C v E

Hi @AllisonJ, Thanks for the question! So we’re told here that people who smoke pipes/cigars have lower health risks than cigarette smokers. Then, we’re told that cigarette smokers who quit smoking have a lower risk of health problems, but cigarette smokers who switch over to pipes/cigars don’t. This is a bit odd, because we would expect them to eventually face the lower health risks that pipe/cigar smokers face, or at least face lower health risks than before. So we’re asked to resolve this paradox. Now take a look at (E), which tells us that people who smoke from cigarette smoking to pipes/cigars inhale smoke in a way that people who have never smoked cigarettes don’t. Well, if this is true, then the health risk might not be based on pipes/cigars vs cigarettes, but rather cigarette-inhalation method vs pipes/cigars-inhalation method. And if that’s the case, and cigarette smokers keep their cigarette smoking inhalation methods, then it would help us understand why cigarette smokers don’t face a lower risk. Now let’s take a look at (C), which tells us that the kinds of illnesses that you might get from smoking don’t develop earlier in cigarette smokers than they do in smokers of pipes/cigars. But this doesn’t really explain why switching from cigarettes to pipes/cigars doesn’t make your health risks go down; it doesn’t explain the difference between people who start smoking pipe/cigars, and people who switched over from cigarettes. So (C) doesn’t resolve the paradox and is wrong. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.