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 bad shit in a cigarette is inherent to the incomplete burning process. “Smoke” is just a ton of different chemicals produced when plant material breaks down. You can’t possibly make a cigarette or blunt or even a campfire without these chemicals.

Cigarettes are a natural product made from plants. Plants are not particularly careful about what they absorb, so in addition to the tars and volatiles from burning (like formaldehyde or benzene) there are trace amounts of all sorts of elements. If arsenic is present in the soil, then it will be present in the tobacco.

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