Predicting the future - How realistic is it that cigarettes will have virtually disappeared by the year 2200?

I say never as at least the governments here get ginormous tax revenue from tobacco products not to mention the big business in taking care of the medical issues it causes and just can’t see them saying adios to that income.

I agree with @Cruiser. The tax revenue is gigantic. Governments don’t want to give up that money, so I think cigarettes will be around forever.

Is there still money in 2200? I thought the United Federation of Planets will give it up… Just kidding.

I would like to know the percentage of Star Trek fans that are smokers. Damn, now I need a cigerette, fucking Tribbles.

2200? How did you come up with such a distant year/star date? I think I remember seeing Kirk smoke a cigar once, or maybe it was a different starship captain nostalgic for old earth? Or, was it on Boston Legal? LOL.

I would have said there won’t be any smoking, but the arguments above make sense that it smoking will be around forever in some form.

@JLeslie – Jonathan Archer, the son of famed warp engineer Henry Archer and his wife Sally, was born in 2112 in Upstate New York, where he spent most of his formative years. James T. Kirk was born and raised in Riverside, Iowa in the year 2233. Therefore I picked the year 2200 as a rough date.

Oh, a cigar… hmm don’t remember that, but it seems like a one time celebration event.

@mattbrowne I see. I am impressed that it was not just some random year pulled out of a hat. Maybe we can google smoking and Star Trek?

Check out the photo on the right side of the page on this link http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Smoking

The German version of TOS uses the year 2200:

“Space… the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

“Space… endless expanses: we are writing the year 2200. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, which, with its 400-man strong crew, is on a 5-year mission: to explore new worlds, new life, and new civilizations. Many light-years away from the Earth, the Enterprise penetrates galaxies where no human being has gone before.” (German version re-translated into English)

@JLeslie – Hmm. St. John Talbot smoking looks like a real smoker. I guess the others are just celebrating something. I like the part

“While once a popular and dangerous habit on Earth, the smoking of tobacco had decreased by the time of Starfleet and may have been abandoned completely by Humans by the 2370s.”

@mattbrowne Is that quote from the link? I didn’t see that when I looked it over quickly.

Yes. I guess it answers my question. The website owners seem to be Star Trek experts. So 2200 is a bit too early.

@mattbrowne I would guess Gene would not consider smoking as part of his utopia he imagined for the UE.

All I know is that while driving through Virginia a couple of weeks ago, it took me a wile to puzzle out what the crop was that I kept seeing fields of. It didn’t resemble any food crop that I had ever seen. Finally, I realized that I was looking at fields and fields of young tobacco.

Why smoke real cigarettes when you can holodeck a smoke. :-)

I think “logic” will eventually win, and cigarettes will go the way of the Dodo.
Only to be replaced with another vice.

The more appropriate question is: will humans still be around in 2200? If not, you can forget cigarettes.

I do not plan on being around in 2200. i will say this, humans will always have addictions. its in our genes. it may not be tobacco, it may be alcohol or drinking too much water. in any event, if the human race is still around in 2200, you can bet there will be someone, somewhere growing tobacco for human consumption. there is too much money and taxes in tobacco and the government will never sign-off on tobacco revenue.

I can see it now. The year is 2200.
We have bridged the gap between man and machine. Spending our lives, laying on the couch, jacked into a virtual world.

What do we do? We go to the bar, having a drink and a smoke.

I don’t know, but I see (at least in the US) a major reform to the Constitution. A change that will give more power to the government to stop what they consider dangerous.

I quit a few years ago after about 25 years of smoking. If I can do it – anyone can. I think that with the aggressive laws about where one can smoke in public, plus taxing and awareness to just how incredibly horrific it is for ones health – each generation will have less and less smokers.

Either Janeway was hitting up the holodeck cigarettes with a vengeance or else she was doing some sly smoking on the side – if her voice is anything to judge by, that is…

I agree with @Cruiser . I don’t think that while tobacco makes so much money that we’ll ever see the end of it. If we do, I’m sure some other hazardous substance accepted in society will have replaced it.
On the other hand I’m not very optimistic that in the year 2200 there will even still be people.

