Evidence – Smoke Master

Prehistoric High: 25,000-Year-Old Teeth May Hold the Oldest Evidence of Psychoactive Drug Use

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 10:09:00 +0000

Researchers analyzing two ancient skeletons from Indonesia found dramatic dental wear and traces of arecoline, suggesting people may have sucked psychoactive areca nuts as far back as 25,000 years ago. The finding could represent the earliest known evidence of psychoactive plant use, while also shedding light on a practice that remains widespread today despite serious health risks.

We already know that plants and fungi have accompanied humanity since the dawn of time. And yes, some of them have psychotropic properties. But now we have more evidence—in fact, the oldest known to date—that people have been seeking altered states of consciousness since basically forever.

Australian researchers discovered two skeletons on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, whose teeth were not only deeply worn down but also contained traces of arecoline. This psychoactive substance is found in the areca nut, also known as betel nut.

According to the study, such extreme dental wear (so deep that it exposed the dental pulp) may have been caused by constantly sucking on the nuts, thereby releasing arecoline, their main neuroactive alkaloid. This would produce a mild high, along with a numbing effect.

At first, the deep grooves in the teeth puzzled the researchers who discovered the skeletons (one about 7,000 years old and the other between 16,000 and 25,000 years old). “What the hell were these people doing? It’s like someone had a drill head shaped like a gobstopper and wore away the inner part of the tooth,” Adam Brumm, the study’s lead researcher, commented, according to The Guardian.

“Imagine you kept a stone in your mouth and you moved it from one part of your mouth to another, and if you did that day after day, hour after hour. Eventually it would wear down your extremely hard dental tissue to form these grooves,” he explained. The team therefore proposed that these people may have been sucking on betel nuts before humans discovered that chewing them together with slaked lime enhances their effects.

So, the researchers conducted an experiment: soaking areca nuts in artificial saliva. Sure enough, this released small amounts of arecoline—enough to produce a psychoactive effect. Brumm even tried it himself: “It’s a really bitter, astringent taste. It makes your mouth go numb.”

He also suggested that this may have been precisely the desired effect, and that these pre-agricultural users may have found themselves trapped in a kind of vicious cycle: at first, sucking on betel nuts may have served as a remedy for dental pain, but daily use would damage their teeth, making the problem worse and leading them to use more to ease the pain.

Thus, the study argues, we may be looking at the earliest evidence of psychoactive substance use by humans, showing that people have been getting high since prehistoric times, if not earlier.

What Is Betel Nut, How Is It Used and Why You Shouldn’t Try It

According to the researchers, around 10% of the world’s population currently consumes this seed, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. Its use is deeply rooted in ancient traditions across several countries, specific social circles and informal markets.

To produce the desired effects, it is typically chewed after being wrapped in betel vine leaves (hence the name, even though the nut itself comes from a different plant) and mixed with slaked lime. This produces a stimulant high and increased concentration, comparable, according to some sources, to drinking several cups of coffee. In India, for instance, people from impoverished communities use betel nut to relieve hunger.

But although it may seem harmless, regular betel nut use carries serious health risks. The list is long: from cancer (especially oral and esophageal) and addiction to various disorders affecting the endocrine, cardiovascular, nervous, gastrointestinal, metabolic, respiratory and reproductive systems. It might be easier to make a list of the systems that aren’t affected by consuming this seed.

Today, some consider this a neglected global public health emergency, not only because of the extremely high rates of use and abuse and the devastating health effects associated with them, but because there is still no coordinated global policy in place to curb the problem. Still, some countries have taken independent action to restrict its use, such as Papua New Guinea and Australia, but the nut is so popular and ubiquitous that the results of these measures have been less than satisfactory.

Photo by Michael Jerrard on Unsplash

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80,000 Responses Later, Will the EU Listen to the Evidence on Tobacco Harm Reduction?

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:30:05 +0000

The European Union is entering a potentially decisive period for tobacco harm reduction. With its latest tobacco consultation now closed, Brussels must decide whether future regulation will recognise the very different risks posed by cigarettes, vapes, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches—or increasingly treat them as variations of the same problem.

The European Commission launched its (second) public consultation on May 22 and closed it on August 14. Together with an earlier call for evidence, which attracted more than 80,000 responses, the exercise will inform revisions of the Tobacco Products Directive and Tobacco Advertising Directive expected before the end of 2026. The Commission says existing rules have helped reduce smoking and tobacco-related mortality, but argues that rapid growth in newer nicotine products, particularly among young people, requires the framework to be modernised.

Was the consultation truly neutral?

Yet even before the responses have been fully analysed, controversy has shifted from what Brussels might regulate to how it has sought public input. University of Catania professor Riccardo Polosa told Eunews that the questionnaire’s design raised concerns about both transparency and the quality of the process. He described it as unnecessarily complicated and argued that some questions appeared to channel respondents towards predetermined categories and policy choices.

