The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their revenue stream too.
It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers. The poor can't, so they just die.
(I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income, rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)
I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should not care that they aren't collecting the money to pay for it anymore. As an example: taxing people who use roads to pay for roads encourages people to use roads less, which puts less wear on the road surface and means you need fewer lanes and thereby less road. If this mechanism is used correctly, and I realize it often isn't, the real problem is only when there is no good way to directly tax the damage and so a proxy is used: we don't tax people for miles driven, we tax them by the gallon of gas purchased, and while that works for pollution control (and people thereby think it makes sense that people who use less gas have to pay less gas tax, under an assumption that the goal is to encourage less burning of gas), the taxes are used to fund roads, and electric cars still put as much wear on the road as gasoline cars; this screws up the incentives and makes the government kind of want people to keep burning gas so they keep getting taxes to fund the roads they continue to need. But this is a slightly different problem than what you are describing. In the case of cigarettes, I was under the impression the goal of the tax was to fund public health infrastructure due to the cost to the public of caring for victims of smoking, and so while I realize the government always mixes their accounts and crosses purposes and generally screws this up, if e-cigarettes are generally safe then that should have been a case of working incentives.
>>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior:
That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool.
There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health Programs
For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social control
Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period.
Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types
Sugar does cause some harm (obesity and associated health costs). Its tax should be commensurate with this harm. However, it is used in both healthy and unhealthy foods, so perhaps the tax should be on unhealthy foods rather than on the sugar itself.
That is a slippery slope, if you want to talk about products or activities that "harm society"
Further then you have to define what "harm" it is doing.
I also suspect part of that "harm" you talk about is Costs associated with healthcare that is paid for by the taxpayer, meaning you likely support government run socialized health services. I do not.
I do not question the harm cigarettes do to individuals, but individuals make choices every day that cause harm to themselves. That is not a reason for government involvement
I do not believe it is my place to tell individuals what chemicals they can or can not consume
I am 100% against the War on Drugs as well, and believe that all drugs, including crack, cocaine, and all prescription drugs should be legal to buy if the person desires it.
> I never support using taxation for social control
Yes, money is fungible, and so gas tax, alcohol tax, and cigarette taxes collected may not be applied to covering the costs of that activity. Even putting it in a specific fund doesn't completely fix the problem, it only establishes a minimum support for that fund's target. Make gas tax specifically fund road surface repairs, and then the DOT can use part of the general fund that is freed up for other purposes.
However, it seems very reasonable to use taxation as a sort of softer hammer to create an incentive or disincentive for various activities. In a way, the government's only power is in its monopoly on legal violence. It can do nothing but kill or imprison you by force. Sure, it can issue fines, or garnish your wages (effectively the same thing), or remove your drivers license, - but the fine has teeth only because they'll imprison you if you fail to pay. And if you try to fight your way out of captivity you'll either be pathetically overpowered or shot. Furthermore, criminal punishments require prosecution in a court, which is expensive and slow.
It would be unreasonable to try to reduce alcoholism by arresting people, charging them with drinking, and sentencing them with a $0.25 fine. It would also be unreasonable to pass a law requiring everyone to buy a house, get married and have 2.54 children, or be arrested and jailed.
Instead, taxation offers a much gentler stick, and sometimes even a carrot. Increase taxation on behavior that society finds to be objectionable or harmful - smoking, drinking, gambling, etc. Offer tax rebates for behaviors that society finds to be valuable: donating to charity, helping the environment, raising a family, owning a home. Taxation is definitely an effective tool for social control. Do you have an alternative? Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?
> Taxation is definitely an effective tool for social control. Do you have an alternative? Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?
I hope you can appreciate why some people would say the answer to that second question is "as little as possible."
When the government is offering carrots and sticks, there will inevitably be some group of people systemically discriminated against (either by not receiving the carrots proportionally or disproportionately receiving the stick). Tyranny of the majority and what not. The gears of government grind very slowly, and changing government policies often results in multiple generations of people experiencing discrimination before things are changed.
For a recent example, one argument (among others, of course) for same-sex marriage equality is that it's discriminatory for same-sex partners not to receive the carrots of legal and tax benefits that come with being married.
Is there an alternative? Maybe. Maybe not. I could spitball one, but it would likely be an inadequate solution. Still, I think it's prudent to be careful. Social control is a double-edged sword.
>> Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?
Bingo... I do not believe the government has any ethical role in tell me how I should live my life, or punishing me if I choose to have a life style the government disapproves of.
That varies per country, I don't know how it's in the US but there are countries (for example: Brazil) where some taxes can only be spent on specific areas and those are determined by the law that created them.
"taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior"
That might be what people say but that's a horrible idea from a governmental perspective. There's nothing that says that the amount of money that can possibly extracted by taxing a thing is the right amount for combating it. If something is taxed enough to double or triple it's official price then smuggling will start to develop. And even if you were to raise taxes enough to instantly stop all new smoking you'd still have to care for people whose lungs have been damaged by cancer somehow.
And in general introducing coupling between taxes and expenditures needlessly complicates the budgetary process. It's a recipe for government sclerosis if you take it too far with people thinking that, e.g., they can't invest in public transit because then road taxes would go down, but the roads are needed for emergency vehicles regardless of commuting and road maintenance isn't anything like linear with use.
Tax things because you want people to do them less and because that lets you lower taxes on things you don't want to discourage.
Road damage is proportional to axle weight raised to the 4th power.
In the US, you cannot drive on the highways with more than 10 short tons (9.1 Mg) per axle. If I cram my daily driver to the gills with heavy junk, I might have 0.75 short tons per axle. That heavily loaded cargo trailer is doing 30000 times more damage to the roads per mile than I am, specifically, and as much as 9600 average passenger cars. [0]
Axle weight is not taken into consideration when I am taxed for the roads. Thus tax-avoidance behaviors optimize for the wrong variables.
Drug dosages and adverse health effects are less easily modeled numerically. My concern is that if you tax something without understanding the potential consequences, you may end up doing more harm than good.
I agree that regressive taxes (actual govt. issued taxes or implied taxes like smoking in your argument) are a tough case - especially when the people they most affect are sometimes strong supporters of the tax not being stopped.
Lottery games are an example of this - the people who play are overwhelmingly poor. This article argues that lottery spending may even be the single largest tax poor families pay [1].
With regard to what you say about there being no replacement income for governments if people stopped smoking cigarettes - I'd say this is only the case if consumption was banned. If it was slowly phased out the pain wouldn't be noticeable. It's like autonomous vehicles - what really matters is the speed of creative destruction.
Because it's an addiction and by design, very difficult to quit. As for the gum, I can tell you that it's a rather poor replacement for cigarettes. It doesn't really eliminate (and barely curbs) the need for a cigarette.
I was actually quite successful with the gum, but the only thing that really made it difficult for me to quit was the withdrawal symptoms. So I suppose it's effectiveness depends on how someone is addicted to smoking.
I tried to quit with gum and it's just not a good replacement. It tastes foul, made my mouth and throat feel unpleasant, and does nothing for the "habit" part of the addiction. Vaping worked much better for me.
Before switching to ecigs, I tried to quit with gums, nicotine patches, and herbal cigarettes. They did nothing for me (to be fair, the first time I tried ecigs, the crappy 2009 models, they didn't help either).
do you have access to some detailed data about state/federal income sources? cursory search says excises are around 3% of total taxation income, while on state level goes up to 14% (but still includes all sources, not just tobacco)
Indeed, the parent poster appears to be weaving a "just so" story with the moral being that government (somehow a monolith and not a composition of a representative legislature) seeks to get more revenue. This ignores the fact that federal tax receipts have been hovering around 20% of GDP for the last 40 years [1].
However, each state is different; some states' legislatures intentionally tax tobacco products as a deterrent to smoking, with demonstrable public health benefits [2]. Cigarette taxes are negatively correlated with smoking rates. I concede that the federal tobacco tax rate is too low to do anything substantial, for raising revenue or as a deterrent. It should either be raised, or scrapped and left to the states.
The tobacco companies are adept at adapting to the market. I would suspect they all either have e-cig products out or are in the process of doing so. As far as taxes, the US has one of the most progressive tax schemes in the world and income is not a major wealth point for many Americans (though it does beget a ton of jealousy)
Not to go too far off track. The real tax on the poor isn't cigarettes, for the poor and stupid its lottery tickets. The real tax on the poor are the vast amount of licensing and related fees that they cannot escape. It is distressing how many lower income jobs have ridiculous fees attached let alone the costs of doing business with every day government interaction. Then throw in all the fees of everyday life and boom, your hurting.
Of course they have e-cig brands; they're the disgusting gas station brands that will be the only viable business in the market in two years. It now costs $1 Million to approve a new flavor at every nicotine concentration: the tobacco companies couldn't have asked for anything better: it's like they're functionally illegal, but they also make more money.
There are other measures like the $2 "tobacco" tax on ballot in California now that means you'll pay $3 for a coil worth $1. This was also likely lobbied by the tobacco companies.
Finally, realize that theres nothing expensive about making these eliquids. Somehow they pulled an arbitrary way of making it more expensive than any other way of leaving tobacco out of their ass.
> Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes
I saw this on Reddit a while back, someone pointed out that "we get it, you vape" was probably introduced by tobacco companies to create a stigma around the practice.
I'm a quitting smoker, on vape (RBA) and it bloody works. If only there were such great tools for quitting other addictions.
I remember that thread. I think someone mentioned big tobacco realizes the future is vape but wants to kill thier current ecig market competitors via the law. It's a race to the bottom with Chinese ecig vendors unless the law bans them or greatly reduces their ability to sell in the USA.... Assuming It's truly harmless, they don't have to worry about being taxed/sued like crazy or severe advertising restrictions anymore... Ecigs are a no Brainer for any tobacco exec.
In my experience the stereotype exists for a reason.
Let's take Grover Norquist as an example. The man is a dedicated crusader who hasn't stopped pounding the tax-reform drum for 20 years. Know what he thinks will decide the next election? Know what he was tweeting about during the debates?
I have no bearing on the "hardcore" vaping community. It's a tool, I am using it to quit. If vaping was outlawed due to legislation I'm worried I'd have to rely on will alone (which has so far failed me). Irrespective of practice or belief, there are people who take things too far. The words of one nut are not representative of the entire community.
"We get it, you vape" is a logical fallacy. Why? It is so trivial to draw a corollary from that incredibly naive statement: you are implicitly voicing support for people acquiring cancer - althought I certainly don't believe that is what you meant to say. This falls under the logical fallacy of "black and white." Things are not so simple, especially so far as the behavior of one vocal minority is concerned.
By pure autonomous volition, I vape away from other people (generally in the company of other smokers in the allocated areas) because I know that the vapor generally clings to skin. It makes you clammy in warm weather. It's not sociable. So you're going to throw someone who is trying their level best to use this quitting aid in a respectable manner into the same bag as Norquist?
150 mutations per year in my lungs[1] x 7 years of smoking = 1050 mutations. I hope to God that I stopped soon enough. I'm so fortunate to have such an easy route out - it's not 1200 or 1350 mutations.
The inability to downvote responses on HN forces me to contemplate a correct response. This is the extremely rare occasion, maybe the first, that I wish it was possible.
I agree that vaping should be at least as legal as cigarettes if not more so. It's unquestionably safer and nicotine consumed in this fashion is very low-risk overall, probably no moreso than commonly prescribed stimulants, khat, or even caffeine.
However, it's stupid to claim that the stereotype came out of nowhere, or was a conspiracy from the tobacco industry. People who vape are typically at least as vocal and outspoken about it as stoners (note: marijuana should also be legal). It's pretty natural for it to be the butt of jokes.
The same thing really applies to the vape community. They are outspoken if not militant (and I don't disagree that's a good thing given the recent steps against it). I agree that it should be legal, go ahead and start a petition and I'll sign it. But holy shit it doesn't make you special, it's a personal decision/affectation/vice and nobody actually cares. I don't go around telling people about my stimulant consumption, and I certainly don't go around pretending it will decide the this election. With apologies to vegans:
Tobacco taxes tend to represent a very small part of government revenue, and fairly large parts of government costs and revenue are affected by the adverse effects of tobacco use (healthcare costs, sickness benefit, reduced taxable income from people becoming seriously ill). Even if the two don't balance, the government has plenty of scope to adjust the tax base over time. Many if not most other sources of tax income are far less predictable. The prospect that public infrastructure will "tank" as a result of people choosing to smoke less is simply not a real world problem.
