, why does it have so many substances known to cause cancer?

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* Source is the packaging I’ve just read for a pack of tobacco in the UK which says it has 70 cancer causing substances

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Leaves are made of chemicals. When they are burned, the chemicals do a bunch of reactions and recombine into other chemicals. Many of those chemicals are known to cause cancer and they exist in all smoke. Smoking is really bad for you because it’s addictive so you’re constantly re-exposing your lungs to damaging smoke and over time they lose their ability to clean themselves. Breathing flour or sawdust every day will kill you just like smoking but you don’t go out for an sawdust-huffing break 20 times a day because your brain doesn’t get a reward for breathing sawdust.

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