Do Hobbits get Lung Cancer?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Selmo

Do we know how much Hobbits and Men smoked?

In LoTR and The Hobbit, our heros were travelling light for most of the time. They could not have carried large quantities of pipe-weed and so would have smoked very little to make their supplies last as long as posible. Is there any evidence that they smoked more heavily at home?

A pipe of tobacco on the bench outside the front door after breakfast and perhaps one more with a jug of ale in the evening would do much less damage than smoking forty cigarettes a day.
.

An interesting perspective. Tobacco amongst the First Nations peoples in North American was 'controlled' by highly developed and formalised social and ritual uses.

Perhaps the hobbits just didn't pop out for a quick ciggie during coffee break. If hobbits were least likely to fall under the domination of the Ring, perhaps this can be extended to all addictive substances, alcohol and pipeweed alike. And in not succumbing to the addictive effects of nicotine (which is a very highly addictive drug), they just didn't have the need to smoke 24/7.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Eonwe, pipeweed was specifically a plant of the genus Nicotiana: tobacco.

Bethberry: that isn't necessarily true. The Cherokee for example smoked small personal pipes regularly, quite apart from the ceremonial 'great pipes.'

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Eonwe, pipeweed was specifically a plant of the genus Nicotiana: tobacco.

What I mean is that when they DID smoke things like Kingsfoil (athelas) then maybe it countered the effects. After all, Aragorn does say in the book that it has many uses, and it IS powerful enough to heal you from trying to attack (and killing) the witch-king.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The hobbits had no idea that athelas was any more than a weed.

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

The hobbits had no idea that athelas was any more than a weed.

That doesn't matter. Things can be good for you even if you dont know they are. Of cousre, there is the opposite, the placebo...
But I don't think athelas was one, especially since, Merry and Eowyn (for example, there were more cases), were in shock when the athelas was used on them

[obloquy]

Everybody knows that cancer only becomes deadly once you know you have it.

[zxcvbn]

I don't think end-of-life diseases like cancer existed in Middle Earth. The impression I got from reading the books was when mortals grew old, they usually just died of old age.