ELi5: Why do cigarettes have so many toxic substances in them? Surely you don’t need rat poison to get high?

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Not just rat poison, but so many of the ingredients just sound straight up unnecessary and also harmful. Why is there tar in cigarettes? Or arsenic? Formaldehyde? I get the tobacco and nicotine part but do you really need 1001 poisons in it???

EDIT: Thanks for answering! I was also curious on why cocaine needs cement powder and gasoline added in production. Snorting cement powder does not sound like a good idea. Then again, snorting cocaine is generally not considered a good idea… but still, why is there cement and gasoline in cocaine??

In: Biology

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Look up FSC cigarettes. They made cigarettes not burn so easily so that people wouldn’t fall asleep and kill themselves and others.

They even say they use bands instead of chemicals to slow down the burn but they are not fooling anyone.

A lot of the bad chemicals are in the filter and the paper.

A bunch of people saying that the companies don’t put chemicals in the product are very mislead.

As far as the tobacco itself, companies do add chemicals (ammonia) to better absorb nicotine and flavor additives which can form cancer causing chemicals when burned.

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