Is Pipe Smoking Safe?
Over the years, it has become evident that the medical problems associated with tobacco products are not only real but clearly devastating enough to warrant the intervention of governments, both local and state, to protect the vulnerable young from the unwanted dangers of smoking. Not unlike the prohibitions against alcohol use among children and youth, regulations intended to protect and preserve from harm the most vulnerable from dangers associated with tobacco products simply makes sense. Yet, all dangers are not created equally. In virtually every study done on the subject, researchers confess that smoking a pipe is far safer than for the other three basic forms of tobacco use–chewing, cigars, and cigarettes. The reason is both simple and quite logical. Since pipe smokers don’t inhale directly into the lungs, smoke as often or as much as the other three users tend to do, the major disease associated with smoking, that is lung cancer, remains relatively rare in most pipe-smokers. I
