Think what you like Those same carcinogenic things are in smoke. Nicotine is the diff. I remember when we were all going to get cancer from BBQ meat. Someone decided scorched meat was carcinogenic. POINT: THE PRESENCE OF CARCINOGENS DOES NOT TRANSLATE INTO CLINICAL CANCER. ONLY CLINICAL CANCER CAN TRANSLATE INTO . . . Yes for tobacco smoke. No for smoke, scorched meat.
Then why don't all smokers get cancer? Trust me, talking sense to that woman is an exercise in futility.
The scientific community don't share your degree of certainty regarding nicotine's role as a carcinogen. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4553893/ Which is not to say that it has a clean bill of health or does not have a role to play. The following may give some indication of the complexity of some of the mechanisms invovled.
What exactly is 'the curing' process if the tobacco plant is already naturally in the air? During the curing process the breakdown of pigment compounds called carotenoids also causes some of the nicotine to be transformed into a cancer-causing chemical called N-nitrosonornicotine During the curing process [because] there is oxidation in the air? During the curing process but not before? is something they 'add' to it causing the transformtaion of nicotine to NNN
There are certain chemical substances contained within the cell membranes inside of plants. When the plant tissue dies, those cell membrane layers that separate different types of chemical substances can start breaking down, and there can be other substances that start forming that don't form in a living plant. In the case of the formation of NNN, what happens is that bacteria start oxidizing some of the nitrogen-containing plant material into nitrites, and then those nitrites react with nicotine break-down products to produce NNN. Most of this would not happen in the plant tissues if they were still alive.
If you want to continue smoking and decrease your risk of lung cancer, smoke pot instead. https://www.webmd.com/lung-cancer/news/20060523/pot-smoking-not-linked-to-lung-cancer
