Last I checked, nicotine isn't carcinogenic. It's the tobacco that kills you. Or, at least, there isn't enough research yet to say that nicotine alone is harmful enough.
So I may be playing devil's advocate here, but isn't this a net improvement over the last few decades? Kids getting hooked on something that's significantly less deadly? It's not ideal, sure, but it's better than a slew of cancer epidemics.
Maybe only tangentially related, but Michael Pollan's recent book about psychedelics "How To Change Your Mind" goes in-depth on this. There's something about being able to quiet the "default mode network" that lends the mind to transcendental/creative thought. The same effect can be achieved through meditation or breathwork.
i'd bet that proto-beer and proto-bread appeared around the same time, and techniques were developed over generations to calibrate different recipes until they resembled what we might recognize as "beer" and "bread" today.
> In most other contexts we encounter, stuffing an adjective in there means "NOT".
I think that's less a comment on grammar and more about how there's a tendency to name stuff that is similar to other stuff, yet markedly different, in oxymoronic ways. For example:
Recently finished The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. I would have been embarrassed to have been caught reading the latter given the subject matter, despite how influential he's been on how I think about food, but it was a real insightful treat.
Currently reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South and Safe Area Goražde, a comic book about the Bosnian War.
Also reading Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy in between books, but that's a book I'll never really finish.
I can attest to this. I've struggled with anxiety/depression/insomnia/adhd for years, and over the past couple years I've learned that careful attention to exercise, diet, and sleep are the most reliable ways I can ensure a healthy baseline.
I used to run a couple miles in the morning and evenings, on streets, until I injured my leg. So I switched to hiking after my leg recovered. Short 2-3 mile hikes turned into 12 mile stretches, which turned into short trail runs, and now I'm running 5-6 miles of trails 2x a week and 12+ mile runs/hikes on weekends (I'm secretly training for an ultra). I'd always thought I'd hate running, because it was too strenuous or something, but I haven't looked back. Maybe I'm just literally running away from my problems, but, it's far more rewarding in any case.
So I may be playing devil's advocate here, but isn't this a net improvement over the last few decades? Kids getting hooked on something that's significantly less deadly? It's not ideal, sure, but it's better than a slew of cancer epidemics.
What is the FDA trying to achieve?