His concern is particularly relevant to tobacco harm reduction because combining fundamentally different nicotine products within broad regulatory questions can obscure differences in relative risk. Polosa argues that reducing smoking-related disease and mortality should remain the central objective and that future EU legislation should clearly distinguish combustible cigarettes from non-combustible alternatives.

This is more than a technical debate over survey design. The consultation will feed into legislation that could affect hundreds of millions of European consumers, while the existing Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) already regulates cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes, among other categories. The question is whether the next framework will become more risk-proportionate—or move towards increasingly similar treatment of all nicotine products.

Protecting youth without protecting cigarettes

Brussels may have moderately legitimate reasons to address youth uptake. The Commission has specifically identified newer tobacco and nicotine products and their popularity among younger consumers as an emerging public-health challenge. Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi, who is known to be very anti-tobacco harm reduction strategies, has specifically framed the review around keeping regulation abreast of a changing market and protecting young people from new forms of dependence.

However, preventing youth nicotine use and encouraging adults to stop smoking do not have to be competing objectives. Age restrictions, responsible retailing, product standards and appropriately designed marketing rules can protect minors without removing potentially valuable alternatives from adults who smoke. The danger comes when youth protection becomes justification for eliminating distinctions between combustible and smoke-free products.

Risk perceptions are already moving in the wrong direction. ASH data for Great Britain found that in 2025, 56% of adults who had heard of vaping believed it was equally or more harmful than cigarettes, while only 28% correctly identified vaping as less harmful. As 53% believed vaping was equally or outright more harmful. For smokers deciding whether to switch, such misconceptions are hardly inconsequential.

The excellent model that Europe refuses to acknowledge

Norwegian tobacco researcher Karl E. Lund believes policymakers should look more closely at Scandinavia. Rather than focusing exclusively on eliminating nicotine consumption, Lund argues that regulation should help people who cannot or do not wish to stop using nicotine move away from smoking. Sweden is particularly important because cigarettes have increasingly been displaced by non-combustible alternatives such as snus and nicotine pouches.

Like many of his peers, Lund describes the Scandinavian approach as one of risk-proportionate regulation: products are not automatically treated identically simply because they contain nicotine. He argues that creating barriers to lower-risk alternatives while cigarettes remain readily available is difficult to reconcile with reducing smoking-related harm.

That argument becomes increasingly relevant when considering the estimated 90–100 million Europeans who still smoke despite decades of taxation, advertising restrictions, health warnings and smoke-free policies. Traditional tobacco control has achieved substantial progress. The issue is whether the remaining smoking population will respond to ever-tighter versions of the same policies—or whether substitution should become a larger part of Europe’s strategy.

Harsh restrictions support the illicit market

The growing belief that vaping is as dangerous as smoking demonstrates what can happen when public-health messages emphasise uncertainty without adequately explaining the magnitude of risk.

Retailers have raised another concern: poorly calibrated regulation may shift sales rather than eliminate demand. The European Confederation of Tobacco Retailers has warned that disproportionate restrictions could disadvantage compliant businesses while benefiting illicit sellers. Lund has raised similar concerns, arguing that regulators need to consider the real-world consequences of making legal alternatives less attractive or accessible.

Perhaps the most overlooked issue in the consultation is how Europe communicates relative risk. The growing belief that vaping is as dangerous as smoking demonstrates what can happen when public-health messages emphasise uncertainty without adequately explaining the magnitude of risk. Even youth data challenge the assumption that exaggerated perceptions necessarily discourage experimentation: in 2024, 58% of British 11–17-year-olds who knew about vaping believed it was as harmful or more harmful than smoking, yet ASH noted that such beliefs did not appear to prevent young people from trying vapes.

Accurate communication therefore matters for both credibility and informed decision-making.

Non-combustible nicotine products should not be promoted to non-users. But neither should their risks be communicated in ways that leave smokers believing there is little health advantage in abandoning cigarettes.

What will Brussels do with the responses this time round?

Stricter tobacco-control groups are pushing Brussels in the opposite direction, calling for tougher regulation of newer products, stronger restrictions on online promotion and greater freedom for Member States to impose additional measures. Agricultural representatives, meanwhile, have complained that the consultation did not adequately capture their sector’s concerns.

The Commission must now reconcile these competing perspectives and translate thousands of submissions into legislation. Its objective of (allegedly) creating a tobacco-free generation by 2040 provides an important clue to what should ultimately matter: reducing tobacco smoking and the disease it causes. The Commission itself describes the target as a tobacco-free generation, while confirming that the review will address the rapidly changing nicotine market.

Europe therefore faces a choice that extends well beyond flavours, advertising or packaging. It can increasingly regulate nicotine by its presence, or regulate products by their risks. For tobacco harm reduction advocates, the test of the consultation’s credibility will now be straightforward: whether Brussels genuinely listens to the evidence it asked Europeans to provide.