I’m an ex smoker.

Tobacco itself is not the issue, it’s the 5000 chemical additives that make it bad for you.

The tobacco industry was a foundation of this country, waaay back when it was a natural substance, far less harmful than todays product.

There will always be smoking addicts and there will always be government capitalizing on such.

Hell…the health insurance companies are investors in the tobacco industry! lololol

Smoking is not always bad for you.
It depends on what you smoke.
Perhaps the content of cigarettes will change.

I like to smoke ham. Sometimes fish.

@ChazMaz The occasional fish does for me.

I will make note of that. ;-)

@lloydbird you couldnt pay me enough money to smoke datura like that page suggests. FUCK THAT. Ive seen first hand some rather negative out comes of it.

I realize its all in the dosage but its like playing with fire.

One hundred and ninety years in the future? I think cigarettes will survive, or tobacco smoking at least will. It has survived for thousands of years, so I don’t see what’s so special about the next couple centuries. Smoking rates are rising in developing countries, and even some developed areas with moronic laws (Ontario for one), are seeing an increase in smoking rates after decades of decline.

No no. Smoking is far too pleasurable to disappear so quickly. In fact, medical science may get to the point of preventing all damage caused by smoking, before the practice is eliminated. If this occurs, you can bet smoking stats will go through the roof.

@Smashley
I was going to say something similar. And drugs may become better in the future but there’s a history that continually inspires new generations to smoke.

I have watched many of the old episodes of Star-Trek, I am not sure of Gene Roddenberry’s stance on tobacco/smoking. I do not believe much will change as far as people smoking cigarettes/cigars/pipes, they have been around much longer than 200 years. No, definitely not by 2200 will smoking stop, I believe there will be many more “safe” alternatives offered to smokers and much better advances in helping people quit but if people want to smoke they will smoke regardless of this. Maybe at a much later date smoking will become rare or a new “habit” will replace it but much later than 2200, maybe more like 2500 or later.

@Jabe73 – The e-cigarette would have sounded like science fiction in 1966. The Star Trek writers obviously didn’t think of it. But they predicted the cell phone.

“But they predicted the cell phone.”

Actually, didn’t the writers of Dick Tracy predict the Cell phone in the 30’s?
Remember Dick Tracy’s wrist watch phone.

@ChazMaz – Good point, but I think many trekkies want to take credit, because some cell phones now really look like the ones used by Captain Kirk opening the communicator with a stylish gesture of his hand…

And they look like Dick Tracy’s phone :-)

there will probably be no need for it. I’m sure we’ll probably come up with a better way/drug that gives off the same good effects without all the bad traits that cigs do. It’ll be safer, cleaner, but provide similar stress relief.

Nicotine will be around almost forever. I saw an e-cig the other day, it was wierd. Guess you can use them to smoke on airplanes.

@truecomedian – Hmm. Some of the nicotine is exhaled. What about passive nicotine inhaling on airplanes?

@mattbrowne
I don’t know what passive inhaling means. I know that I could get away with it on a plane, because I’m shady like that. I saw one the other day, and there was only a slight vapor I was told. People seem to use them as a way to quit. Smoking is crazy fun, but we won’t evolve past harmful consumables for at least another thousand years, maybe two, give or take. And that’s just the core population, we’ll have fringe groups, each defined by their use of an ancient vice of their choice.

I work at a high school, and I’m not seeing the next generation being smoke-free. We have just as many teens smoking as ever. The practice of the state governments tacking insane taxes on cigarettes isn’t even stopping it. Those people that don’t smoke tobacco smoke other stuff. Now that spice is illegal, people will go back to pot and fuel the illegal drug trade. My religious friends who don’t smoke are all hooked on Zanex. My solution is that our government stop trying to legislate everything. Or don’t the understand that prohibition doesn’t work. I myself quit smoking a year ago and went on e-cigs. I was able to quit overnight after 15 years of smoking. No more smoker’s hack, no more coughing up crap out of my lungs, and no paying sin tax to the government. They have no second hand smoke, no lingering smell and no stained teeth. I could have never quit without them. Now the government wants to make them illegal. The only reason could be that they are losing a lot of tax money.