Safer Isn't Always Safer

On October 12, 1492 Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas on an island the native Lucayan people called Guanahani. Columbus quickly renamed the island San Salvador. To this day, the modern identity of Guanahani remains a subject of historical debate.

The Lucayan people warmly greeted their visitors. Offering them gifts of fruits, fish, spears, and the dried leaves of the tobacco plant. As the plants were not edible, and had a distinct smell to them, those leaves, which the Lucayan people had been smoking for over 2 millennia, were quickly tossed overboard.

While Columbus soon realized his mistake, as he observed that the leaves were a prized possession among natives used for trade, he could not have foreseen, that those small dried leaves, would change the world.

Before the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese Sailors were planting tobacco around nearly all of their trading outposts. By 1528 the Spanish had introduced tobacco to Europeans. Use of the plant quickly spread to France, followed by England, Germany, and every other European country.

Tobacco become one of the driving forces of the colonization on the 16th century. Tobacco led to the beginning of the African slave trade, as labor was needed in the burgeoning tobacco colonies in Brazil. In 1776 it was tobacco that was put up as collateral for the loans the American Colonies were getting from France.

Until the mid 1800’s chewing tobacco was by far the most prominent method of consumption. Pipes were difficult to use and wasted large amounts of the plant. Cigars were expensive and difficult to make. All of that changed in 1853 with the outbreak of the Crimean War. British soldiers observed their Turkish allies rolling tobacco into discarded newspaper and smoking the leaves through the slowly smoldering paper. If tobacco itself swept across Europe quickly, cigarettes were an absolute tidal wave.

Cigarettes were cheap, effective, and easy to make. In almost no time, all of Europe was smoking. As the popularity grew, the profits began to rain in. Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, and several other giants became, and still are, some of the most profitable businesses to ever exist. Thus is should come as no surprise that when people started noticing the ill health effects of smoking, tobacco companies were quick to introduce “safer” cigarettes.

In the late 1920’s mentholated cigarettes were introduced. The idea being that menthol was good for the lungs, cancelling out the ill effects from smoke. One of the biggest breakthroughs in smoking safety came from the P. Lorillard company.

Cigarette filters had been introduced in the 1930’s. They were made mostly of cork, and to this day most cigarette filters are made to look like cork. In 1952 Lorillard introduced the “Kent” cigarette with a Micronite filter. What exactly is Micronite you ask? A Lorillard ad would proudly tell you that Micronite is a pure, dust free, completely harmless material that is so safe, so effective, it is used to help filter the air in hospital operating rooms.

Micronite was an absolute breakthrough in cigarette tech. It was cheap and readily available. It could be spun into tiny fibers, making it highly effective at trapping smoke particles. It was also flavorless and did nothing to change the experience of smoking. Unfortunately for Kent smokers, Micronite was also made of 30 percent crocidolite. Crocidolite is also known as Brazilian blue asbestos, widely known to be one of the most dangerous forms of asbestos.

Kent cigarettes were certainly effective at reducing the amount of cancer-causing smoke particles that were entering the lungs. Tragically however, they were simply replacing the cancer-causing smoke particles, with even more dangerous asbestos particles. To make matters even worse, the filters made the cigarettes hard to draw on, requiring the smoker to use heavy suction, drawing the deadly asbestos even deeper into their lungs.

Cigarettes are bad for you. I don’t think you will find anyone who will try to convince you otherwise. Even the tobacco companies acknowledged it. They tried their best to offer safer alternatives. But it turns out many of those were just as bad, or even worse.

Credit cards all also bad for you. I know as soon as I write that I will get flooded by responses from people telling me they use credit cards and love the rewards etc. They can certainly be used responsibly. 55 percent of Americans carry a credit card balance. Just like smoking doesn’t give everybody cancer, credit cards don’t get everybody in a financial hole. But they have 55% of Americans in a financial hole, so I am going to say they are a bad thing.

Just like the tobacco companies, lenders are quick to realize that credit cards are bad. So they offer safer alternatives. Transfers those balances to a personal loan. Refinance your house and consolidate that debt. Try a new 0% intro APR card. The options are plentiful. Don’t fall for it. If you have consumer debt, the best thing you will ever do for yourself is suck it up, and pay it off. The balance transfer cards, refinances, are not meant to help you get out of debt. The last thing any lender wants is for you to get out of debt, because as soon as you do, they don’t make any money off of you. Stop trusting them. The only person who will help you get out of debt is you. And maybe Dave Ramsey.