Tobacco levies being disproportionately a "tax on the poor" is true, but health problems also are suffered more by the poor and one of the side effects of high tobacco levies in an era where e-cigarettes are a widely-available commercial product is nicotine replacement becoming much more affordable than tobacco
I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China.
They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China.
They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes without any desire to quit.
The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. Once you aren't using nicotine any longer all that is left is the social ritual and habit of going out for a smoke, which isn't a very convincing reason after a while. Soon you'll forgot to take your e-cigarette with you one day - you'll use it less and less. Until it simply doesn't matter any longer.
While I also highly recommend e-cigarettes, your story is of course the ideal picture of how it should go. But it might not go that easy for everyone: even with the use of it I'm having a hard time to quit the actual cigarretes completely and it's not due to the nicotine (in fact I do not know what exactly still makes me crave for those hand-rolled cigarettes). Also nicotine can be a pleasant drug to use. Which is likely why I know several people who've been vaping for years and have a hard time quitting, or even just don't want to quit. But they did quit smoking so that's a huge win already of course.
I'm not sure why the goal is quitting. Nicotine itself isn't the problem with cigarettes, it's just a stimulant and has the usual stimulant effects. If you have high blood pressure or trouble sleeping, probably not a great drug to use. But the same can be said of coffee, which is perfectly legal.
Of course, e-cigarette liquid is not only nicotine, so who knows what the long term effect of that is. The chromium in the heating coils worries me personally. (Kanthal and stainless steel both contain chromium. Obviously stainless steel is designed to be relatively inert, so maybe it's OK. Titanium is another option, and is implanted in the body regularly. But things are different at high temperatures.)
> Nicotine itself isn't the problem with cigarettes, it's just a stimulant and has the usual stimulant effects
Agreed, it's tobacco that is the primary issue.
I've been curious to adopt the e-cig for the stimulant aspect. I likely won't, but will admit to being curious if it would be a productivity boost. I'd bet the e-cig companies could gain a whole new market if they published some quasi-scientific material on the productivity benefits of nicotine.
The problem is any potential productivity benefits are usually shut down at the employer level - I've never seen an employer (specifically office environment) that allows vaping in the workplace. My employer requires people to clock out for a smoke break and go outside anyway, so to get the next hit people have to go break momentum away from their desk for a while - and that'd probably be quite frequently too; from my somewhat brief stint(s) of trying to adopt vaping over combustion, I'd find myself puffing on it far more frequently than I'd go for a smoke (which at work is about 1 every 1-2 hours or so~)
Well for anecdotal evidence we've got two people with (multiple) vapers in our office and they totally use them at their desk. Only annoying bit is the permanent noise of using them. It seems less distracting overall to me than people running around for smoke breaks all the time.
Out of curiosity, I tried this instead of going back on caffeine. I got the lowest-dose gum, cut a piece into tiny fractions, and still found it too intense. I don't know if was just my metabolism or if smokers have all just built up a big tolerance, but it was definitely not for me.
I've been chewing nicotine gum semi-regularly for a couple of months. I use 2mg pieces, and I found a single piece to be pretty intense at first; I'm a bit more tolerant now.
Did you read the instructions? You're supposed to chew on it for a bit, than 'park' the gum between your gum and teeth, let it sit for a minute or two, rinse, repeat. If you chew continuously you get the whole dose quickly, which can be a bit unpleasant if you don't like the nicotine buzz.
I've adopted nicotine gum. I've never smoked. It helps me focus. (Or, at least, I have the impression it helps me focus. I havn't actually measured anything.)
Nicotine has stimulative and depressant effects, depending on environment/ mood of the user. It's actually one of the more interesting facets of the drug
For whatever little it's worth, and appologies if you knew this already: Kanthal wire should be generally more 'inert' than stainless at high temperatures. The aluminum in Kanthal forms a tougher and more temperature resistant oxide layer than the nickel in typical stainless steel.
(I actually used Kanthal wire sold for DIY vaping things professionally at one point, in a ~1200C heater in vacuum. It's not inert enough in those conditions, sadly)
The metal content of e-cigarette vapour has been analysed; even for relatively crude first-generation devices, the metal content is well within established safe exposure limits.
Stainless steel coils facilitate temperature-controlled vaporisation, which is a crucial advance in harm reduction. Controlling the temperature of vaporisation significantly reduces the production of aldehydes and aromatic hydrocarbons, which are created by the thermal decomposition of propylene glycol and glycerine; these decomposition products are by far the most dangerous components of e-cigarette vapour.
do you know anything about the wire temperature in these things? I looked at both links and didn't see any numbers outside the paywall. Another comment mentions a vapor temperature of <260C, but nothing about the wire temperatures.
Stainless or Kanthal at 500C or something should indeed be quite inert, it's just not that hot.
200C to 260C is the normal temperature range, measured at the coil. Temperature-controlled devices use the coil itself as the temperature sensor by continuously measuring the resistance of the coil. The device calibrates each coil at room temperature when it is first installed. Stainless steel has a sufficiently high temperature coefficient of resistance to measure temperature quite accurately. Kanthal doesn't work with this method, because by design it has a very low temperature coefficient of resistance.
Power-controlled devices rarely exceed 300C in normal use, because there is considerable airflow over the coil combined with evaporative cooling. Excessive temperatures can be reached if the device is inadvertently activated, or if the liquid flow to the coil is inadequate.
As you say, kanthal and stainless steel should be very stable at these temperatures. Pure titanium wire also works with temperature control and completely avoids the issue of chromium, but there is some debate over the potential risks of titanium dioxide nanoparticles.
There's also breakdown products of the glycol and glycerine that include aldehydes such as formaldehyde and acrolein. Not as much as are in cigarettes, but enough to be somewhat concerning on their own.
Indeed. What e-cigarettes have done for me, and a few friends who have quit smoking, is help alleviate (my friends, who then later completely quit all e-ciggs), or replace (myself) the habitual addiction of cigarettes. Namely, the act of puffing, exhaling, and the sociability of going outside, etc.
That's a big part of the cigarettes many persons (anecdota) have trouble with quitting outside of the addictive properties: the learned habits.
Caveat: I've never smoked or vaped, but I have plenty of friends that do both.
I think the idea is that when vaping, you are able adjust the level of nicotine you are consuming without having to adjust how often you engage in the physical act of vaping/smoking. The act is a comfortable ritual, a chance to take a break, step away, relax for a few moments, whatever. It's a habit itself, distinct from the nicotine dependency. Quitting smoking is doubly painful if you are craving both the chemical and the act. Vaping gives you the act without the chemical.
This doesn't even touch the fact that nicotine is not particularly harmful - simply a habit-forming stimulant like caffeine, adderall or modafinil. Vaping delivers the nicotine without the tar, and the tar is what kills. The thing that makes people nervous about vaping is not the nicotine, but the behavior of the (largely unstudied and unregulated) substances in the vapor being inhaled.
Indeed. Stimulants tend to form habits. It's not as noticeable with caffeine, because there is a 15-60 minute lag time for it to take effect. Nicotine (largely due to the delivery method, I assume) takes effect in 10 seconds. So it's easy to start forming associations with the feeling, leading to the psychological dependence.
One other point I have yet to see mentioned here that occurred to me when I made the switch from smoking cigarettes to vaping several years ago is that vaping also changed how I engaged in my smoking ritual.
A cigarette has become a somewhat expensive object. When I light it up I would finish it, or at least try to. If the time I had for my smoke break was short I would puff that thing hard to get it done in the time I had allotted. An e-cig can be used for a few puffs and then dropped back into my pocket with nothing wasted. I could be much lazier about how I smoked and as a consequence I tended to smoke less.
I found it harder to quit as a rollie-smoker myself. My theory is the ritual of rolling up a quick cigarette is just as compelling as the actual smoke. I'd find myself rolling at my desk when in a stressful situation a fair bit.
I wonder if another fidget would help. I just heard a recommendation in this week's MacBreak Weekly, but I don't remember the name of the company. Maybe it was called Fidgetopia?
Yep, as someone else who also smokes rollies exclusively (straights are disgusting and so fucking expensive), I can attest to that.
Vaping just didn't fill that void and I think that's part of the reason I gave up (the other being that I just couldn't find a flavour I actually liked, no matter how close the name of it is to 'golden virginia', it never tasted remotely as close)
Rolling cigarettes feels good. E-cigarettes allow you to keep all of your addictive habits and mannerisms other than rolling, and it's all of those habits that are the addiction; you're physically off nicotene in a couple of weeks, and you're mentally off within a month or two. I was once able to roll a cigarette while riding a bike; now I have a skill that I'll never use again.
I'm creeped out by whatever's in e-cigs. I'm don't know why everyone is so sure that constantly inhaling propylene glycol for years on end is safe, or that all that's in that mystery imported off-brand liquid is propylene glycol. I of course find it extremely likely that it's less unhealthy than smoking.
I quit through using Swedish snus. I think it was crucial that snus isn't fun, and gives you nothing to do with your hands. To gradually wean off nicotene, just leave the portions in longer. Twenty-year smoker, two-year snuser, four years tobacco-free.
I hate to say it, but after puffing an e-cig for a couple years, it became extremely painful for my throat and lungs, to the point I couldn't even bear a single puff anymore without pain and a coughing fit. I actually went back to tobacco.
I really don't know to be honest, if you're not paying attention it's pretty easy to accidentally buy the wrong mix and then end up with something that'll fuck your throat up for weeks.
As a former smoker I believe that the best way to quit smoking is cold turkey. Sure, the withdrawal phase is a hell but in my case that helped me realize just how addictive that shit was. Before I’d never imagine that quitting would cause me depression or sleeping problems. All that, and a lot more, helped me understand how much my body was reliant on cigarettes. From my experience most smokers don’t realize how addictive and dependent they are on their habit. If they were perhaps they’d think twice before lighting another one.
IIRC it has to do with the anguish of quitting - if you went through the difficulty and pain of quitting cold turkey you probably don't want that to be for nothing
Cold turkey is how my dad did it after 40 years of 2 packs a day, unfiltered. He went through a couple weeks of hell, but as far as I know he hasn't smoked in 21 years.
I have worked with quite a few elderly people, and I've heard many stories of people just quitting cold turkey after many years of smoking, as soon as the catastrophic health effects became common knowledge.
I think the older generation is just generally more accepting of discomfort than todays cream-puffs.
I remember reading a study done in the UK that said the exact opposite. 70% of people going cold-turkey were able to quit for good. They compared it to the number of people quitting using helping substitutes (like patches, ecigs and whatnot) where the success rate was way lower.
For a year or so I smoked casually when i was a teen in the 90s (to look cool) with intermittent bouts of heavy smoking over days at friends homes/etc. Probably average ~1-2 packs a week. One day i just got bored and stopped. Never felt any withdrawal signs.
I'm not countering your point of it being addictive. I was so, so so lucky not to have been hooked by that at all. I don't know if i just didn't smoke enough, or what... but it's one of the few points in my life i feel like i made the right choice.
Weirder yet, it wasn't even a choice.. i just sort of stopped.
I'm with you for that reason. It can be a real wakeup call. I thought I had just grown more irritable and less social -- turns out I was just seriously addicted to nicotine.
I tried a number of cessation methods, including vapes, and was only eventually successful going cold turkey. But I think there's a pretty complex nexus of factors that determine what works best for an individual - your behavioral tendencies towards addictions in general, your neurochemical susceptibility to nicotine dependency in particular, your overall health and ability to weather more severe physical withdrawal, your use of other recreational drugs or medicines, and the presence of other smokers in your everyday life all come to mind. So, while I felt similarly about my own experience quitting, I disagree with the statement that it's the normative "best way", or that there is any single best way to quit.
Yep. 20 years of smoking, failing at every cessation method that I've heard of, was finally beaten with 3 months of e-cig tapering for me too. I was actually content just keep using it, but my machine broke on an out of town trip, and I realized after a few days I didn't miss it like I did when I'd try to quit smoking.
These anti-vape ads infuriate me. I don't even use one anymore, haven't for over a year, and every time I see one of those ads I think there might go another person who had a real chance to quit smoking cigarettes.
Do we have any statistics on percentage of vape users quitting analog smoking vs. recreational/teen experimental usage? If there are strong recreational vape trends in youth I can see why anti-vape ads might be a thing.
Teens already experiment with smoking actual cigarettes, all vaping does is provide them with an alternative to experiment with that is far safer and less addicting than tobacco.
