When I was a kid, my dad smoked Kent brand cigarettes. I remember seeing them on top of the refrigerator, right behind the Hostess Cupcakes. My parents always put the stuff we weren't supposed to get into on top of the frig. But we kids had a way to get into the cupcakes. One swift slide of the kitchen chair across the linoleum and our treasure was secured. But we knew better than to get into Dad's cigarettes. They were simply "not for the kiddos" and everyone in my family knew that. There was a time though, for about 4 years in the late 1970's, when my dad began to dabble in the pipe smoking world. I'm not sure why, other than he probably thought it was sophisticated. I'm not sure why half the stuff done in the seventies was done, but I guess that's for historians to figure out.
Anyway, he kept the pipe paraphernalia in the den near the liquor cabinet (another seventies iconic image). This was much easier to get around. My sister and I would open the package of tobacco and fill our senses. It felt kind of strange but smelled really good. We then took the pipe apart to see if we could put it back together again. We would even break out the pipe cleaners and get that thing sparkling inside and out. It was an odd attraction we had, but we knew not to light it up. I once asked my dad why he smoked it. He gave two responses. For one, he said the taste was better than the cigarettes and two, he said it wasn't as bad for him.
The novelty of the pipe eventually wore off, like the lime green liesure suits, and it started to collect dust in the corner of the den. Forty years later, we now have an interesting study in Tobacco Control that evaluated the health consequences of pipe smoking. They looked at the risk of dying from all smoking-related illnesses in men who daily and exclusively smoked a pipe. They also looked at a group of people who were converted to exclusive pipe smoking away from cigarette smoking. They compared these groups to a reference group of never smokers.
I wonder if you, the reader, can guess what researchers found? I'm sure you can. As you'd expect, their conclusions were that no significant differences in mortality were found between pipe and cigarette smokers. Those who switched from cigarette to pipe smoking, had the same risk as cigarette smokers for any cause mortality and the specified smoking-related diseases.
So as it turns out, I guess my dad smoked a pipe for only one reason, the taste. I wish he were still alive so I could tell him. Now there may be someone out there saying, well, what about water pipes? Doesn't the water filter out the bad stuff? I don't have the time to go into this now, but trust me, water pipes are not safer. This is a case where the equipment looks real cool and the process of smoking it looks cool, even a little taboo or exotic, but the consequences are the same.
Moral of this story, and if I may paraphrase from SNL's Frankenstein's monster, "Smoking Baaaaaaaad!"
