Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The dangers of clove cigarettes
They anesthetize your mouth and throat
Dear Matmailen in Cloven-landen: My friend Marky-Mark and I have heard a lot of scary statements in regard to the ingredients and health risks of clove cigarettes. Our preferred brand: Djarum Specials, long lasting, smooth, and aromatic. Smokers and nonsmokers alike say things like, “Oh boy, they’ll burn holes in your lungs”; or “Man, those things are filled with pesticides”; or “One is worse than 20 regular cigarettes.” Nobody is yet able to tell me where precisely they got their information. They say they heard it sometime, somewhere; they were told in school; they once read it in some magazine; blah, blah, blah.... Smokin’ Matthew, please dig deep into your fuming box of knowledge and let us finally and definitively know what’s in those aromatically enhanced, smokable incense sticks. Do they contain any tobacco at all, or are they only the leaves of the clove bush/tree/plant? What substance in clove cigarettes, if not nicotine, is playing with and addicting the smoker’s mind and body? — Martin Seidl, La Jolla
We doused the fuming box of knowledge, let it cool off, and pulled out some charred stuff that appears to be facts: Call ’em kreteks, call ’em chicartas, or “cloves,” or (my personal opinion) reeking stench-sticks, all clove cigs are two-thirds to three-quarters tobacco. The remaining fraction is a minced form of the little pointy things your mom sticks all over the Christmas ham. (Note that at Christmas, you’re smart enough to throw the cloves away, not light ’em and suck on ’em....) According to the medical science guys, one unfiltered clove cig delivers 34 to 65 mg tar, 1.9 to 2.6 mg nicotine, 18 to 28 mg carbon dioxide. This is about three times what you get from one filtered Marlboro, which, toxin-wise, makes your Djarum Specials the choice of smart shoppers. The cloves themselves contribute to the hefty tar content, but mostly those ugly numbers come from the tobacco.
Eugenol is the chemical that gives cloves their characteristic taste and smell. It’s a topical anesthetic in its liquid form, but not much is known about what happens when you burn it, then toke it. There have been cases of lung damage, pneumonia, and some other bad respiratory stuff associated with clove cigarettes. Researchers believe the anesthetic properties of eugenol interfere with throat muscle function, and clove smokers might aspirate more throat crud into their lungs. But it’s all a little hazy. The biggest risk doctors see (aside from emphysema, death, and other tobacco pitfalls) is that clove cigarettes anesthetize your mouth and throat and make smoking “easier” for beginners, who later move on to regular cigarettes. Think of them as Camels with training wheels.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The dangers of clove cigarettes
They anesthetize your mouth and throat
The dangers of clove cigarettes
They anesthetize your mouth and throat
Dear Matmailen in Cloven-landen: My friend Marky-Mark and I have heard a lot of scary statements in regard to the ingredients and health risks of clove cigarettes. Our preferred brand: Djarum Specials, long lasting, smooth, and aromatic. Smokers and nonsmokers alike say things like, “Oh boy, they’ll burn holes in your lungs”; or “Man, those things are filled with pesticides”; or “One is worse than 20 regular cigarettes.” Nobody is yet able to tell me where precisely they got their information. They say they heard it sometime, somewhere; they were told in school; they once read it in some magazine; blah, blah, blah.... Smokin’ Matthew, please dig deep into your fuming box of knowledge and let us finally and definitively know what’s in those aromatically enhanced, smokable incense sticks. Do they contain any tobacco at all, or are they only the leaves of the clove bush/tree/plant? What substance in clove cigarettes, if not nicotine, is playing with and addicting the smoker’s mind and body? — Martin Seidl, La Jolla
We doused the fuming box of knowledge, let it cool off, and pulled out some charred stuff that appears to be facts: Call ’em kreteks, call ’em chicartas, or “cloves,” or (my personal opinion) reeking stench-sticks, all clove cigs are two-thirds to three-quarters tobacco. The remaining fraction is a minced form of the little pointy things your mom sticks all over the Christmas ham. (Note that at Christmas, you’re smart enough to throw the cloves away, not light ’em and suck on ’em....) According to the medical science guys, one unfiltered clove cig delivers 34 to 65 mg tar, 1.9 to 2.6 mg nicotine, 18 to 28 mg carbon dioxide. This is about three times what you get from one filtered Marlboro, which, toxin-wise, makes your Djarum Specials the choice of smart shoppers. The cloves themselves contribute to the hefty tar content, but mostly those ugly numbers come from the tobacco.
Eugenol is the chemical that gives cloves their characteristic taste and smell. It’s a topical anesthetic in its liquid form, but not much is known about what happens when you burn it, then toke it. There have been cases of lung damage, pneumonia, and some other bad respiratory stuff associated with clove cigarettes. Researchers believe the anesthetic properties of eugenol interfere with throat muscle function, and clove smokers might aspirate more throat crud into their lungs. But it’s all a little hazy. The biggest risk doctors see (aside from emphysema, death, and other tobacco pitfalls) is that clove cigarettes anesthetize your mouth and throat and make smoking “easier” for beginners, who later move on to regular cigarettes. Think of them as Camels with training wheels.
Comments