That's not a good enough reason to not have anti-vape commercials. Just because it's "less bad" than analog cigarettes doesn't mean we shouldn't speak out about their negative effects.
We should, when they don't present their reasoning. Or when we know they're being financially influenced by "Big Tobacco". Tobacco laws are being driven by religious puritans who hate the idea that someone is enjoying a drug. To them, that's cheating at life by being happy before judgement day. They'll grasp at any straw to advance their agenda of control, even if it means cooperating with "scientists" from tobacco companies.
We should immediately reject all governmental proposals that aren't backed up by rigorous science. Not only would this stop a ton of abuse, but we'd save a fortune in tax money that could then be spent on initiatives that actually save lives.
Which toxic drug are you suggesting is present in eliquid? You can't be talking about nicotine, since that's no more toxic than caffeine and is not carcinogenic.
Apologies for misunderstanding your comment, however I would add that vapers don't usually end up smoking, the flow is in the other direction. I'd recommend reading the Smoking Still Kills report for more information:
That's odd, I can't reply to neotek. I didn't know there was a limit to the level of replies...
To neotek: No problem, it's easy to misunderstand people on the internet.
I do appreciate that vaping is probably safer than cigarettes, but that's a very low bar indeed...
Just because it may be (and who knows until there are long term studies), doesn't mean as a society we should be encouraging, or even allowing vaping.
At the very least I think there should be some kind of regulation around the ingredients, otherwise how can anybody say the vapor is safe for the inhaler and the people around them?
Chuckle. Nobody will go from vaping something that tastes like candy to sucking on something that tastes like an ashtray.
Even if they were having a nic fit they'd still vape - you can get stronger fluid and vape more than you can get via smoking without feeling sick.
> I do appreciate that vaping is probably safer than cigarettes, but that's a very low bar indeed...
There's no probably about it. Smoking kills, and we don't see Vaping doing that.
> Just because it may be (and who knows until there are long term studies), doesn't mean as a society we should be encouraging, or even allowing vaping.
So you'd recommend we pursue measures known to kill tens of thousands of people just because there's a vanishingly small chance of harm sometime in the distant future?
You're mainly just demonstrating the problems with democracy.
> So you'd recommend we pursue measures known to kill tens of thousands of people just because there's a vanishingly small chance of harm sometime in the distant future?
Disallowing vaping is not the same thing as recommending cigarettes.
If you asked me to make a recommendation, it would be to make smoking illegal immediately. It's ridiculous that it's allowed at all, when it kills so many people for no good reason other than "it's not illegal, so get over it". It's so dangerous that it kills thousands of people that don't even do it!
I just don't want to see the horse bolt like it did with smoking. If it's safe, then it's safe. But nobody knows yet so don't insinuate that has been proven.
Like I said, if the threshold for safety is that things must be safer than cigarettes, then that's a very low bar indeed.
> You're mainly just demonstrating the problems with democracy.
It's a problem with democracy that I want a new drug delivery system to be proven safe before being allowed/recommended?
> It's a problem with democracy that I want a new drug delivery system to be proven safe before being allowed/recommended?
100%.
> if the threshold for safety is that things must be safer than cigarettes, then [...]
That's not the threshold for playground equipment, or shampoo, but for a smoking replacement.
> If it's safe, then it's safe. But nobody knows yet
Oh yes, we do. I don't have to say rock climbing is safe to know that shark-taunting is unsafe. We have a really good idea how many people die from smoking and we aren't seeing vape users have that issues, or at least not 1/50th as much.
The open questions isn't "is vaping unsafe" but "which fluids are unsafe to breathe the vapors from?" Even if we discovered that propylene glycol is unsafe that doesn't mean the idea of atomizing nicotine is a bad one.
> Disallowing vaping is not the same thing as recommending cigarettes.
Actually, it is exactly that. This isn't a thought problem of "Which drug would you want your citizens to be hooked on," the question is "given that they are already hooked on cigarettes, ...".
> I find you rude.
Another typical liberal thug. Willing to use the might of the government to kill people in the guise of helping, and whose greatest insults are "You hurt my feelings."
I'm sure you do find me rude, but I'd rather hurt the feelings of a few uninvolved busybodies than let the millions of innocent people who got hooked on cigarettes die from cancer.
To quote the Smoking Still Kills report, which was backed by over 100 health organisations in the UK including the Royal College of Paediatricians, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, and plenty more:
>This has raised concerns that the use of electronic cigarettes could lead to the ‘renormalisation’ of smoking and provide a gateway to smoking for young people. Yet so far there is little evidence that this is happening. The use of electronic cigarettes by people who have never smoked has been, and remains, negligible.
>If electronic cigarettes are a gateway, they currently appear to be a gateway out of smoking.
Same here. It was a little bit of a challenge to switch over at first since the existing devices at the time (maybe 3-4 years ago) weren't very effective. Still, at one point while dealing with yet another lingering cough/cold due to smoking, I just said screw it, bought a better vaporizer, and stopped smoking.
The nicotine delivery is less immediate and not as strong so for someone used to the immediate dose delivered by smoking, it sort of left me wanting more but at the same time, it was a much less intense "craving" than a smoker would feel when forced to abstain.
A big part of it for me was adjusting to this. Smoking delivers a large, immediate dose of nicotine which then drops off in your bloodstream over the course of the next half hour or hour, when (predictably) you sort of want another cig. With the vaporized nicotine solution, I had to get used to just having a puff every so often throughout the day (more like hookah I guess) and maintaining a more constant but lower blood level.
Anyway, maybe I'm overanalyzing it. The results were the same though. It was as much getting off the roller coaster of "dose, levels drop, crave, redose" and onto a more sustained but lower level. It made it much easier to go without and it made it easier to lower the nicotine in the liquid to the point where I keep some 3mg/ml stuff around for the occasional desire for a mild stimulant but otherwise, it was practically effortless to wean off.
Aside from just lowering my nicotine intake and habituation to something more along the lines of how I really could go for a coffee some mornings, stopping the constant deposit of tars and particulates into my respiratory system has made a huge impact on my general health. No more lingering colds and honestly I haven't had a major cold or other respiratory infection in years now. I used to get them all the time thanks to the constant irritation and level of crap I was inhaling.
And another cool thing is that I know exactly what's in the stuff I'm inhaling occasionally now. I can get MSDS sheets for the flavorings and the rest is just nicotine and a couple types of glycerine (like you'd use in a fog machine or asthma inhaler). The levels of anything potentially harmful are a miniscule fraction of what they'd be if I was smoking cigs still and I'm no longer getting the vast majority of harmful compounds or carbon monoxide at all.
I really hate to come off as a "booster" and I try not to be the guy who just has to tell you about "his vape" but I think this sort of anecdotal experience is appropriate and on-topic in threads like this. I think it's a real shame that something with maybe 1-2% of the risk of smoking has been so demonized and lobbied against when it's a bigger improvement than methadone for heroin addicts or AA for alcoholics.
I bought one for my mother because her health seemed lowering. She didn't like it and didn't want to spend time searching for the right device and/or liquid.
She had an infarctus (not myocard it seems though) last month, obviously cardio told her no more cigarettes. She was worried about nicotine addiction, I mentioned e-cig, I got angry eyes, borderline saying it was worth than cigs.
I understand their concerns about untested liquids turning into other kinds of carcinogens, but I'm still surprised about the reaction. I expected that some doctors would be able to either mention calmly "no vaporized liquids is free of dangerous particles" or redirect to well tested brand and suppliers. I guess it's just hurried scare tactics.
Disposable ecigs are much more convenient, and are a more natural way for people to switch. I also find refilling liquid to be a nuisance. The Njoy Daily has become my favorite.
Some doctors are more open minded than others. I use an ecig to deal a smoking relapse after being quit for 7 years (sadly, the addiction never really leaves you), and from my unscientific and informal poll of pulmonologists, thoracic surgeons, and others in the medical field, they largely think of ecigs are harmless (especially when compared to cigarettes).
Of course, they won't recommend them to patients because the science has yet to fully establish their safety, but what science HAS come in is promising and the anecdotal evidence from countless users is also promising. Even so, doctors want to promote quitting altogether, not crutches or replacements, as it simplies treatment plans and eliminates variables. Plus, many of them have never been smokers, so they just don't understand what it's like to be a smoker, depending upon both nicotine and the comforting ritual of smoking in a society flush with stress.
From my personal experience with friends/family men are much more likely to make the switch. All the male smokers I have urged to try quit normal cigs shortly after. All the women use it only sometimes but continue smoking or just flat out rejected it. Not sure why this is. I am suspecting it is too technical/nerdy for most of them dealing with charging batteries, refilling liquid, assembling tanks etc. No meaning to be sexist here but I would not be surprised if the gender distribution for vaping would be similar to that in technical jobs for instance.
I noticed this as well.... Ive Never seen a female vape unless they were behind the counter at the Cape shop. Maybe some female oriented Cape advertising? Worked for malboro
Sure, but they give nicotine gums so it doesn't matter. I was just thinking about a smooth transition toward healthy lifestyle. (no cigs, no ecigs, no gums).
"E-cigarettes are not risk free, but based on current evidence they carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes. Public Health England’s independent review of the latest evidence found that using an e-cigarette (known as ‘vaping’) is around 95% safer than smoking."
and
"If you are a smoker, the best thing you can do is stop smoking now and e-cigarettes can help people to quit."
I did research the subject quite a lot, for what an non health pro or student can find, including NHS reports. The issue is that opinions evolve. Some high grade doctors were publicly against, then suddenly change, but with a bit of marketing agenda behind.
I wanted to cross check with ecigs "nerd" communities, who are fine grained in their approach of products and spend time discussing issues and qualities of liquids, and devices (combustion properties control matters).
I'm still looking for data about vaporizers (be it water + nicotine, or even THC).
This is my experience as well. 10 years of smoking analogs lead me to ecigs. Used ecig for 3 years. Went from 18mg to 0 in the last 6 months of me using. Continued using 0 nic for 2 months. Now I am 8 months clean of all nicotine products and 6 months clean of ecigs in general.
It was easy because of how gradual it was and that I was still able to satisfy the oral habit of smoking while kicking the chemical dependency. Smoking while driving was a huge hangup.
As a side note - if you buy good hardware and good quality liquid, the whole experiene is better than smoking as well. Forget the vape "culture". IMO ecigs are more convenient, taste better, feel better, and so on.
Personally, I didn't want to give up nicotine. I just wanted to give up cigarettes.
So that's what I did. I took my carton money for the month and invested in a proper setup after doing my research. I spent time trying different juices until I found one I could use all day, every day.
That was 2 years ago. Everyone around me still smokes, but I've never even been tempted to go back. I smoked for 10 years as well.
the ecigaratte subreddits are extremely helpful... they seem to have changed since i was using it (similar story to others.. smoked analogs for a decade, after about 2 years on ecigs I am not vaping or taking any nicotine).. this seems to be the best place: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vaping/
you can get a good setup for ~$50 then the heaviest users will spend like $30/month on juice (most users will spend a fraction of that)
/r/electronic_cigarette is the primary ecig subreddit. /r/diy_ejuice is a good resource for people interested in making their own eliquid. can't access the spreadsheet i made at the moment to check, but i pay somewhere in the order of a dollar worth of ingredients for 30ml of juice.
The mark up for juice at most vape stores is obscene, yet still manages to be cheaper than regular cigarettes. $15 for 30 mL at my local store, that lasts me on average 15 days. So it's still roughly half the price for a half pack a day smoker and 1/4 of the price for a pack a day smoker (assuming a very generous $5 a pack).
If you mix your own juice you're approaching savings that are better on an order of magnitude.
it's crazy how expensive some juices are, especially when a lot are pretty simple flavor profiles with lots of sweeteners and colorings added in.
once i found some diy recipes that i enjoyed, i made a pair of 120ml, and the cost savings from those two bottles alone covered all the ingredients and equipment (beakers, stirring rods, scale, bottles, etc). diy is especially worthwhile if your device guzzles juice like my geekvape griffin tank does.
I'm a cheap bastard, so I just buy Chinese liquid. 50ml for 11 bucks.
If you're buying domestic juice you pay a premium for nothing special, from what I can tell. Also, the chances of it being made in a proper factory are basically nil. It's often someone else's DIY garage juice at a 10000% markup.
Yeah, I'd agree on the markup part for sure. From my experience the quality difference between "premium" and cheap juice is small but noticeable. These days I only buy juicse with flavors that are tough to work with, coffee and chocolate in particular.