From Poland to Lithuania: Are Europe’s Nicotine Policies Reasonable or Going Too Far?

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A Destructive Global Tobacco Policy Shift? Prohibition Reigns Supreme as Evidence Keeps Being Ignored

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 02:15:59 +0000

The worldwide tobacco control landscape is increasingly characterized by a dichotomy — on one side, evidence-based harm reduction, and on the other, prohibitionist policymaking. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in the dramatic regulatory push taking shape from Turkey, juxtaposed with increasing criticism of the European Union’s direction of travel. Taken together, these developments raise pressing questions about whether policymakers are actually focusing on the fundamental cause of smoking-related disease at all — combustion.

Turkey’s proposed tobacco legislation represents one of the most draconian anti-nicotine frameworks to date. By proposing a complete ban on tobacco products, including their production, sale, and consumption by 2040, Ankara is putting the finishing touches on its prohibitionist endgame. The proposal is critical in that it does not draw a distinction between combustible cigarettes and reduced-risk alternatives. Instead, it broadens the concept of “tobacco products,” including e-cigarettes and heated tobacco as well as all systems that contain nicotine.

Ignoring different risk levels

Nicotine, although addictive, is not classified as a carcinogen by major authorities and is of minor importance in cancer causation.

From a harm reduction standpoint, the most impactful piece is not these restrictions on particular products, but rather the slapping of similar regulation onto all nicotine products, irrespective of their level of risk. By treating combustible cigarettes and non-combustible alternatives the same, the policy ignores a central finding of decades of research: it is combustion — not nicotine — that causes the vast majority of smoking-related cancers.

A wide body of toxicological and epidemiological literature has long shown that the carcinogenic properties of smoking derive from combustion byproducts—tar, carbon monoxide, and thousands of toxicants produced when tobacco is burned. While nicotine, although addictive, is not classified as a carcinogen by major authorities and is of minor importance in cancer causation.

And while there is still a lot we don’t know about the effects of inhaling vapour, comparative exposure studies have found that, although some toxins are present in vapes, they typically deliver only a small fraction of the toxicants found in cigarette smoke (with many carcinogens absent or at very low levels). This is one reason that comprehensive public health reviews, including one by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), have repeatedly found that vaping is greatly less harmful than smoking and can be a powerful quit tool.

But frameworks such as the one proposed in Turkey’s draft law obliterate these distinctions, building regulatory environments in which less harmful products are regulated with the same strictness as the most dangerous ones. This could sabotage one of the biggest levers to help reduce smoking-related disease: substitution.

An unfortunate global pattern — from Seoul to Hawaii

Turkey is not alone. In Seoul, recent regulatory changes have now banned smoking and imposed fines for all nicotine products, including vapes. Framing this as filling enforcement gaps, the policy once more makes it seem, at a glance, that there are no meaningful risk differentials between combustible and non-combustible products.

In Hawaii, too, lawmakers have moved to ban disposable e-cigarettes due to youth uptake and environmental concerns. The United Kingdom currently has its own version of the ban in place. And although these interventions are frequently justified on narrower grounds (e.g., protecting youth, preventing waste), the overall trend is clear — greater restrictions on reduced-risk products without proportional acknowledgment of their role in smoking cessation.

A fork in the road for Bangladesh?

By contrast, Bangladesh is now reviewing its planned 2025 ban on vaping and other new nicotine products. Advocacy groups such as the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), say this review is an opportunity to adopt a more pragmatic, risk-proportionate framework. Their stance reflects a commonly held view among harm reduction experts: it is possible to engage in effective tobacco control without forcing a choice between protecting youth and reducing harm for adults. Both can be accomplished through targeted regulation — strict age limits, product standards, and enforcement against illicit sales — while keeping access to safer alternatives for smokers.

That debate is also playing out at the supranational level. The European Union’s current process for reviewing its Tobacco Products Directive has been criticized for a similar failure to integrate comparative risk into its policy-making. By threatening to impose the same kind of restrictions on reduced-risk products that are commonplace with combustible products — from flavour bans to disproportionately punitive tax structures — the EU is in danger of duplicating policy mistakes that are now becoming apparent elsewhere, including Turkey.

The proliferation of such approaches was flagged by groups such as Prohibition Does Not Work (PDNW) and the Observatory for Harm Reduction in Medicine, which decried them as unscientific and inconsistent with reality. Demand doesn’t disappear; it moves, based on data from jurisdictions that have enacted restrictive policies. In the Netherlands, for instance, where flavour restrictions were introduced a few years earlier, a large proportion of users continue to consume outlawed products through the black market or cross-border access following these laws.

So what actually reduces smoking in the real world?

