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From: dce@hammer.UUCP (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Smokers enjoy the taste?
Message-ID: <1333@hammer.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Jun-85 16:54:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: hammer.1333
Posted: Sun Jun 16 16:54:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 04:35:24 EDT
References: <2646@decwrl.UUCP> <268@azure.UUCP>
Reply-To: dce@hammer.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 54
Summary: 

In article <268@azure.UUCP> chrisa@azure.UUCP (Chris Andersen) writes:
>Mike Moroney writes:
>> A friend of mine claims that one of the reasons he smokes is "for the taste". 
>> I never could really understand that, and recently I felt rather nasty.  So I
>> stole one of his cigarettes, removed some of the tobacco, and added the
>> following flaverful items:  A bit of spiderweb, a piece of maple leaf, a small
>> feather, a bit of dirt, some paper towel and a dead ant.  I then repacked the
>> cigarette (easier said than done!) and watched when he lit it up.  When he was
>> done, I asked him if he enjoyed his cigarette, and he replied in the
>> affirmative. I then told him what was in it.  So, my question is, do smokers
>> *really*  enjoy the taste, or can they put any burning, obnoxious substance in
>> their mouthes? 
>
>Actually, I think long term smoking can destroy the taste buds thereby making
>the taste better, in a relative sense that is.
>
>Chris Andersen
>
>"We're not Beatrice"

My experience shows that smoking doesn't destroy your taste buds that badly.
More than likely, the taste of the various substances added to the cigarette
was either masked by the flavor of the cigarette or just went up in smoke.

In reply to Mike's message:


First of all, tobacco comes from the ground and goes through various places
before becoming part of a cigarette. This means that there can be a lot of
trash in a cigarette. Yet, in 5 years of smoking, the only cigarettes I
ever smoked that tasted bad were "stale" (meaning that they were old or the
pack been open for a while). Menthol cigarettes are even less susceptible
to foreign flavors.

If you want to experiment with your friends (though why they would be your
friends after a trick like that is beyond me), get a cigarette and leave it
out for a couple of weeks and have them smoke it. Blech!

Secondly, what percentage of the smoke from a cigarette actually touches
the smoker's tongue? When I smoked, it was very rare that I smoked more
than half of the cigarette. Most of the time I just held it, and I almost
always left about 1/6 of it because of the burning. Of that 1/2 cigarette,
most of it would never get near my tongue.

In answer to the question of whether a smoker can smoke anything, it isn't
likely. I smoked low-tar menthol cigarettes and they tasted good to me.
Any other type of cigarette (or any other brand, for that matter) wasn't
quite right, and was only smoked for it's nicotine value.

			David Elliott
			tektronix!tekecs!dce

PS to smokers: It's easy to quit smoking. The hard part is the 2 pack/day
chewing gum habit you have to break.