I haven't kept up with the new FDA guidelines since starting DIY about a year ago, but from what I remember a lot of the little garage brands are going to be in trouble. My buddy used to work at Apollo out in Concord and I know they take their juice seriously. I think it's shitty, but it's not because the line is dirty haha. Molecule Labs out in Benicia has a pretty cool facility as well.
If they had established flavors before the guidelines were put into place, they will be fine for now - just no new flavors. Unfortunately the hamstringing of innovation will eventually lead to their demise.
For sure, I take it they're able to start making new flavors again upon meeting the guidelines? Seems like it'll just force people to outsource manufacturing to somewhere like Molecule or just fold, which is a shame. It's been a lot of fun watching the industry explode over the last few years.
Also check out Rocky Top Vapor! 145ml for that price, and sometimes have sales where it's only $17 for 145ml. GREAT juice too. I love their Cereal Milk and Strawberry Fruit Chew flavors.
Different tanks consume different amounts. If you subohm on a 2+ coil rig you will use a TON of product than 20w mod ever could. Maybe his equipment plays a significant factor into his volume consumed.
I tried my hand at mixing myself but was not successful. Could not make anything that I considered good. With the goal of simplicity I chose to buy pre-made coils and buy pre-made juice.
Sigelei 50W Watt Box Mod
Kanger-subtank with OCC Vertical coil. 0.5 ohm
liquids:
Ultimate Kringle (every day juice)
Castle Long (every now and then)
As others have replied and as might know, the world of ecigs is rather large, poorly detailed (mostly), and can be expensive to start. That equipment worked really well for me at the time. But the "go to" gear may be different by now - I would stress that you research before you buy.
I have learned everything i know about ecigs from friends, ecigforums, youtube rewviews, and buying a lot of crappy equipment.
> Went from 18mg to 0 in the last 6 months of me using. Continued using 0 nic for 2 months. Now I am 8 months clean of all nicotine products and 6 months clean of ecigs in general.
Congratulations!
But being a non-smoker, I don't understand. Can you explain why you couldn't have cut down on nicotine by just smoking fewer cigarettes per day?
Because cigarettes deliver nicotine very, very fast, giving an instant and pleasant rush. After an hour or so the nicotine level in your blood has fallen quite a lot and you'll be craving another one.
E-cig nicotine delivery happens slower and you avoid both the highs and the crashing lows. That makes it a lot easier to cut down to insignificant amounts of nicotine over a few months.
Tobacco smoke also contains monoamine oxidase inhibiting compounds, which are believed to drastically increase the addictive potential of nicotine. Rats are largely indifferent to nicotine alone, but will compulsively self-administer nicotine in combination with an MAOI.
Cigarettes do give a more immediate and intense nicotine 'hit'. Ammonia compounds are added to cigarette tobacco, which increase the proportion of freebase nicotine to nicotine salts. Cigarettes are, in a very literal sense, the crack cocaine of nicotine delivery.
As other have said better than I could have - analogs are more of a one size one dose kind of thing.
PLUS To change your dose you have to change your habit. With Ecig, to change the dose you just buy a different product, but your day to day (hour to hour) habits are the same as always.
Same story here. Smoker for 20 years, been vaping for 2. Started at 18 mg, went to 12, then 9 (made this myself by mixing equal parts 12 and 6). Currently at 6 mg. Already have large quantities of 3 mg and 0 mg juice purchased. When my supply of one strength runs out, I move on to a lower one.
I always make a point of sticking at each level for at least 2-3 months. This way I can be sure I've grown fully accustomed to one step before taking the next. In my view, reducing the nicotine content too quickly would increase chances of a relapse.
I noticed the same - I tried to jump too quickly from 18 to 12 to 6 to 3, once I hit 3 I started smoking again. It's a nice way to wean yourself off and gives you a ton of options for flavor, ingestion, and strength
I have a friend who quit this way. Steadily reduced the nicotine until he was either using a very low amount or none, depending on the flavor. Then one day he lost the vape and didn't feel the urge to buy a new one.
Yup my Kanger Subox Mini starter kit was a great purchase. I cut it down to 0mg nicotine over a few months with ease. I still vape a bit now and then but I never feel the need to do it like I did cigarettes. Plus I don't stink and food tastes so fucking good now!
This, IMO, is a good reason to legalize and regulate all drugs, including hard drugs like heroin and meth. The user having the tools to regulate the potency and amount of the drug in order to use this taper-down strategy is not available via the black market.
Not to mention the drastic increase in accurate market information. The amount of misinformation and lies (reefer madness) about drugs coming from well meaning (that might be generous) people and organizations about illegal drugs is staggering. Some people trust this and never try drugs, other people try drugs and realize they've been lied to, which leads to a lack of trust in the information presented about drugs. This is a bad thing because some drugs truly do have very bad downsides.
Sometimes I wish kids were forced to truly grok some of the basics of economic theory before getting to high school. I wonder how different the world would be if even a few percent more people didn't take some of the actions they do that are clearly counterproductive.
I think along the same lines as you, but I'm not so sure about users being able to successfully self-taper with legalization. Lots of people with oxycodone or similar perscriptions find it almost impossible to meaningfully self taper. Not to say that there aren't some people with that level of self control, but not all. I don't think it would be much different with heroin or meth.
I get the impression it varies with different drugs: with cigarettes the addiction is powerfully reinforced by associating taste/smell with the nicotine kick, and vaping can particularly help by letting you remove that factor.
(Couldn't say from my own experience, though, unless you count my addiction to chocolate.)
Yeah it's definitely not the same with different drugs. The urges triggered by smell of cigarette smoke, I personally feel is more a mental thing, ie. the power of suggestion. It's separate from the physical dependence.
Vaping may remove the smell triggers, but having smoked for a long time, and having vaped a fair amount as well, I suspect that while vaping may be much healthier, it could end up being more addictive due to the way it tends to be used along with differences in the way it's inhaled.
When light cigarettes were first introduced, they also thought they would be healthier, but many people actually tended to pull harder on a light cigarette than the regular cigarettes, resulting in smoke being pulled more deeply into the lungs actually doing more damage.
It varies with the type of drug, definitely. Most people can’t just kick opiates once addicted; often they end up just abusing methadone instead of heroin or pills. But I think addicts don’t generally want to be addicts.
In this case, legalisation and regulation of a different drug—kratom—could help users self-rehabilitate. Kratom is to opiates much as e-cigs are to cigarettes—some of the effects, but far milder, more manageable, and easier to quit. The DEA announced their intent to schedule it, but (thankfully) has since backpedaled a bit due to public objection.
Yeah, Kratom definitely has a lot of potential to do a lot of good for opiate addicts. I disagree with the analogy to e-cigs though. With e-cigs you can put a much stronger concentration of nicotine in each hit depending on the liquid used. It's still exactly the same chemical, ie. nicotine, binding to the exact same receptors in the same way. With Kratom, you are binding to the same receptors as opiates, but it's a different chemical which binds/antagonizes the receptors differently than other opiates. It's this difference which makes tapering Kratom easier than other opiates. This difference does not apply to cigs and e-cigs.
Sorry, I was being unclear. I was speaking only in terms of addictive potential and difficulty of quitting. MAOIs in cigarettes make them more addictive than e-cigs (nicotine alone) as the different action of other opiates makes them more addictive than mitragynine.
I see. I wasn't aware of the MAOIs in tobacco. Though I wasn't able to find a good source on how much they might contribute to the addiction (lots of questions about it around the web though).
Do you happen to know of credible sources or studies which have looked at this?
17 years of smoking here, and decided to quit when my first child was born almost 5 years ago. The electronic cigarette industry was comparatively ancient at the time, and the devices were...not the best. Anyhow, I kept at it, and within 4 months, had transitioned completely without realizing it. Can't even remember a ceremonial "last cigarette", although I'll still have a cigarette once a year as a harsh reminder.
In any case, I followed much the same road once I switched; I stepped down from 18mg (headaches!) to 12mg, and now I'm at 6mg or 3mg depending on the liquid I have. I can't describe just how much my health has improved over that span as a result.
Also, devices and liquids have _vastly_ improved in the past 4 years, to the point where when I give recommendations to others looking to transition, I don't get cold stares back from failed attempts and cheap devices that kept them from ditching cigarettes.
Smoked until I got an ecig (not one of the huge monsters, just a cheap $20 refillable) then smoked that until it broke then I didn't really want to smoke anymore
I quit smoking without using e-cigarettes. It's actually really easy to quit to if you actually want to. e-cigarettes are a crutch that no one actually needs.
I acknowledge that not everyone will agree with me, but this is my opinion on the matter.
Do e-cigarettes really have a reputation as a 'menace'? I've never heard anyone express any significant concern about them on an individual level (certainly nowhere near as much as about traditional cigarettes), and yet I've read countless news articles decrying them.
Only in U.S. cities will I see scare-tactic advertisements against e-cigarettes. What's strange to me is that the Truth campaign is sponsoring some of them. The Truth campaign is a result of a liability suit of several states vs the cigarette companies, and it is intended to pay for anti-smoking advertisements and smoking cessation programs. It appears to be a blatant violation of the terms of the judgement.
You can be even more general than that. Inhaling burning organic matter is probably worth avoiding. There is some good evidence that wood smoke is also quite bad for you.[1]
On an individual level, I find them nearly as obnoxious as normal cigarettes even without tobacco in them and someone is just smoking "perfume" around (why bother at that point?). I have allergy sensitivities to aerosols and perfumes and strong smells and just about any smoking tends to infuriate me.
I see so many people use e-cigarettes as an excuse to smoke indoors, even in light of public smoking bans, and get upset when I complain that they make me feel sick. Indoor air quality isn't just about carcinogens or aerosolized tobacco, but allergens and respect for common spaces that we all have to share.
There's a couple of big things against them right now.
A) they are unproven. Many people believe that something that isn't proven safe or unsafe is not better than something unsafe that has been heavily scrutinized and studied. What if there's a much worse effect that we dont' know about yet?
B) They are unstandardized. Each producer can be putting who-knows-what in the oils.
C) It's still smoke. When they first came out, a lot of people got e-cigs with the idea that they could get around smoking bans, such as on planes or in bars (in places that banned that). This has resulted in a massive backlash, because it really wasn't health problems that caused those bans, it was the fact that nobody wants to sit in someone elses smoke cloud. This is causing a big social stigma against e-cig users.
In theory the vapour might have as strong a smell as cigarette smoke; in practice even the most strong smelling vapours are mostly comparable to the smell of personal fragrances, and we are ways off from banning those as well.
In practice, there's often no useful difference between a thin cloud of vile-smelling smoke and a thick cloud of fruity-smelling vape: many people would prefer to avoid both. (Also, the vape cloud leaves much more residue than smoke did, just much less foul). Best policy seems to be to use the things only where actual smoking is allowed to try to avoid annoying bystanders.
I wonder if people would still be annoyed if it didn't produce a cloud?
To me, it seems like many people have this weird "ick" about natural biological functions. Some are understandable - like body waste, and sneezing/coughing that could spread contagions. Regular smoking I can understand from the standpoint that it smells bad.
But vape clouds typically smell good. But they are visible. So people are reminded of "ick - breath!" meaning something similar to coughing/sneezing (and not covering your mouth/nose)...
Yet, nobody seems to have an aversion to everyone around them just "breathing" normally - or even an exasperated sigh or huff - which is arguably just as much breath coming out as someone vaping.
Just that it is invisible - and now no "ick factor" if you will.
It's kinda crazy; here is something that can and could really help smokers, yet being vilified because of some weird hangup people have with breathing - because it is visible. It is similar to how some people love to eat chicken nuggets, but give them a bone-in chicken wing and all of a sudden it is "gross - it has bones" - like the nugget is somehow more sanitary or further removed from the chicken because it is boneless?
I also omit the flavors to minimize the risks. I also vape only on very low settings and with increased nicotine.
I see people using devices beyond 150W and super hot coils to 'make dem sick clouds'. They have essentially created some nice portable catalytic converters. You can even buy coils made from different alloys like Ni-Ti and some devices measure the coil resistance to control the temperature.
I would never claim that they are safe without a lot more scientific evidence, but safer is plainly obvious. Vaporizers do not combust the material. Incomplete combustion of plant matter generates tons of carcinogens. The material in ecigs is vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol, nicotine, and flavors. The first two have been inhaled regularly for decades (asthma inhalers for one). Nicotine has been shown to be mainly harmless. The only thing iffy is the flavorings. They are well-known to be safe to ingest, but there's no real data on their regular inhalation.
