Smoking home grown tobacco is probably as bad for you as any other tobacco, give or take an ounce or two.
Does this surprise you, coming for a company that promotes the sale of tobacco seeds and DIY tobacco in general?
It shouldn’t. Those of you who know us over the years know we’re an honest bunch. We don’t exploit the smoking community by giving false hopes about the health merits of homegrown tobacco. There are benefits, but unfortunately, living a longer life is not one of them.
We made a lot of fuss in the early years, when we discovered what the major tobacco manufacturers were putting into their tobacco products. It was scandalous and we wanted to expose it.
In the USA, there are over 2,000 natural and unnatural additives put into tobacco, either to help you get a better kick, to make it taste nicer (so you can smoke more than you would otherwise ) or simply to help it burn better. The full list is quite disturbing to see. Ammonium Hydroxide, Chocolate and Sugar are just 3 of these.
Such revelations made it an easy selling point for us and others, which helped to raise seed sales and popularize the home grown tobacco industry in general.
And now there is an established home growers community, have people been mislead into thinking that home grown types of tobacco is healthier than existing types bought in shops?
Many smokers think that it is these other ingredients that are the root cause of problems commonly associated with smoking, maybe it is. Home grown tobacco, which is purer and unadulterated is better for you…or should we say less harmful. Whilst there maybe an ounce of truth in this point of view, the truth is tobacco is a very poisonous plant. It kills and causes untold health related problems. If only growing your own tobacco was the answer to this problem. It is not.
We would be lying if we said that by smoking your own tobacco, you can avoid getting the dreaded diseases commonly associated with smoking. There is no evidence of this whatsoever, so let’s not make the same mistake as our forefathers and assume everything in this crazy world is okay until proven otherwise. We, as pioneers, don’t wish to be ridiculed by future generations, if it transpired that home growers had exposed themselves to even higher levels of risk through smoking their own tobacco.
We home-growers simply do not have the means or resources to check these theories out, so it will take maybe 50 years or more before there is any conclusive evidence.
The only benefits of making your own tobacco are these:
- It’s cheaper
- It’s cleaner
- It’s new and interesting
- It gets you out of the house more
- And, it makes a great hobby!