Why didn't anyone smoke on "TOS?"

[alensatemybuick1]

I know "re-run threads" are de rigueur around here, but nearly the identical points were brought up 2 years ago in this thread (seemingly in the same order, even):

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/cigarette-smoking-and-tos.236812/

Is Star Trek really that talked out?

 

[1001001]

Is Star Trek really that talked out?

Yes

 

[alensatemybuick1]

Yes

A while back, you closed a thread I created about a vintage "Genius at Work" globe I saw on Ebay (a completed auction, so no chance it could be mistaken as a plug, though it was not even mine and I said as much). I had noted the font was seemingly identical to that on the famous ruler seen in TMOST (which I actually have a replica of, courtesy of a talented member here). I thought there may be story there, like it was perhaps made by the same company (I've since found a button with the same font as well). The thread was dying a natural death anyway due to lack of interest, and I recall thinking at the time that there was no need for you to go out of your way to close it down. I recall thinking as well that your comment about its questionable value as you closed it down was ironic, since I find plenty of content here to be of questionable value. Unless the value is in the post counts.

 

[Spock's Barber]

A while back, you closed a thread I created about a vintage "Genius at Work" globe I saw on Ebay (a completed auction, so no chance it could be mistaken as a plug, though it was not even mine and I said as much). I had noted the font was seemingly identical to that on the famous ruler seen in TMOST (which I actually have a replica of, courtesy of a talented member here). I thought there may be story there, like it was perhaps made by the same company (I've since found a button with the same font as well). The thread was dying a natural death anyway due to lack of interest, and I recall thinking at the time that there was no need for you to go out of your way to close it down. I recall thinking as well that your comment about its questionable value as you closed it down was ironic, since I find plenty of content here to be of questionable value. Unless the value is in the post counts.

We reach, brother.

 

[E-DUB]

Was anyone even mentioned the fact that living in LA around that time was like smoking a pack a day anyway?

 

[1001001]

If you two have problems with the way this forum is moderated, please feel free to PM me or @T'Bonz.

Please don't derail threads like this. It's not fair to the OP, or the other posters.

Thanks

 

[Spock's Barber]

Lloyd Bridges said it best....

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[Shawnster]

I like to think of it this way. They had outgrown and matured beyond such harmful foolishness. A shame we're still living with it today.

On the other hand, alcohol was seen many times on TOS so there's that level of inconsistency

Alcohol is not the carcinogen or toxic poison stick that cigarettes and cigars are. Alcohol is naturally occurring and digestible. It's a form of sugar.

The digestible portion of tobacco is a minor portion of smoking or chewing tobacco.

 

[Christopher]

Alcohol is not the carcinogen or toxic poison stick that cigarettes and cigars are. Alcohol is naturally occurring and digestible. It's a form of sugar.

It's also addictive and promotes increased aggression and diminished judgment, and is a factor in a high percentage of violent crimes and vehicular deaths. And when used to excess, it can cause liver damage and other serious health issues. There are other intoxicants that are objectively much less dangerous, such as cannabis -- which was outlawed mainly due to racism, because Americans saw it as the drug of choice for Mexicans and other minorities. That's why the nickname "marijuana" was played up in the rhetoric of the people campaigning against it, as a form of race-baiting. (Although I think that smoking cannabis has similar cancer risks to smoking tobacco -- after all, it's still inhaling combustion products into one's lungs, which can never be an entirely safe thing. But there are various other ways of delivering it, like in food or as a patch or whatever.)

I suppose alcohol is safe in reasonable doses, but for some reason, our culture normalizes overdosing on it as some sort of endurance test or something. The very word "intoxication" means poisoning, consuming a harmfully excessive amount of a substance. Having a glass or two of wine with dinner is one thing, but drinking with the specific goal of becoming intoxicated and impaired is the sort of thing that leads to addiction, aggression, health problems, etc.

 

[Nyotarules]

Having a glass or two of wine with dinner is one thing, but drinking with the specific goal of becoming intoxicated and impaired is the sort of thing that leads to addiction, aggression, health problems, etc.

I wish the Brits would realise this, even Europeans don't understand the British definition of having a good time meaning 'go out and get totally pissed'.
Makes no sense to me.

 

[Harvey]

Sad how the "firsts" so often get reassigned to shows that had legs and no one remembers the shows that actually did the pioneering.

Syndication conquers all.