Well, you can get the ingredients list for one. Like a lot of things, there are some less reputable companies making it and a lot of reputable ones. If anything, I've been pleasantly surprised at how seriously a lot of the vaping "community" takes this, sometimes going as far as to have samples analyzed in a lab and sharing the results when there's a concern about one of the flavoring agents in a mix.
Then there's people like me and the person who replied to your comment earlier who just make our own. It's surprisingly simple and pretty inexpensive. The other commenter eschews flavoring altogether whereas I only use a small amount of it and only buy stuff from companies that list the compounds included so I can make sure there are no particularly nasty components that would make them dangrous to inhale in typical concentrations.
I agree that there are no long term studies on the effects of inhaling this stuff for years on end but a lot of the things that stick out as hazardous are easy to identify and even when they exist, it's typically at a level that's a small fraction of what you'd run into when talking about combustible tobacco.
Basically it's harm reduction. Like how you read about the dangers of eating char-grilled meat because it has some of the same things as cig smoke. That may be the case but you're not getting nearly as much of it so you won't likely get cancer from eating a seared steak a few times a year like you would from smoking cigs daily.
It's true that flavorings are the biggest variable and it's a risk that people are taking because many feel that risk is extremely low.
For example; some flavorings contain diacetyl which, if inhaling too much, will lead to Bronchiolitis Obliterans or "popcorn lung", but the amount actually inhaled in e-cigarettes is 750 times less than cigarettes and vastly less than the amount inhaled by people that have developed popcorn lung.
Yes, there are some chemicals in the flavoring, but the amount is fractions of that in cigarettes (flavorings usually account for less than 10% in my liquid, and much of the flavoring is more base liquid; VG and PG). I've taken the risk assessment and decided that e-cigs are much safer. Each person must do that for themselves.
For anyone who hasn't followed this, "popcorn lung"[1] is named that because it was found in workers at factories making (microwave?) popcorn products. In other words, they were dealing with diacetyl in industrial quantities.
"If you’re reading this as a member of the public, please don’t be put off by the conflicting headlines – we all agree cigarettes are bad for you, most of us agree vaping is probably much safer than smoking regular cigarettes, and if you’re a smoker we all really want our research to help you to quit. Don’t let us get in the way."
I wonder about the culture around vaping. From my observations, pretty much everyone I see doing it is young and from appearances seem to be counter-culture. Doesn't mean they're bad people, but if they're the only one doing it, it doesn't make it mainstream.
It also leads to the vape being classed in the same breath as "neckbeard" and "fedora"... which is unfortunate as hell for people just trying to quit cigarettes. The problem is, the person who quietly vapes out of sight and mind doesn't make an impression. The guy with a fedora and a neckbeard who's blowing huges clouds of vapor in a public space makes a lasting and terrible impression.
At the end of the day though, if you're a smoker, the choice is pretty straightforward, and you should use a "vape". You should however, be considerate of others, and unfortunately also accept that for a while you're going to be lumped in with the more anti-social element of society.
Too be fair, smoking is already counter culture in the USA.
I'd imagine alot of reasons you don't see more vaping is age. Younger folks don't care as much(and smoke less in general) but some dude smoking malboro at 50 is far less likely to roll up with an ecig at a casual BBQ. Its a hard enough battle getting old people using email... Let alone vaping.
This is purely anecdotal but I have made the switch almost a year ago, also by "accident" after buying a starter kit to see what this thing was people around me started doing. Without actively trying to quit I just was not interested in regular cigarettes shortly after and managed to lower my nicotine content from 24mg to 6mg and am now planning to go lower with the next batch of liquid that I will order.
This was after many failed attempts to quit from around a pack a day with the longest cessation time being around half a year.
I don't think that vaping is harmless and I would not be surprised there are adverse long time health risks. But compared to real cigarettes this was a godsend for me. It is much cheaper, it does not have that disgusting smell, and it is much easier from the logistics side compared to having to buy cigarettes every day, feeling like some lowlife addict in the process. What I have now is a hobby, tinkering with my devices, building coils, trying juices (since some time I got rid of any flavours and just vape pure VG/PG). Gone is most of the shortness of breath when working out, disgusting mouthfeel in the morning, cold hands and feet and this permanent feeling of being poisoned. I gave my father a starter-kit for Christmas and he managed to quit cigarettes completely on that very day after heavily smoking for 30 years, trying to quit and suffering from the effects of smoking much more than a relatively young person does. I might have saved his life that day.
So yes, maybe vaping is bad, maybe it will kill you when you are not able to quit timely. But the time spend with the addiction is a whole lot more pleasant with vaping than with cigarettes and I cannot imagine it being remotely as deadly as smoke/tar. Banning vaping because of unknown health risks is complete madness in my opinion.
I quit smoking 7 years ago and helped a dozen people to quit as well.
NONE of the people I know who used e-cigarettes were able to quit for good.
Here's my recipe:
1. Quitting sounds hard but it isn't. The majority of people who try to quit, actually succeed.
2. Don't use ANYTHING as a substitute (no chewing gum, no patches or e-cigs). Substitutes usually can never replace the original and will just keep you "hooked".
3. Read affirmative stuff (like news stories, studies). Reading about a study that showed most people quit for good, actually helps. As does reading about the consequences for continueing to smoke.
That's it. Just quit. It's easy, you'll be off cigarettes in no time.
Everyone can do it. Smoking is totally a 90s thing.
And the one person I know who had tried various ways to quit over the years got a vape set, tapered down gradually to no cigarettes over about 6 weeks (I think on day 1 she only had half a pack instead of her usual ≥ 1 pack habit), and hasn't had an actual cigarette in over 2 years. Different people seem to respond better to different approaches.
I know the initial success is great. The question is, will she be able to stay off cigarettes for good (and ecigs, too). Most ecig-users I know went back to cigarettes without hesitation when they forgot to bring extra liquid to the party and they got drunk. Even after years of abstinence from real cigarettes.
Everything anyone here will say is anecdotal of course.
I think (as someone who hasn't touched a cigarette in two years, and hasn't touched an ecig since February) that the most important part is that you have to taper down the nicotine content of the ecigs, otherwise you're just replacing one nicotine delivery system with another and not making any progress. The leap between being nicotine and tobacco free and a cigarette is far greater (mentally and physically) than between a nicotine supplement (ecigs) and a cigarette.
Occasional relapse isn't actually a terrible thing. One cigarette every half a year isn't going to kill you, probably, or at least it's not going to kill you faster than all the other unhealthy things you do.
If it's easy to switch back after you've had your relapse, the only real issue is with the all-or-none definition of quitting.
I think that the two properties--that it is safer than cigarettes and that it's a menace--are not a contradiction. It's certainly not as bad to be around a vaper than a smoker, but that doesn't mean it's not bad to be around a vaper. It's relatively better, absolutely still on the "gross, don't do that around me" end of the spectrum.
I try pretty hard to not subject people to my disgusting habits. How is it that people expect inhaling chemicals to be any different? They act like they are surprised that you don't want to be exposed to their disgusting clouds of stink.
But it isn't nearly as stinky! And I have a feeling that it's much less noxious! And the vapour hasn't even been proven yet to kill everyone around! It's totally amazing and we should all be encouraging everyone to vape!
If you can't tell, I'm agreeing with you. I pray something is done about vaping before the horse has bolted like it did with cigarettes. Just because it could be less dangerous doesn't mean it should be encouraged or indeed allowed at all. Every vaping liquid being sold should have to be tested thoroughly for safety IMO, and really I'm amazed that it doesn't have to be.
Vaping is too new for long-term studies to have been performed, and also with the zillions of different kinds of vaping juices, each one with a different formulation, how can we know that they are all safe?
It's an absolute joke how much secondhand smoke a non-smoker is forced to inhale nowadays with what we know about how dangerous it is, and I live in Australia, with relatively progressive smoking laws. I don't want to be subjected to secondhand smoke in public places, and I don't want to be subjected to secondhand vapor either, regardless of whether or not the inhaler considers it "safe enough".
Actually it is illegal here to sell nicotene-containing liquid. I do think that nicotene-containing liquid is being sold however, as I do see people vaping around the place, and just quietly, they don't seem like the kind of people who could get their stuff together enough to make their own ecig juice.
IIUC, cigarettes have been chemically modified to increase the rate of the nicotine hit, to get nicotine through the bloodstream to where it does its nicotiney job. That's one of the reasons cigarettes are more addictive: the sudden hit followed by a quick drop off.
I find that I sometimes still crave a cigarette. I suspect that has more to do one or more of the 599 additives (4000 when burnt)[1] in them being addictive.
We actually don't know that they're safer to puff. We simply don't have any evidence that indicates that they're as or more dangerous.
Every variety of plastic or food additive that ended up being proved harmful was thought safe for years. People are right to be skeptical of them for the next thirty years or so.
"Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture, said Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health."
This is true.
You can see the same thing during the (alcohol) prohibition era: because ethyl alcohol is necessary for other uses, it was mandated to be "denatured" by adding chemicals that made it less appealing to drink. When they found people still drinking it (or managing to separate the alcohol from the denaturants), they increased the toxicity of the chemicals until they were actually poisoning people.
In this case, the primary goal is to prevent new smokers. Since many of the e-cigarette flavors are pleasant, they regard it as attractive to children. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that.
On the other hand, if you are already smoking, your soul is lost and, to a first approximation, it would be better if you were to die as soon as possible---outside of pharmaceutical companies, there is no serious interest in cessation. Inside those companies, making nicotine gum and patches is big business, and I know people who have been chewing the gum frequently for nearly a decade.
There is a certain amount of the same feeling in those who have quit smoking. To paraphrase an old joke, how do you know someone quit smoking? Don't worry, they'll tell you. If you can quit cold-turkey, good; if you can't, you are weak willed and a lesser human.
In any case, the bottom line is, like in all Puritan situations, that results matter less than perceptions.
Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture
I think that's hugely simplified. There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use recreationally:
- Crack
- Meth
- Nicotine
- Heroin
People who use those at all are very likely to use them a whole hell of a lot, and they have terrible health effects. I don't think it's Puritanism to recommend staying away from highly addictive substances.
Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that.
"Eighth grade students who use e-cigarettes are 10 times more likely than their peers who do not use e-cigarettes to eventually smoke tobacco cigarettes. This trend continues to a slightly lesser degree for older adolescents. Tenth and 12th grade students who use e-cigarettes are eight and six times more likely, respectively, than their peers to smoke tobacco cigarettes. This suggests that youth who use e-cigarettes are likely to become tobacco cigarette smokers as they age."
That stat isn't necessarily causal though. Have they controlled for the fact that 8th graders who start using e-cigs are already more likely to start smoking tobacco cigarettes? Which seems like a very reasonably assumption to make
Nicotine alone doesn't have 'terrible health effects' for those that are otherwise generally healthy. Yes, it is addictive and can exacerbate existing conditions (e.g. high blood pressure), but nicotine consumed through methods like lozenges, patches and gum poses negligible health risks.
As long as people keep playing the sub-ohm game, thus keeping the majority of heat dissipation in the battery (I've seen 5 milli-Ohm coils, imagine where the heat's going when an 18650 has a typical resistance of 100 milli-ohms fresh) then yes, these things will be a menace. Just the other day a sub-ohmer at the mental health facility I was re-wiring had his battery explode on him. POPFIZZLE! It was just sitting on the concrete in the shade, he wasn't even using it and it hadn't been used for at least 10 minutes.
Ohm's law really needs to get more exposure in the classroom.
Okay, so... Extremely simplified (slightly incorrect) but good rule of thumb for you at the end.
What happens when you hotwire a battery (a wire between positive and negative)? Current flows, discharging the battery but also often melting or exploding the battery. Normally current flow is the whole reason for a battery, but why is hotwiring bad as opposed to tossing a LED+resistor in the circuit?
In a circuit, heat accumulates where majority of resistance is. So when your element has less resistance than your battery, more of the stress is going there than on your heating element. So it's hard on your power supply. If it's a cool 5v hobbyist power supply, you're probably cool. They're durable. Don't stress too much, you're more likely to break the element. But if it's a battery, you're sinking heat into something that is ultimately full of volatile chemicals and has limited capacity to fight back.
You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by transferring the charge to an intermediate element (obviously your ecig rig hasn't popped yet).
