Photo: pellesten 60 Minutes recently ran a story about snus, smokeless tobacco that is not messy and that may be a substitute for cigarettes. An anti-tobacco activist talked at length about how it might worsen tobacco’s hazards by addicting more people to nicotine, leading to more smoking.
This is a standard problem whenever the damage from undertaking a risky activity is reduced: Offer a life raft and more people will jump off a sinking ship. Many will be saved, but some will drown off the life raft. Mandatory seat belts do this-lives are saved, but people also drive faster and more accidents occur. Sex education does this-there are fewer pregnancies per sexual encounter, but more sexual encounters are undertaken. Unemployment insurance does this-it is a life raft for the working, but it attracts people into the workforce who are more likely than others to be unemployed. I’ll bet that snus, like the other examples, will reduce the total damages of the risky behavior, but more people will engage in the behavior because they expect its costs to be lower.
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So sex is a risky behavior. Really it is only risky if you are not educated. I just love how you group sex in with the other examples. What a joke. The joke is sex is a crime one day for a person and then the very next day it is not.
I would also prefer if you would back up your statements with some facts.
“This is a standard problem whenever the damage from undertaking a risky activity is reduced: Offer a life raft and more people will jump off a sinking ship. Many will be saved, but some will drown off the life raft. Mandatory seat belts do this-lives are saved, but people also drive faster and more accidents occur. Sex education does this-there are fewer pregnancies per sexual encounter, but more sexual encounters are undertaken.”
This is the so-called Peltzman Effect. But in the Freakonomics Radio podcast of 2/5/10, economist Steve Levitt (a friend of Peltzman himself) says, “I do not believe that there ever has been convincing evidence of a single Peltzman Effect.”
Does Mr. Hamermesh have any non-anecdotal examples of the Peltzman Effect at work?
Is Mr. Hamermesh a smoker, and has he tried Snus? The two experiences really aren’t comparable by a long shot. There’s no way that one of these nasty little packets that you stuff into your craw is going to somehow attract even more people to tobacco usage than cigarettes do.
Switching to Snus from cigarettes is a much bigger leap than just putting on a seatbelt or using condoms. Similarly, I would guess that most non-smokers would find Snus absolutely disgusting.
Snus has been out for a while now. It’s not a proper life raft for cigarettes, and it’s not going to attract large numbers of non-smokers. If you want to make this forced comparison, at least look at something like those electronic cigarettes.
I believe that there is not a single study linking snus with cancer, so calling it “risky behavior” is probably inaccurate. Its as risky as coffee, it seems.
Really? You think more people are having sex because of sex education? Not because cultural mores are changing, because better contraception is available, or because it was a secret before?
If only we could keep people ignorant! That would solve our problems.
The internet does this – experts make fewer mistakes, but the mistakes they make lead to pages of trolling.
Snus can give you cancer, studies have showed that, and the World Health Organisation has warned about it. But I think Mr Hamermesh draws the wrong conclusions. Here in Sweden snus is very common, but cigarettes as well. I think it’s just a question of taste.
Snus is not nearly as satisfying as a healthy pinch of Copenhagen. If someone was going to try smokeless tobacco to wean themselves off of cigarettes, Cope is the way to go. You’ll probably catch a decent nicotine buzz the first few times, something many longtime smokers haven’t felt in a while.