Smoking takes an enormous toll on human health – accounting for about 6% of all ill-health globally according to the best estimates. This is more than HIV and malaria combined. Despite this, smoking is on the rise in many developing countries as people become richer and can afford to buy cigarettes.
– Smoking in the Developing World, an Effective Altruist cause profile by 8000 Hours
Tobacco is a mischievous plant. Tobacco smoke delivers an addictive substance in a particularly carcinogenic medium. Of course you can just get the addictive substance by vaping, presumably cutting the cost to your health by a substantial amount (assuming you don’t compensate for the relative safety of the medium with a significant increase in nicotine consumption). But many people find it hard to stop smoking, no doubt because the ritualistic aspect of it can become deeply ingrained, and perhaps also because of the mildly addictive properties of combustion products (speculatively, carbon monoxide itself has a psychoactive effect in small amounts).
So one idea to keep the nicotine and the smoking while reducing the negative effects is to lace nicotine into a plant with mild flavor and far less severe carcinogenic properties. Damiana, for example, used to be the plant delivery mechanism for research cannabinoids (cf. Spice), salvia, and other exotic drugs – the kind you find in a California smoke-shop or sketchy gas station. If damiana smoke has a better health profile than tobacco smoke when inhaled, then this could be of serious benefits to the world’s health (cf. Herbal Cigarettes).
Alas, can you really imagine millions of people switching from traditional, aromatic, well-known, “perfectly natural” tobacco cigarettes to weird, insipid, bland damiana cigarettes laced with nicotine? I can’t. I don’t think the product would make much of a dent in the market. At least not without some serious leverage and incentives, like tax exemptions or limited edition trading cards inside the packaging (for the younger crowd). But as those options are too unrealistic, we may need to come up with a different product altogether.
Perhaps we could add aromas as well? This multiplies the potential market several fold. Smokers who buy perfumes, enjoy aromatic spas, and/or make use of essential oils might be interested in “damiana cigarettes that smell like X”. From humulene and alpha-damascone to linalool and geraniol, a little goes a long way in producing a gentle, delicious, and seductive aroma. Indeed, we could even market this as being a kind of smokeable nootropic. Linalool, for instance, is not only essential in perfumery, but has also subtle (yet significant) psychoactive effects when inhaled or ingested orally (cf. lavender oil capsules). The possibilities are endless. For example, an evocative- if perhaps minimalistic- interpretation of a lavender-lemon flavor can be achieved by simply combining d-limonene, citral, and linalool. Or you could use complex accords made of dozens of terpenes. The smoothness of lavender with the awakening effects of lemon in a single power-punch of aromatic bliss, already superior in character to tobacco, could be trivially achieved with an open mind and some experimentation. And orange? Pineapple? Honeysuckle? Pear? Why not explore qualia-space while inhaling addictive smoke? At least you’ll do some productive work while feeding your vice (rather than just feeding your vice). And at a QALY discount over straight up tobacco smoke, this would seem to be by far the superior option, wouldn’t it?
Now, adding lots of terpenes and other aromachemicals to a “neutral” substrate for a smokeable material reminds of something… It’s almost as if this has been explored before by someone, somewhere…
Of course!
The difference between Orange Kush and Silver Haze is not only their THC content (which is 14-18% and 18-23%, respectively, if you must know) or the degree to which CBD is present. To a large extent, their distinct aromas, feel, and perhaps even subjective effects are explained in terms of the presence of terpenoids and other aromatic compounds. For instance, Orange Kush has more terpinolene while Silver Haze has more myrcene. Of course there is very little knowledge about how exactly these differences cash out in psychoactivity. But nonetheless, the cannabis world finds them to be utterly fascinating and endlessly worthy of discussion.
So, could we perhaps take this plant, which has been praised for its aromatic properties, which already has thousands of well-defined and optimized strains, and which is in the process of becoming legal(ish) worldwide… and use it as a delivery medium for nicotine?
Why not? Although cannabis smoke is by no means harmless, it might be substantially better for your health than tobacco smoke. If people find the experience of smoking THC-free nicotine-laced Orange Kush joints enjoyable, and this enjoyment is strong enough to be superior to the experience of smoking tobacco, we may be able to reduce the health costs of nicotine worldwide by a huge margin. Could this be the long-awaited Cause X?
Recreating or emulating the effects of tobacco combustion isn’t straightforward though: as a smoker that’s the main factor that keeps driving me back to cigarettes. Cannabis smoke is different, mainly in the oropharyngeal zone.
I bet someone is trying to develop a plant which when vaporized gives you that feeling, I hope they succeed because combustion residues are the main drivers of the health damage of tobacco (and cannabis) smoke.
The ideal product for me would be a plant with a fixed amount of terpenes, that could be laced with personalized amounts of nicotine and/or cannabinoids, preferentially on the spot.