> You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by transferring the charge to an intermediate element
Of course, most people use regulated mods which do just that.
As someone who vapes, I wouldn't be opposed to banning the sale of mechanical mods (i.e. mods which are literally just a battery, a button and a resistance element in a circuit). They're dangerous. On the other hand, people would just build them themselves, they're not difficult.
Mechanical mods are only dangerous if you're using a volatile power supply - e.g. a lithium cell. NiMH (what's used in the mechanical MFLB) doesn't do this, those tend to burst/leak rather than go up in an incendiary ball.
This is indeed a problem if people are using mechanical mods. But with a sufficient battery pack and proper voltage/current regulation, and batteries from reputable manufacturers (Sony, Samsung, LG, etc.), it's not even a concern.
Also, the mechanical mod crowd is a rather small part of the e-cig community overall. Vocal, but small.
Of course it's great if you're replacing normal cigarettes with it. But why should we pretend it's healthy to do if you weren't smoking to begin with? Nicotine is still highly addictive and causes heart disease. If you're not currently using nicotine, why start?
It's not about pretending they're healthy, it's about not pretending like they're anywhere near as terrible as smoking tobacco, which is terrible. The argument seems to be "they both involve inhaling and exhaling something that isn't air, so they're both equally bad."
Personally I think it's mainly to do with the optics of it. As a society we've spent all kinds of money and effort to stop smoking, and it's now heavily stigmatized. So to see something come around that appears similar to smoking seems to drive a lot of people nuts.
Obviously don't start. But do write the FDA urging them to recognize them as at least less unhealthy than cigarettes. And removing those moronic testing charges associated with flavor and nicotine would help consumers make healthy choices instead of accepting the tobacco companies products and actually get people off of smoking.
That's one thing I don't understand. It's great if used as an an aid to quitting, like nicotine gum, but I don't understand why someone would use them otherwise. A nonsmoker buying nicotine gum would be just as crazy. I can't imagine anyone being naive enough to think that nicotine by itself is a good thing, except as a step towards getting rid of a preexisting nicotine addiction.
Nicotine itself is a stimulant with few health risks, the main problem with tobacco is the burning plant matter. Nicotine itself occurs naturally in many foods, such as tomatoes.
I used e-cigarettes to quit smoking and I can attest that they did work for me. Although my friend and brother tried it as well without any success - so I guess its an individual thing.
Although I would recommend e-cigs as a temporary quit smoking aid only and not as a replacement. I noticed I got more lung infections while vaping and my brother noticed the same thing. Also I wouldnt trust some of the flavors out there, they put anything in there. So if its a temporary measure taken as a quit smoking aid, great, as an alternative to cigs - that Im still on the fence about.
It's only briefly alluded to in the piece, indirectly at that, but one of the most frustrating things about vice taxes is that they are sold as methods to disincentivize behavior, but as governments use the revenue, as that behavior falls, there's a tendency to try to create an equivalent tax on the new behavior. The worst of these are the periodic proposals for a "mileage tax" on high efficiency vehicles in states like California, which has actually been pitched (unsuccessfully) for the explicit purpose of replacing the revenue lost on gas taxes from the shift towards electric and high mileage cars.
Every time you drive your car, you damage the road, increase traffic congestion, and put toxic chemicals into the air.
The purpose of a gas tax is to discourage marginal usage.
Since driving is more expensive, it makes that person who was deciding between driving their car or taking a bike to work and makes them just a little bit more likely to use the bike.
Yea, the argument that it's a usage tax falls apart when you point out that, even before the movement to fuel efficient vehicles, a gas tax always applied to different people differently, regardless of their usage, as so many cars get different mileage, require more expensive forms of gas, etc. Unless someone somehow tries to make an argument that the variation in tax burden is somehow progressive (which is ridiculous unless they're arguing that wealthy people as a rule drive less efficient cars), then there's really no way to claim that it's actually a use tax.
If the gas tax was pitched and passed as a usage tax, rather than as an incentive for purchasing more efficient vehicles, I'd have a different perspective on moving to a mileage tax. However, in California, at least some gas taxes were pitched and passed as vice taxes, and the mileage tax here was explicitly pitched to replace the revenue generated by it (by at least one CA representative). Thankfully, thus far we've resisted.
Related: a usage tax for maintenance of roads and bridges has a far simpler option than taxing gas that may be used in boats, tractors, and other non-road uses: toll roads, which tax everyone who uses the roads equivalently. And before anyone argues that such a tax is regressive: a gas tax is far more regressive, as those with older, less efficient vehicles are hit harder than those with the money to buy a Tesla.
Because diesel is commonly used for non-vehicle purposes, diesel fuel is frequently marked with color to indicate if it was taxed at the vehicle rate or not:
For anyone looking at e-cigarettes, I have recommend the JUUL [0] as it is by the far the safest, best pulling, and sleekest looking e-cigarette I've tried. The only downside is that there isn't a simple way to reduce nicotine content. That aside, it's a wonderful little piece of hardware.
the malboro man does not smoke e cigarettes. they're not cool. they're a medical tool for addicts. being an addict is not cool. as smoking is just silly herd behaviour of putting burning stinking sticks into your mouth and somehow being part of something cool, it's no surprise e cigarrettes don't take off.
only a big shift in marketing of these things can change that. if e cigarettes where seen as the Apple of smoking surely they'd sell better.
I used to date a girl who used an ecig and would exhale a cloud of vanilla cookie aroma everywhere we went. I thought that was pretty cool to be honest.
Interesting, except for the fact that nicotine is not carcinogenic and doesn't kill you. It is about as dangerous as caffeine, and we can look around us and see how uncool that dangerous substance has become over the past few decades...
I know many people say short term use of e-cigarettes have helped them that's great but I have to wonder about those who have no plans to stop.
There seems to be a vocal battle between e-cig users and scientists each having their own claims about diacetyl. It's the famous fake butter compound for microwave popcorn that caused lung cancer in the workers who handled it.
My dad has IPF and COPD two lung diseases from years of working a blue collar job breathing in small damaging particles over time. Sawdust, paint drops, metal from grinding, probably welding fumes, etc. any small particles may seem harmless but over time damage lungs.
What concerns me about e-cigarettes is maybe the damage doesn't appear until 30 from now. Will we see an increase of lung disease 30 years from now?
Note that diacetyl has been removed from almost all flavour compounds used in the creation of ejuice, aside from some custard ones, and even then there's variations without diacetyl.
In any case, I doubt there's a very significant amount of people who've started ecigs who wouldn't have started cigarettes, and cigarettes are well known to cause lung damage.
Safe or not for smokers, non-smokers should certainly not have to inhale the same substances that smokers do. I find it alarming that e-cigarette marketing managed to convince smokers that what gets exhaled is just "water vapor", and thus they can now smoke anywhere they want.
I don't understand. In my experience these vaporizers don't have any sort of smoke that lingers around and there is no unpleasant sensation associated with breathing around ecigarette users like there is with tobacco. Even if there is more than water vapor in there, I feel like it's very unlikely that I'd be getting any sort of significant dose from their exhalations, so why should I care if they smoke inside?
Do you have any proof it is safe, or are we just basing our decisions on feelings?
I'm personally not comfortable inhaling your random unknown vaporizer gases. Many chemicals are dangerous at levels you are not able to smell, or indeed have no odor.
Are you being serious? Just google for "e-cigarette smoke harmful" and pick any of the papers that you get. Serious stuff, NHS-sponsored research and the like.
I find it really interesting that the bulk of the comments here are about folks using them as a smoking cessation aid.
In my case, every friend I know who's started using e-cigarettes took them up without having an existing tobacco habit. Some of them add nicotine to the vape juice, some don't.
I don't know how common this is, but it's certainly given vaping a negative impression for me. At the very least, it seems like an unnecessary risk given how little public health data there is.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadIt's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers. The poor can't, so they just die.
(I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income, rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)
That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool.
There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health Programs
For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social control
Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period.
Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types
Further then you have to define what "harm" it is doing.
I also suspect part of that "harm" you talk about is Costs associated with healthcare that is paid for by the taxpayer, meaning you likely support government run socialized health services. I do not.
I suggest you have a trip to to a respiratory ward sometime.
I do not believe it is my place to tell individuals what chemicals they can or can not consume
I am 100% against the War on Drugs as well, and believe that all drugs, including crack, cocaine, and all prescription drugs should be legal to buy if the person desires it.
I am an individualist, not a collectivist
> I never support using taxation for social control
Yes, money is fungible, and so gas tax, alcohol tax, and cigarette taxes collected may not be applied to covering the costs of that activity. Even putting it in a specific fund doesn't completely fix the problem, it only establishes a minimum support for that fund's target. Make gas tax specifically fund road surface repairs, and then the DOT can use part of the general fund that is freed up for other purposes.
However, it seems very reasonable to use taxation as a sort of softer hammer to create an incentive or disincentive for various activities. In a way, the government's only power is in its monopoly on legal violence. It can do nothing but kill or imprison you by force. Sure, it can issue fines, or garnish your wages (effectively the same thing), or remove your drivers license, - but the fine has teeth only because they'll imprison you if you fail to pay. And if you try to fight your way out of captivity you'll either be pathetically overpowered or shot. Furthermore, criminal punishments require prosecution in a court, which is expensive and slow.
It would be unreasonable to try to reduce alcoholism by arresting people, charging them with drinking, and sentencing them with a $0.25 fine. It would also be unreasonable to pass a law requiring everyone to buy a house, get married and have 2.54 children, or be arrested and jailed.
Instead, taxation offers a much gentler stick, and sometimes even a carrot. Increase taxation on behavior that society finds to be objectionable or harmful - smoking, drinking, gambling, etc. Offer tax rebates for behaviors that society finds to be valuable: donating to charity, helping the environment, raising a family, owning a home. Taxation is definitely an effective tool for social control. Do you have an alternative? Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?
I hope you can appreciate why some people would say the answer to that second question is "as little as possible."
When the government is offering carrots and sticks, there will inevitably be some group of people systemically discriminated against (either by not receiving the carrots proportionally or disproportionately receiving the stick). Tyranny of the majority and what not. The gears of government grind very slowly, and changing government policies often results in multiple generations of people experiencing discrimination before things are changed.
For a recent example, one argument (among others, of course) for same-sex marriage equality is that it's discriminatory for same-sex partners not to receive the carrots of legal and tax benefits that come with being married.
Is there an alternative? Maybe. Maybe not. I could spitball one, but it would likely be an inadequate solution. Still, I think it's prudent to be careful. Social control is a double-edged sword.
Bingo... I do not believe the government has any ethical role in tell me how I should live my life, or punishing me if I choose to have a life style the government disapproves of.
At least in Germany that's not the case. State income from taxes is not earmarked. Other fees like the mandatory television licence might be.
That might be what people say but that's a horrible idea from a governmental perspective. There's nothing that says that the amount of money that can possibly extracted by taxing a thing is the right amount for combating it. If something is taxed enough to double or triple it's official price then smuggling will start to develop. And even if you were to raise taxes enough to instantly stop all new smoking you'd still have to care for people whose lungs have been damaged by cancer somehow.
And in general introducing coupling between taxes and expenditures needlessly complicates the budgetary process. It's a recipe for government sclerosis if you take it too far with people thinking that, e.g., they can't invest in public transit because then road taxes would go down, but the roads are needed for emergency vehicles regardless of commuting and road maintenance isn't anything like linear with use.
Tax things because you want people to do them less and because that lets you lower taxes on things you don't want to discourage.
In the US, you cannot drive on the highways with more than 10 short tons (9.1 Mg) per axle. If I cram my daily driver to the gills with heavy junk, I might have 0.75 short tons per axle. That heavily loaded cargo trailer is doing 30000 times more damage to the roads per mile than I am, specifically, and as much as 9600 average passenger cars. [0]
Axle weight is not taken into consideration when I am taxed for the roads. Thus tax-avoidance behaviors optimize for the wrong variables.
Drug dosages and adverse health effects are less easily modeled numerically. My concern is that if you tax something without understanding the potential consequences, you may end up doing more harm than good.
[0] http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf
Lottery games are an example of this - the people who play are overwhelmingly poor. This article argues that lottery spending may even be the single largest tax poor families pay [1].
With regard to what you say about there being no replacement income for governments if people stopped smoking cigarettes - I'd say this is only the case if consumption was banned. If it was slowly phased out the pain wouldn't be noticeable. It's like autonomous vehicles - what really matters is the speed of creative destruction.