As prohibitionist policies multiply, real-world evidence continues to show the opposite. Countries that have embraced harm reduction — most famously Sweden but also the U.K. and others — have delivered some of the steepest declines in smoking prevalence on record. Sweden has, of course, been declared smoke-free. And now, in the UK, vaping has surpassed smoking for the first time, with 95% of vapers being current or former smokers.

These results reinforce an important lesson: when smokers are given the opportunity to transition to attractive, lower-risk alternatives, many will do so. By contrast, when such alternatives are limited or stigmatized, smoking reductions slow and even reverse.

Turkey’s proposed law reflects a wider dilemma worldwide. Policymakers can choose effective nicotine elimination strategies that penalize all products uniformly, or proceed with risk-proportional measures informed by available science.

The distinction matters. If cancer risk is primarily a product of combustion, then policies modeled on smoke- and smokeless-tobacco alike can protect the most dangerous products while restricting access to those least harmful.

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New Evidence Challenges “Mixed Research” Narrative on Vaping for Smoking Cessation

admin — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:37:21 +0000

Debate over vaping has been dominated, for more than a decade, by arguments that the available evidence is “uncertain” or “mixed.” That story is increasingly hard to maintain. A larger body of higher-quality research now tells a much clearer story: nicotine-packed e-cigarettes are among the most effective tools available to adult smokers trying to quit.

A significant shift is provided by a summary spearheaded by Angela Difeng Wu at the University of Oxford, which collated results from 14 systematic reviews between 2014 and 2023. By focusing on the highest-quality data, the researchers definitively sliced through years of competing interpretations. They revealed a clear trend: nicotine vaping products are more effective than any pre-existing method for cessation.

There is no shadow of a doubt: Vaping works

When lower-quality or inconsistent studies are excluded, the conclusion is remarkably consistent: nicotine vapes help more people quit smoking than nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), including patches, gums, and lozenges, as well as behavioural support alone.

This is consistent with previous work from the Cochrane Collaboration, whose living systematic review has consistently found greater quit rates among smokers using nicotine e-cigarettes compared to other cessation aids. Likewise, clinical trials published in high-impact journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine show vaping can nearly double quit success rates compared to traditional NRTs under real-world conditions.

Where vaping goes up, smoking goes down

Population-level data mirror this pattern. Cigarette smoking rates in the United States have continued to decline, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, in fact falling to all-time low levels. And this has happened in parallel to the increase in vaping, with many adults reporting that they use vaping products for cigarette cessation purposes.

This long-term drop in smoking — down from more than 40 per cent of adults in the 1960s to about 10 per cent today — is largely due to various factors, including public health campaigns. But vaping seems to be accelerating this trend among certain groups, especially among those having a tough time quitting by traditional means.

This substitution effect is critical from a harm reduction perspective. The target is not nicotine cessation at all costs but decreasing smoking-related illness by transitioning users away from combustion.

Addressing the “Evidence Gap”

The evidence supporting the role of vaping in smoking cessation is now strong, but remains woefully incomplete. The Oxford University overview introduced an “evidence and gap map” to show where more research is needed.

Importantly, we have little high-quality data from direct comparisons between e-cigarettes and newer or alternative cessation tools (e.g., cytisine, bupropion or nicotine pouches). There is also scant evidence comparing vaping with varenicline — widely regarded as one of the most effective pharmaceutical aids.

Also, most previous studies were conducted in high-income countries. That leaves open the question of how applicable the findings are to low- and middle-income settings, where smoking practices, health care systems and access to alternatives may be lacking.

Correctly interpreting uncertainties is crucial. Lack of definitive long-term data does not equate vaping with smoking. The harms of combustible tobacco are already well recognised, including links to cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness.

In fact, the main reason vaping should be considered is to reduce exposure to combustion-related toxins. This distinction is fundamental. Policies or messaging that confuse smoking and vaping jeopardise harm reduction efforts by discouraging smokers from switching to safer alternatives.

The latest science reveals a clear winner in quitting success rates

This emerging consensus around the efficacy of vaping marks a dramatic shift in the anti-tobacco landscape. There has been uncertainty shaping debates for years. Today, the balance of evidence is tipping in a similar direction. Nicotine vapes may not be a miracle solution, but for adult smokers wanting to quit, they are pretty close. They provide a potentially effective alternative, one backed by both clinical evidence and real-world results.

The challenge now is to ensure policy keeps pace with science. Harm reduction strategies can be deprived of their potential if implemented with overly restrictive measures, misinformation or by failing to differentiate products. The notion that the evidence base on vaping is ambiguous has grown stale. The best research to date invariably demonstrates that nicotine e-cigarettes are superior to many conventional cessation aids.

For the harm reduction community, one path ahead is obvious: promote access to safer alternatives, responsible use, and ensure that evidence-based public health strategies are grounded in evidence, not perception.

Understanding the Different Types of Scientific Studies on E-Cigarettes

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