Nicotine
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Yes or no?
ILF
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@b1 Sure! Not in doses too high, and not by smoking obviously. If the question is 'is the consumption of it optimally healthy?'
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Easy to get addicted to tbh. Cheaper supplements are just as effective.
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@b1 I don't think we have the kind of data we'd like to have (or think we have) to really know whether smoking untreated tobacco leaf (organic roll-your-own) is detrimental. The major confound is all the toxic crap most commercial tobacco is laced with. Even with those toxins, there were threads at RPF with "pro-tobacco-smoking points of view" posting studies about how difficult it was to give rodents, dogs and other animal models lung cancer by exposure to tobacco smoke.
I think many of us here have unusually well-attuned bullshit detectors (especially after seeing how "pushed", exaggerated and propagandized the industry-or government-promoted vaccine-mandate studies were pushed and conflicting information was suppressed). It's easy to see pro-tobacco-smoking studies as "industry propaganda" but I now think perhaps the same players, in some cases, control both sides.
We know that nicotine patches (without smoke) provide measurable pro-metabolic gains for IBS, preventing neuro-degeneration and dementia-causing illness. So by that measure, nicotine has a pretty substantial evidence base to support it.
Five years ago, I would have thought anyone saying a good word about smoking tobacco being healthy was industry-funded propaganda or bunk. Now I'm not so sure. I think a close look at the studies reveals something surprising: how difficult it is to find persuasive open-and-shut-case evidence for harms associated with smoking. I don't think there have been any RCTs (or ever could be due to ethics-committee rules) showing that smoking dried tobacco leaves with few or no additives causes lung problems, respiratory stress or anything else harmful.
I think the jury is out on this question more than we might have thought (those of us who once thought -- wrongly, I now believe -- that there is a conclusive evidence base showing that smoking tobacco is harmful). I think if you can afford very high-end roll-your-own tobacco with minimal additives, then smoking it may in fact be net beneficial. It's so expensive however that it's probably a bad idea for most people to consider starting. How would we know until we try (e.g. eating Peaty, being metabolically and scientifically attuned, and smoking high-end organic leaf tobacco) -- maybe it's worth considering for those can afford it. Yolo.
