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

Most of the toxins in tobacco are not added to the product – they are byproducts of the burning of the tobacco leaf. Case in point, formaldehyde is produced when additives such as sugars, sorbitol, guar gum, cellulose fibres, and carob and gum in tobacco are burnt.

Tobacco companies aren’t going out of their way to make cigarettes unhealthy – that would be bad business. They just can’t magically make breathing smoke a healthy thing to do.

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