[1] http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/
The government can replace its tobacco tax with a carbon tax.
However, each state is different; some states' legislatures intentionally tax tobacco products as a deterrent to smoking, with demonstrable public health benefits [2]. Cigarette taxes are negatively correlated with smoking rates. I concede that the federal tobacco tax rate is too low to do anything substantial, for raising revenue or as a deterrent. It should either be raised, or scrapped and left to the states.
1. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an...
2. http://www.cbpp.org/research/higher-tobacco-taxes-can-improv...
Not to go too far off track. The real tax on the poor isn't cigarettes, for the poor and stupid its lottery tickets. The real tax on the poor are the vast amount of licensing and related fees that they cannot escape. It is distressing how many lower income jobs have ridiculous fees attached let alone the costs of doing business with every day government interaction. Then throw in all the fees of everyday life and boom, your hurting.
There are other measures like the $2 "tobacco" tax on ballot in California now that means you'll pay $3 for a coil worth $1. This was also likely lobbied by the tobacco companies.
Finally, realize that theres nothing expensive about making these eliquids. Somehow they pulled an arbitrary way of making it more expensive than any other way of leaving tobacco out of their ass.
I saw this on Reddit a while back, someone pointed out that "we get it, you vape" was probably introduced by tobacco companies to create a stigma around the practice.
I'm a quitting smoker, on vape (RBA) and it bloody works. If only there were such great tools for quitting other addictions.
Let's take Grover Norquist as an example. The man is a dedicated crusader who hasn't stopped pounding the tax-reform drum for 20 years. Know what he thinks will decide the next election? Know what he was tweeting about during the debates?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-2016-vap...
https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336
https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336
https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/785299905464111104
No, seriously: we get it, you vape.
"We get it, you vape" is a logical fallacy. Why? It is so trivial to draw a corollary from that incredibly naive statement: you are implicitly voicing support for people acquiring cancer - althought I certainly don't believe that is what you meant to say. This falls under the logical fallacy of "black and white." Things are not so simple, especially so far as the behavior of one vocal minority is concerned.
By pure autonomous volition, I vape away from other people (generally in the company of other smokers in the allocated areas) because I know that the vapor generally clings to skin. It makes you clammy in warm weather. It's not sociable. So you're going to throw someone who is trying their level best to use this quitting aid in a respectable manner into the same bag as Norquist?
150 mutations per year in my lungs[1] x 7 years of smoking = 1050 mutations. I hope to God that I stopped soon enough. I'm so fortunate to have such an easy route out - it's not 1200 or 1350 mutations.
The inability to downvote responses on HN forces me to contemplate a correct response. This is the extremely rare occasion, maybe the first, that I wish it was possible.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870712
However, it's stupid to claim that the stereotype came out of nowhere, or was a conspiracy from the tobacco industry. People who vape are typically at least as vocal and outspoken about it as stoners (note: marijuana should also be legal). It's pretty natural for it to be the butt of jokes.
The same thing really applies to the vape community. They are outspoken if not militant (and I don't disagree that's a good thing given the recent steps against it). I agree that it should be legal, go ahead and start a petition and I'll sign it. But holy shit it doesn't make you special, it's a personal decision/affectation/vice and nobody actually cares. I don't go around telling people about my stimulant consumption, and I certainly don't go around pretending it will decide the this election. With apologies to vegans:
Q: "How do you know if someone vapes?"
A: "Don't worry. They'll tell you."
Oh noes - someone who cares more about something than I do. Time to belittle them to justify my apathy. /s
> No, seriously: we get it, you vape.
These are people who've essentially beat cancer.
But we get it, you'd rather mock sick people.
Tobacco levies being disproportionately a "tax on the poor" is true, but health problems also are suffered more by the poor and one of the side effects of high tobacco levies in an era where e-cigarettes are a widely-available commercial product is nicotine replacement becoming much more affordable than tobacco
They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. Once you aren't using nicotine any longer all that is left is the social ritual and habit of going out for a smoke, which isn't a very convincing reason after a while. Soon you'll forgot to take your e-cigarette with you one day - you'll use it less and less. Until it simply doesn't matter any longer.
https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine is interesting reading.
Of course, e-cigarette liquid is not only nicotine, so who knows what the long term effect of that is. The chromium in the heating coils worries me personally. (Kanthal and stainless steel both contain chromium. Obviously stainless steel is designed to be relatively inert, so maybe it's OK. Titanium is another option, and is implanted in the body regularly. But things are different at high temperatures.)
Agreed, it's tobacco that is the primary issue.
I've been curious to adopt the e-cig for the stimulant aspect. I likely won't, but will admit to being curious if it would be a productivity boost. I'd bet the e-cig companies could gain a whole new market if they published some quasi-scientific material on the productivity benefits of nicotine.
Did you read the instructions? You're supposed to chew on it for a bit, than 'park' the gum between your gum and teeth, let it sit for a minute or two, rinse, repeat. If you chew continuously you get the whole dose quickly, which can be a bit unpleasant if you don't like the nicotine buzz.
(I actually used Kanthal wire sold for DIY vaping things professionally at one point, in a ~1200C heater in vacuum. It's not inert enough in those conditions, sadly)
Stainless steel coils facilitate temperature-controlled vaporisation, which is a crucial advance in harm reduction. Controlling the temperature of vaporisation significantly reduces the production of aldehydes and aromatic hydrocarbons, which are created by the thermal decomposition of propylene glycol and glycerine; these decomposition products are by far the most dangerous components of e-cigarette vapour.
http://www.ecigarette-research.org/research/index.php/resear... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12942/abstrac...
Stainless or Kanthal at 500C or something should indeed be quite inert, it's just not that hot.
Power-controlled devices rarely exceed 300C in normal use, because there is considerable airflow over the coil combined with evaporative cooling. Excessive temperatures can be reached if the device is inadvertently activated, or if the liquid flow to the coil is inadequate.
As you say, kanthal and stainless steel should be very stable at these temperatures. Pure titanium wire also works with temperature control and completely avoids the issue of chromium, but there is some debate over the potential risks of titanium dioxide nanoparticles.
More than that, you'll know immediately it's happened because it tastes awful.
Same thing with formaldehyde - nobody is ever going to willingly inhale it, since its presence means your vape is going to taste awful.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/05/formaldehyde-fears-used-to...
That's a big part of the cigarettes many persons (anecdota) have trouble with quitting outside of the addictive properties: the learned habits.
I think the idea is that when vaping, you are able adjust the level of nicotine you are consuming without having to adjust how often you engage in the physical act of vaping/smoking. The act is a comfortable ritual, a chance to take a break, step away, relax for a few moments, whatever. It's a habit itself, distinct from the nicotine dependency. Quitting smoking is doubly painful if you are craving both the chemical and the act. Vaping gives you the act without the chemical.
This doesn't even touch the fact that nicotine is not particularly harmful - simply a habit-forming stimulant like caffeine, adderall or modafinil. Vaping delivers the nicotine without the tar, and the tar is what kills. The thing that makes people nervous about vaping is not the nicotine, but the behavior of the (largely unstudied and unregulated) substances in the vapor being inhaled.
A cigarette has become a somewhat expensive object. When I light it up I would finish it, or at least try to. If the time I had for my smoke break was short I would puff that thing hard to get it done in the time I had allotted. An e-cig can be used for a few puffs and then dropped back into my pocket with nothing wasted. I could be much lazier about how I smoked and as a consequence I tended to smoke less.
Vaping just didn't fill that void and I think that's part of the reason I gave up (the other being that I just couldn't find a flavour I actually liked, no matter how close the name of it is to 'golden virginia', it never tasted remotely as close)
I'm creeped out by whatever's in e-cigs. I'm don't know why everyone is so sure that constantly inhaling propylene glycol for years on end is safe, or that all that's in that mystery imported off-brand liquid is propylene glycol. I of course find it extremely likely that it's less unhealthy than smoking.
I quit through using Swedish snus. I think it was crucial that snus isn't fun, and gives you nothing to do with your hands. To gradually wean off nicotene, just leave the portions in longer. Twenty-year smoker, two-year snuser, four years tobacco-free.
I think the older generation is just generally more accepting of discomfort than todays cream-puffs.
I'm not countering your point of it being addictive. I was so, so so lucky not to have been hooked by that at all. I don't know if i just didn't smoke enough, or what... but it's one of the few points in my life i feel like i made the right choice. Weirder yet, it wasn't even a choice.. i just sort of stopped.
It's probably genetic
Also it seems to correlate with risk of Parkinson's http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/832391
( huh that seems to be paywalled? Google "Ease of Quitting Smoking May Be Early Sign of Parkinson's")
https://www.hri.global/files/2011/07/13/Benowitz_-_Nicotine_...
These anti-vape ads infuriate me. I don't even use one anymore, haven't for over a year, and every time I see one of those ads I think there might go another person who had a real chance to quit smoking cigarettes.
We should immediately reject all governmental proposals that aren't backed up by rigorous science. Not only would this stop a ton of abuse, but we'd save a fortune in tax money that could then be spent on initiatives that actually save lives.
Hardcore coffee addicts don't usually end up smoking coffee with 4000 other random addictive chemicals mixed in.
And wrt your question, who knows what other chemicals are in ecig juice, as the ingredients seem to be completely unregulated.
http://ash.org.uk/information-and-resources/reports-submissi...
To neotek: No problem, it's easy to misunderstand people on the internet.
I do appreciate that vaping is probably safer than cigarettes, but that's a very low bar indeed...
Just because it may be (and who knows until there are long term studies), doesn't mean as a society we should be encouraging, or even allowing vaping.
At the very least I think there should be some kind of regulation around the ingredients, otherwise how can anybody say the vapor is safe for the inhaler and the people around them?
Even if they were having a nic fit they'd still vape - you can get stronger fluid and vape more than you can get via smoking without feeling sick.
> I do appreciate that vaping is probably safer than cigarettes, but that's a very low bar indeed...
There's no probably about it. Smoking kills, and we don't see Vaping doing that.
> Just because it may be (and who knows until there are long term studies), doesn't mean as a society we should be encouraging, or even allowing vaping.
So you'd recommend we pursue measures known to kill tens of thousands of people just because there's a vanishingly small chance of harm sometime in the distant future?
You're mainly just demonstrating the problems with democracy.
Disallowing vaping is not the same thing as recommending cigarettes.
If you asked me to make a recommendation, it would be to make smoking illegal immediately. It's ridiculous that it's allowed at all, when it kills so many people for no good reason other than "it's not illegal, so get over it". It's so dangerous that it kills thousands of people that don't even do it!
I just don't want to see the horse bolt like it did with smoking. If it's safe, then it's safe. But nobody knows yet so don't insinuate that has been proven.
Like I said, if the threshold for safety is that things must be safer than cigarettes, then that's a very low bar indeed.
> You're mainly just demonstrating the problems with democracy.
It's a problem with democracy that I want a new drug delivery system to be proven safe before being allowed/recommended?
I find you rude.
100%.
> if the threshold for safety is that things must be safer than cigarettes, then [...]
That's not the threshold for playground equipment, or shampoo, but for a smoking replacement.
> If it's safe, then it's safe. But nobody knows yet
Oh yes, we do. I don't have to say rock climbing is safe to know that shark-taunting is unsafe. We have a really good idea how many people die from smoking and we aren't seeing vape users have that issues, or at least not 1/50th as much.
The open questions isn't "is vaping unsafe" but "which fluids are unsafe to breathe the vapors from?" Even if we discovered that propylene glycol is unsafe that doesn't mean the idea of atomizing nicotine is a bad one.
> Disallowing vaping is not the same thing as recommending cigarettes.
Actually, it is exactly that. This isn't a thought problem of "Which drug would you want your citizens to be hooked on," the question is "given that they are already hooked on cigarettes, ...".
> I find you rude.
Another typical liberal thug. Willing to use the might of the government to kill people in the guise of helping, and whose greatest insults are "You hurt my feelings."
I'm sure you do find me rude, but I'd rather hurt the feelings of a few uninvolved busybodies than let the millions of innocent people who got hooked on cigarettes die from cancer.
>This has raised concerns that the use of electronic cigarettes could lead to the ‘renormalisation’ of smoking and provide a gateway to smoking for young people. Yet so far there is little evidence that this is happening. The use of electronic cigarettes by people who have never smoked has been, and remains, negligible.
>If electronic cigarettes are a gateway, they currently appear to be a gateway out of smoking.
