What's in a processed cigarette?

A typical cigarette contains a nasty cocktail of synthetic chemicals that don't exist in a tobacco leaf. A total of 599 chemical additives have been approved for use in cigarettes , and when those chemicals are lit up and smoked, they can produce up to 4,000 chemicals that the user inhales.
Those are 599 chemicals that don't exist in a natural tobacco leaf. You could actually remove all the tobacco from cigarettes and replace it with cardboard and the cigarette would still be just as deadly thanks to the all the chemicals and additives. The tobacco leaf itself has relatively little to do with the overall health effects of a typical processed cigarette. Smoking the burning vapors of synthetic chemicals is a form of slow suicide. But smoking an actual leaf of tobacco -- absent chemical additives -- is undeniably less dangerous to human health. Also, as another way to look at this, consider this simple fact: Smoking SPINACH carries roughly the same health danger as smoking tobacco leaf. There is nothing particular special about tobacco that makes it any more carcinogenic than smoking any other leafy plant. The nicotine content, of course, makes tobacco highly addictive, but that's different from the question of the toxic dangers of its smoke. And yet if someone sold "spinach cigarettes" that combined dried spinach leaves with hundreds of toxic chemical additives into a cigarette, it would seem downright retarded to say that "spinach causes cancer." And yet that's the same language used with tobacco right now. How often have you heard the phrase "tobacco causes cancer?" Again, if we are to approach this issue with intellectual honesty, we need to differentiate between the natural tobacco plant and the highly processed manufactured cigarettes packed with toxic chemicals.