 

[Spot261]

There are other intoxicants that are objectively much less dangerous, such as cannabis

More "are difficult to objectively establish" as being dangerous in the formal, publishable sense. Whether banning cannabis actually reduces the harm is another matter entirely (I suspect not - it simply introduces the criminal element, not to mention the infinitely more harmful synthetic variants) but it would be bordering on wilful ignorance to be a mental health professional in many of the environments I have worked on NOT see a link, regardless of one's politics. The problem is you can't publish that experience in a scientific journal.

Working on secure or acute wards and being aware cannabis has been smuggled in you know damned well you are going to see an upsurge in symptoms of psychosis, particularly paranoia and it won't be limited to a minority of those who partake. The pattern is so clear it is simply taken as a given by the staff who work these wards, few if any would question it much as they wouldn't question that the sun will rise in the morning.

Yes you could argue that this effect may be limited to those with a predisposition towards psychosis but that ignores the fact that such predispositions are both very common and invisible until triggered. It also fails to take into account the tendency to self medicate using the very substance which contributed towards triggering that predisposition, much as people suffering depression will self medicate using alcohol.

The link between cannabis and psychosis is very much analogous to that between smoking and lung disease/asthma historically, it's nigh on impossible on ethical grounds to construct or conduct studies which establish anything beyond correlation, regardless of how painfully obvious the causal relationship to anyone who actually works in the field. Hence the decades cigarette manufacturers could legitimately state there was no scientific evidence for the claim smoking caused lung diseases whilst health professionals found themselves banging their heads in frustration, often watching people actually smoke more because they have convinced themselves it helped.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Yes

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[Christopher]

More "are difficult to objectively establish" as being dangerous in the formal, publishable sense. Whether banning cannabis actually reduces the harm is another matter entirely (I suspect not - it simply introduces the criminal element, not to mention the infinitely more harmful synthetic variants) but it would be bordering on wilful ignorance to be a mental health professional in many of the environments I have worked on NOT see a link, regardless of one's politics.

I would never put political ideology above evidence. Indeed, I used to be very firmly anti-drug, and I've never used recreational drugs in my life. But I've come to be convinced by what I've subsequently read that my initial beliefs about cannabis were in error. While it may not be harmless, it certainly seems to do far less damage than alcohol or tobacco.

Working on secure or acute wards and being aware cannabis has been smuggled in you know damned well you are going to see an upsurge in symptoms of psychosis, particularly paranoia and it won't be limited to a minority of those who partake.

But surely that's because it's illegal and thus there can't be adequate quality control of the product or supervision of its use. As with many things, outlawing it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it more dangerous due to the inability to regulate it. Again, to hell with politics or ideology -- reality doesn't reshape itself to fit anyone's beliefs or wishes. The only thing that should matter is what works. This should be seen as a functional question.

Logically, recreational drugs would be like any other medication -- different drugs in different dosages are indicated for different individuals. A drug that's safe for most people could be dangerous for others. Blanket approaches don't take those individual differences into account. It's ideally the sort of thing that should be tailored for individuals and done following medical advice or supervision. Stigmatizing or outlawing it doesn't help people do that. I'm not personally comfortable with recreational drug use, but I know it's going to happen anyway, so the only sensible goal is to find the safest way for it to happen. If we can identify the safest recreational drugs and the safest way to use them -- or invent such drugs in the lab and tailor them for the safety of their individual users -- then that would give people a way to get a fix without needing to turn to more dangerous substances. This isn't a matter of politics, it's a matter of medicine.

 

[Spot261]

While it may not be harmless, it certainly seems to do far less damage than alcohol or tobacco.

I'm not sure here, the problem is exactly what can be quantified based on the limited evidence and the fact that genuinely objective and unbiased research is unlikely to ever be approved. When a substance is already banned there is little motivation to fund research into it's dangers, which is compounded by the fact ethical guidelines make running causative studies effectively impossible.

All I can go off is the depressingly predictable link between becoming aware there is weed (or a synthetic derivative) circulating on my ward and watching the clock tick before I'm helplessly watching people dramatically backtrack. Safety becomes harder to maintain due to managing multiple actively paranoid patients in close proximity and sometimes leaving years of effort wasted and literally destroying already damaged lives, a pattern that is almost universally acknowledged by literally hundreds of colleagues.

Sometimes it becomes quite difficult to then stomach being repeatedly informed cannabis is safe....

But surely that's because it's illegal and thus there can't be adequate quality control of the product or supervision of its use. As with many things, outlawing it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it more dangerous due to the inability to regulate it.

