#15 - Smokers of pipes or cigars run a distinctly lower risk

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (E)

The paradox presented in this case is as follows: pipe and cigar smokers enjoy lower health risks than cigarette smokers. Yet when cigarette smokers take up smoking pipes or cigars, they maintain their level of health risks rather than gain significant benefits, as we might expect them to, like cigarette smokers who quit altogether.

The stimulus is followed by a Resolve question, so we need to find the answer choice which best resolves the discrepancy between the full quitters and those who switched to pipes and cigars. The correct answer choice will likely provide some way to distinguish regular pipe/cigar smokers from those who have crossed over from cigarettes.

Answer choice (A): While pipes and cigars are not risk-free, they still generally bring lower risks than cigarettes do. Since the discrepancy remains even with this information, this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): Since this answer choice does not provide any information about those who switch from cigarettes to pipes and cigars, it cannot resolve the discrepancy from the stimulus and cannot be the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (C): The fact that these illnesses arise at the same time provides no distinction between the two relevant groups. Specifically, this choice does not explain why ex-cigarette smokers experience greater risks when taking up pipes and cigars than those pipe and cigar smokers who never smoked cigarettes.

Answer choice (D): Smokers’ tendency to be loyal to one smoking medium at a time does not resolve the discrepancy in the stimulus, as it fails to explain how pipe and cigar smoke appear to have different effect depending on whether one has crossed over from cigarettes.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. This choice provides insight into how ex-cigarette smokers can somehow extract greater risk from pipes and cigars than regular pipe and cigar smokers. If ex-cigarette smokers inhale pipe and cigar smoke, and this is different from those who never smoked cigarettes, then this explains how cigarette smokers are able to maintain their health risks when they switch to the normally less dangerous pipes and cigars.

[alee]

Hi guys,
This is a question about the Dec 1994 Lsat, Section II, Q15. I understood the stimulus as follows.

1. Smokers of pipes/cigars -> lower health risk than smokers of cigarettes
2. Cigarette smokers who quit smoking altogether reduce health risk from smoking related problems, cigarette smokers who switch from cigarettes to pipes/cigars do not reduce their health risk as a consequence.
Explain the discrepancy.

Before moving onto the answer choices, I 'prephrased' the following type of answer: an answer that would suggest a difference between pipe/cigar smokers without prior history of cigarette smoking and pipe/cigar smokers who previously smoked cigarettes. Since (E) suggests that there is a potentially relevant difference (relevant to health effects) because of different habits of inhaling between the 2 groups, I choose (E), which is in fact correct.

However, I later noted that my logic isn't quite right, since the first sentence of the stimulus doesn't refer to smokers of pipes/cigars *without prior history of smoking cigarettes*, it just refers to this group as a whole... Hence I am not sure if my logic here is quite correct in arriving at option E.

What is your suggestion?

Thanks!

[Steve Stein]

Thanks for your question--it's great that you got that one right--those can be tricky.

So, the overall population of pipe/cigar smokers run a lower risk than the general cigarette smoking population.

That means that even if some of those pipe/cigar smokers are ex-cigarette smokers, there must be some who are not ex-cigarette smokers for the above statement to be true.

Interesting point--thanks, and let me know whether this makes sense.

Thanks!

~Steve

[alee]

Thanks, Steve,
Your answer clears it up nicely!

[ashpine17]

tbh how is the pipers inhaling smoke differently supposed to necessarily explain the same outcome in health issues? different doesn't mean it will produce a result?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi ashpine,

While your question is a very reasonable one, it turns out that:

A. We never find out exactly how the difference in inhaling the smoke makes the former cigarette smokers who now smoke pipes or cigars remain in as much danger as before.

B. It turns out that we can still answer this question even without knowing the exact physical/medical mechanism that explains this difference.

The way to approach Resolve the Paradox questions is to first identify exactly what the seeming paradox is and then prephrase the type of answer that you're looking to find.

Here, the paradox (or puzzling fact) is that former cigarette smokers who now smoke pipes or cigars remain in as much danger as before whereas pipe and cigar smokers who never smoked cigarettes are at reduced risk. That's strange because one would expect that changing from cigarettes to pipes or cigars would reduce health risks since pipes and cigars are generally not as bad for one's health (according to the stimulus).

So our prephrase here is that there has to be something particular about smoking cigarettes that creates unique long-term changes to the person that continue even after that person quits cigarettes. This long term change or changes will then affect this person if they continue to smoke even if they are now smoking pipes or cigars.

For example, perhaps smoking cigarettes permanently changes a person's lungs so that the person will always absorb more nicotine into their lungs even if they switch to pipes or cigars.

Of the answers, only Answer E provides a difference between the relevant groups that could potentially explain the odd facts above. It would be great if Answer E had specified that the way that the former smokers inhale causes them to inhale more smoke or has some other effect that would be harmful to their health, but it doesn't need to in order to still be the best answer given.