Engineer a plant disease similar to the one that wiped out the Gros Michel banana, but which targets tobacco plants. Destroy the tobacco industry with biological warfare.
Posted by TheLobsterCopter5000@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 23 comments
Ok-Title9458@reddit
People should have a right to choose to consume tabbacco. Just like people have a right to ingest alcohol or other sustances. The issues at hand have more to do with captains of industry abusing people for money than the act of smoking tobacco.
TheLobsterCopter5000@reddit (OP)
The "right to choose" argument kinda falls apart when you introduce highly addictive substances into the mix. For many, it's not a choice.
Ok-Title9458@reddit
And for many it is. You decided the actions of others defines the inherent nature of a plant. You focusing on how to eliminate the plant rather than thinking about how to ensure humans stop using it to hurt others means you arent focusing on that actual issue at hand. Did you also consider what those companies and people would peddle if the plant went extinct? What if that creates the drive to make and push an even more addictive and destructive substance into children? You aimed at the king but not the crown.
Bongcopter_@reddit
Calm down Satan
ScoutRiderVaul@reddit
Why though?
MrPhuccEverybody@reddit
Could you not. I like my slow suicide.
Useful_Calendar_6274@reddit
too much risk it spills over to potatoes and tomatoes (same family) and then you are responsibly for the biggest famine we've seen since the green revolution
UnlikelyPerogi@reddit
Plus nicotine can be synthesized, at a cost effective and industrial scale. And it is, for lots of non tobacco nicotine products. So you might get rid of food and cigarettes, but not vapes and zyns and whatever the hell else nicotine products gen z are using.
Useful_Calendar_6274@reddit
I thought those were a concentrate or extract from plants. crazy
UnseenTardigrade@reddit
Tomatoes and potatoes combined only make up like 2% of global caloric intake. The fungus that devastated the Gros Michel took decades to do so. So a gradual complete shift away from potatoes and tomatoes wouldn't necessarily cause famine.
GroundbreakingRun186@reddit
100% of my caloric intake is pizza and French fries. It would be devastating on a personal level
munoodle@reddit
Your PCP would celebrate
Brilliant_Chemica@reddit
But have you considered that potatoes are fucking awesome. How much of our humanity will we sacrifice to wipe clean the scourge
adsarelies@reddit
Wait... so the Simpsons episode on tomacco was based on a biological possibility? Can they actually produce a tomato-tobacco hybrid fruit that "tastes like grandma" but still very addictive?
expertninja@reddit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Products_produced_from_The_Simpsons
It’s based off of a real study and people have done it.
Wurm42@reddit
Well I'll be damned. Some actually did it!
WeissMISFIT@reddit
The real r/monkeypaw
TheLobsterCopter5000@reddit (OP)
Dammit...
atomicsnarl@reddit
Wasn't there a tobacco maze fungus that was a real PITA for the industry?
Kaurifish@reddit
The tobacco mosaic virus. Yeah, I figure one of these days we’re going to get an expert with a cancer-dead spouse, CRISPR and a basement lab. If it were me, I’d go to the bars where tobacco workers hang out and sprinkle it on the floor.
Minimum-Attitude389@reddit
That would be difficult. Banana varieties are basically clones, which is why that particular disease was so devastating.
BBWolf326@reddit
Moot point, adults smoking tobacco based products is at an all time low. Dying industry in the states.
TheLobsterCopter5000@reddit (OP)
In the States, sure, but not worldwide. The tobacco industry has just shifted their efforts to poorer countries with more vulnerable populations.