Absolutely, outlawing drugs (including alcohol) has a sad history of making the problem worse, by introducing criminality and it's associated ruthlessness, further increasing risks due to unclean products and (of current concern particularly) synthetic alternatives cooked up in black market labs.

The recent trend in this regard in the UK has been a variety known as "spice" whose effects on even the first passive exposure are comomonly, frankly, heartbreaking. It literally seems to reduce rational human beings to incoherent, debilitated zombies with every indication the effect is frequently permanent.

It's not hard to speculate on a connection between the development of such substances and the criminalisation of the safer (previously) legal highs, not to mention that of authentic cannabis.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure here, the problem is exactly what can be quantified based on the limited evidence and the fact that genuinely objective and unbiased research is unlikely to ever be approved. When a substance is already banned there is little motivation to fund research into it's dangers, which is compounded by the fact ethical guidelines make running causative studies effectively impossible.

Which is exactly the point. The illegality of cannabis just gets in the way of doing real science and getting real answers. It was a politically and racially motivated act that was not medically beneficial. Legalization, at least to a degree, would allow better science and better understanding.

 

[Spot261]

Which is exactly the point. The illegality of cannabis just gets in the way of doing real science and getting real answers. It was a politically and racially motivated act that was not medically beneficial. Legalization, at least to a degree, would allow better science and better understanding.

Up to a point, but you still have the problem that making a causal connection requires certain methodologies to distinguish from correlation, regardless of legal status. This was exactly what sheltered the tobacco industry for so long. In order to establish a causative effect in a lab setting you would have had to

a) take a healthy, non smoker and introduce the toxin over a prolonged period, specifically with the intent of causing them a potentially fatal illness

and

b) do so with sufficiently large sample sizes to anticipate statistical significance and take covariants into account

Medical (and by proxy psychological) research is subject to tight ethical restrictions and oversight within the profession, entirely aside from the bare minimums expected by legal systems, first and foremost being the requirement to do no harm. That requirement isn't conditional upon numerical weighting, it is absolute. The needs of the many do not in this case allow for flexibility regarding the few. No ethics committee would allow for such studies and thus for years the tobacco industry could brazenly state there was no proof smoking CAUSED any harm.

The fact that said lack of proof stemmed from ethical restrictions rather than a lack of reason to suspect such a link was lost on the majority of the public and cost literally millions of lives until the sheer volume of pressure from the medical profession and other concerned parties led to policy rethinks in many countries. (Here in the UK it is now a requirement for cigarette manufacturers to print unambiguous warnings on their products.)

Much the same difficulties currently apply to what research exists regarding cannabis, regardless of it's existing legal status. In order to actually establish that causative link the medical profession would be required to violate it's own most fundamental tenets, thus we are left with correlational studies based on existing usage, correlational studies which are far less definitive and far more open to interpretation.

 

[Christopher]

In any case, the point is that, while there are definitely uncertainties remaining about the dangers of cannabis, we have overwhelming evidence of the dangers of alcohol and tobacco, so it's pretty messed up that those are considered more "acceptable" drugs.

 

[Herbert]

In any case, the point is that, while there are definitely uncertainties remaining about the dangers of cannabis, we have overwhelming evidence of the dangers of alcohol and tobacco, so it's pretty messed up that those are considered more "acceptable" drugs.

Pot is still swimming upstream against decades of preconceptions and attitudes. It's making progress but still has a ways to go. It's going to be quite a bit longer before Pot is as socially acceptable as alcohol and tobacco. Although, tobacco isn't nearly as socially acceptable as it was in the past, at least not in the U.S. I personally think that as a society we should be consuming far less of all these products. However, there are plenty of unhealthy activities we engage in that aren't going away any time soon. Perhaps humanity will one day mature beyond them but I highly doubt it.

And I do agree that pot (consumed by smoking it) isn't necessarily the beneficial substance that many of the pro-pot folks would have you believe. I think that will be borne out when more studies on its usage are done.

 

[Ithekro]

Sad how the "firsts" so often get reassigned to shows that had legs and no one remembers the shows that actually did the pioneering.

Having all the tapes reused, burned, scrapped, or otherwise gone usually precludes people remembering a show decades later. Particularly if a show was a local UHF station or what not. Things survive and some people remember, but the majority will never hear about it because it basically doesn't exist anymore. Like a lot of early television. Either the film was reused, or the quality of the tape was so poor that it has disintegrated by the 1980s, much less the 21st century. And that's not even going into human stupidity like the BBC junking their old tapes from the 1960s because they didn't think they needed it, or thought one of their other departments had a copy for the records.