Why are there so many chemicals in cigarettes?

Question

Nicotine is already addictive, and I know some of the other added substances are also added for addiction purposes. But I read that there are *thousands* of added carcinogens in cigarettes, what’s the point of *all* of them? You’d think killing your customers is a bad business strategy…

I moved on to rolling cigarettes with more natural pipe tobacco, and eventually ditched that for using a nicotine vape. Noticed no difference between the pipe and cigs, and the vapes weren’t that hard to get used to.

Just seems like overkill, no pun intended

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

It’s a plant.

Plants make lots of chemicals. Tobacco plants have big leafy leaves, and bugs love to eat them because they are very lush. So the plants make chemicals to try and make the bugs stop. It takes many chemicals to suppress many types of bugs.