The nicotine delivery is less immediate and not as strong so for someone used to the immediate dose delivered by smoking, it sort of left me wanting more but at the same time, it was a much less intense "craving" than a smoker would feel when forced to abstain.
A big part of it for me was adjusting to this. Smoking delivers a large, immediate dose of nicotine which then drops off in your bloodstream over the course of the next half hour or hour, when (predictably) you sort of want another cig. With the vaporized nicotine solution, I had to get used to just having a puff every so often throughout the day (more like hookah I guess) and maintaining a more constant but lower blood level.
Anyway, maybe I'm overanalyzing it. The results were the same though. It was as much getting off the roller coaster of "dose, levels drop, crave, redose" and onto a more sustained but lower level. It made it much easier to go without and it made it easier to lower the nicotine in the liquid to the point where I keep some 3mg/ml stuff around for the occasional desire for a mild stimulant but otherwise, it was practically effortless to wean off.
Aside from just lowering my nicotine intake and habituation to something more along the lines of how I really could go for a coffee some mornings, stopping the constant deposit of tars and particulates into my respiratory system has made a huge impact on my general health. No more lingering colds and honestly I haven't had a major cold or other respiratory infection in years now. I used to get them all the time thanks to the constant irritation and level of crap I was inhaling.
And another cool thing is that I know exactly what's in the stuff I'm inhaling occasionally now. I can get MSDS sheets for the flavorings and the rest is just nicotine and a couple types of glycerine (like you'd use in a fog machine or asthma inhaler). The levels of anything potentially harmful are a miniscule fraction of what they'd be if I was smoking cigs still and I'm no longer getting the vast majority of harmful compounds or carbon monoxide at all.
I really hate to come off as a "booster" and I try not to be the guy who just has to tell you about "his vape" but I think this sort of anecdotal experience is appropriate and on-topic in threads like this. I think it's a real shame that something with maybe 1-2% of the risk of smoking has been so demonized and lobbied against when it's a bigger improvement than methadone for heroin addicts or AA for alcoholics.
She had an infarctus (not myocard it seems though) last month, obviously cardio told her no more cigarettes. She was worried about nicotine addiction, I mentioned e-cig, I got angry eyes, borderline saying it was worth than cigs.
I understand their concerns about untested liquids turning into other kinds of carcinogens, but I'm still surprised about the reaction. I expected that some doctors would be able to either mention calmly "no vaporized liquids is free of dangerous particles" or redirect to well tested brand and suppliers. I guess it's just hurried scare tactics.
In the mean time, it's nicotine gums diet.
Of course, they won't recommend them to patients because the science has yet to fully establish their safety, but what science HAS come in is promising and the anecdotal evidence from countless users is also promising. Even so, doctors want to promote quitting altogether, not crutches or replacements, as it simplies treatment plans and eliminates variables. Plus, many of them have never been smokers, so they just don't understand what it's like to be a smoker, depending upon both nicotine and the comforting ritual of smoking in a society flush with stress.
"E-cigarettes are not risk free, but based on current evidence they carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes. Public Health England’s independent review of the latest evidence found that using an e-cigarette (known as ‘vaping’) is around 95% safer than smoking."
and
"If you are a smoker, the best thing you can do is stop smoking now and e-cigarettes can help people to quit."
https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes
I wanted to cross check with ecigs "nerd" communities, who are fine grained in their approach of products and spend time discussing issues and qualities of liquids, and devices (combustion properties control matters).
I'm still looking for data about vaporizers (be it water + nicotine, or even THC).
It was easy because of how gradual it was and that I was still able to satisfy the oral habit of smoking while kicking the chemical dependency. Smoking while driving was a huge hangup.
As a side note - if you buy good hardware and good quality liquid, the whole experiene is better than smoking as well. Forget the vape "culture". IMO ecigs are more convenient, taste better, feel better, and so on.
So that's what I did. I took my carton money for the month and invested in a proper setup after doing my research. I spent time trying different juices until I found one I could use all day, every day.
That was 2 years ago. Everyone around me still smokes, but I've never even been tempted to go back. I smoked for 10 years as well.
you can get a good setup for ~$50 then the heaviest users will spend like $30/month on juice (most users will spend a fraction of that)
If you mix your own juice you're approaching savings that are better on an order of magnitude.
once i found some diy recipes that i enjoyed, i made a pair of 120ml, and the cost savings from those two bottles alone covered all the ingredients and equipment (beakers, stirring rods, scale, bottles, etc). diy is especially worthwhile if your device guzzles juice like my geekvape griffin tank does.
diy or die on youtube is a great resource, here's one of the recipes i make regularly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlI8CvT8SCA
If you're buying domestic juice you pay a premium for nothing special, from what I can tell. Also, the chances of it being made in a proper factory are basically nil. It's often someone else's DIY garage juice at a 10000% markup.
I haven't kept up with the new FDA guidelines since starting DIY about a year ago, but from what I remember a lot of the little garage brands are going to be in trouble. My buddy used to work at Apollo out in Concord and I know they take their juice seriously. I think it's shitty, but it's not because the line is dirty haha. Molecule Labs out in Benicia has a pretty cool facility as well.
Three 120ml bottles last me close to an entire month. Local stores around here are also a rip-off (near Austin, Texas).
Vaping is something I do A LOT of while post-processing photos! Do you perhaps have a photographic interest?
That's more than 10ml a day! I know you're going to disagree and try to convince me otherwise, but that is an INSANE amount of liquid.
I should try and cut back some and reduce my nicotine dosage of 1.5mg down to 0mg but I don't mind the nicotine.
I'm also addicted to coffee so about 2-3 full Yeti cups a day. Woe is me!
Sigelei 50W Watt Box Mod Kanger-subtank with OCC Vertical coil. 0.5 ohm
liquids: Ultimate Kringle (every day juice) Castle Long (every now and then)
As others have replied and as might know, the world of ecigs is rather large, poorly detailed (mostly), and can be expensive to start. That equipment worked really well for me at the time. But the "go to" gear may be different by now - I would stress that you research before you buy.
I have learned everything i know about ecigs from friends, ecigforums, youtube rewviews, and buying a lot of crappy equipment.
best of luck.
Congratulations!
But being a non-smoker, I don't understand. Can you explain why you couldn't have cut down on nicotine by just smoking fewer cigarettes per day?
E-cig nicotine delivery happens slower and you avoid both the highs and the crashing lows. That makes it a lot easier to cut down to insignificant amounts of nicotine over a few months.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320506... http://jneurosci.org/content/25/38/8593.long http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091305703...
Cigarettes do give a more immediate and intense nicotine 'hit'. Ammonia compounds are added to cigarette tobacco, which increase the proportion of freebase nicotine to nicotine salts. Cigarettes are, in a very literal sense, the crack cocaine of nicotine delivery.
http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_623.pdf
[1] http://www.dddmag.com/article/2009/07/question-opioid-euphor...
PLUS To change your dose you have to change your habit. With Ecig, to change the dose you just buy a different product, but your day to day (hour to hour) habits are the same as always.
I always make a point of sticking at each level for at least 2-3 months. This way I can be sure I've grown fully accustomed to one step before taking the next. In my view, reducing the nicotine content too quickly would increase chances of a relapse.
Sometimes I wish kids were forced to truly grok some of the basics of economic theory before getting to high school. I wonder how different the world would be if even a few percent more people didn't take some of the actions they do that are clearly counterproductive.
(Couldn't say from my own experience, though, unless you count my addiction to chocolate.)
Vaping may remove the smell triggers, but having smoked for a long time, and having vaped a fair amount as well, I suspect that while vaping may be much healthier, it could end up being more addictive due to the way it tends to be used along with differences in the way it's inhaled.
When light cigarettes were first introduced, they also thought they would be healthier, but many people actually tended to pull harder on a light cigarette than the regular cigarettes, resulting in smoke being pulled more deeply into the lungs actually doing more damage.
In this case, legalisation and regulation of a different drug—kratom—could help users self-rehabilitate. Kratom is to opiates much as e-cigs are to cigarettes—some of the effects, but far milder, more manageable, and easier to quit. The DEA announced their intent to schedule it, but (thankfully) has since backpedaled a bit due to public objection.
Do you happen to know of credible sources or studies which have looked at this?
diluting drugs is not hard. many dealers dilute the drugs for you!
In any case, I followed much the same road once I switched; I stepped down from 18mg (headaches!) to 12mg, and now I'm at 6mg or 3mg depending on the liquid I have. I can't describe just how much my health has improved over that span as a result.
Also, devices and liquids have _vastly_ improved in the past 4 years, to the point where when I give recommendations to others looking to transition, I don't get cold stares back from failed attempts and cheap devices that kept them from ditching cigarettes.
I acknowledge that not everyone will agree with me, but this is my opinion on the matter.
It seems odd.
Important distinction.
[1] https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf
I like to vape on occasion - mostly at home, indoors, when I am coding or doing something similar on my computer in my office.
My vape of choice is a custom menthol blend with caffeine - and zero nicotine.
I see so many people use e-cigarettes as an excuse to smoke indoors, even in light of public smoking bans, and get upset when I complain that they make me feel sick. Indoor air quality isn't just about carcinogens or aerosolized tobacco, but allergens and respect for common spaces that we all have to share.
A) they are unproven. Many people believe that something that isn't proven safe or unsafe is not better than something unsafe that has been heavily scrutinized and studied. What if there's a much worse effect that we dont' know about yet?
B) They are unstandardized. Each producer can be putting who-knows-what in the oils.
C) It's still smoke. When they first came out, a lot of people got e-cigs with the idea that they could get around smoking bans, such as on planes or in bars (in places that banned that). This has resulted in a massive backlash, because it really wasn't health problems that caused those bans, it was the fact that nobody wants to sit in someone elses smoke cloud. This is causing a big social stigma against e-cig users.
In theory the vapour might have as strong a smell as cigarette smoke; in practice even the most strong smelling vapours are mostly comparable to the smell of personal fragrances, and we are ways off from banning those as well.
To me, it seems like many people have this weird "ick" about natural biological functions. Some are understandable - like body waste, and sneezing/coughing that could spread contagions. Regular smoking I can understand from the standpoint that it smells bad.
But vape clouds typically smell good. But they are visible. So people are reminded of "ick - breath!" meaning something similar to coughing/sneezing (and not covering your mouth/nose)...
Yet, nobody seems to have an aversion to everyone around them just "breathing" normally - or even an exasperated sigh or huff - which is arguably just as much breath coming out as someone vaping.
Just that it is invisible - and now no "ick factor" if you will.
It's kinda crazy; here is something that can and could really help smokers, yet being vilified because of some weird hangup people have with breathing - because it is visible. It is similar to how some people love to eat chicken nuggets, but give them a bone-in chicken wing and all of a sudden it is "gross - it has bones" - like the nugget is somehow more sanitary or further removed from the chicken because it is boneless?
/humans are weird
If it's rude to spray perfume or eat smelly food, then it's also rude to vape.
But yes, you are correct. A lot of the flavors are not regulated. I recall there was an issue with a carmel like flavor recently.
I see people using devices beyond 150W and super hot coils to 'make dem sick clouds'. They have essentially created some nice portable catalytic converters. You can even buy coils made from different alloys like Ni-Ti and some devices measure the coil resistance to control the temperature.
Then there's people like me and the person who replied to your comment earlier who just make our own. It's surprisingly simple and pretty inexpensive. The other commenter eschews flavoring altogether whereas I only use a small amount of it and only buy stuff from companies that list the compounds included so I can make sure there are no particularly nasty components that would make them dangrous to inhale in typical concentrations.
I agree that there are no long term studies on the effects of inhaling this stuff for years on end but a lot of the things that stick out as hazardous are easy to identify and even when they exist, it's typically at a level that's a small fraction of what you'd run into when talking about combustible tobacco.
Basically it's harm reduction. Like how you read about the dangers of eating char-grilled meat because it has some of the same things as cig smoke. That may be the case but you're not getting nearly as much of it so you won't likely get cancer from eating a seared steak a few times a year like you would from smoking cigs daily.
For example; some flavorings contain diacetyl which, if inhaling too much, will lead to Bronchiolitis Obliterans or "popcorn lung", but the amount actually inhaled in e-cigarettes is 750 times less than cigarettes and vastly less than the amount inhaled by people that have developed popcorn lung.
Yes, there are some chemicals in the flavoring, but the amount is fractions of that in cigarettes (flavorings usually account for less than 10% in my liquid, and much of the flavoring is more base liquid; VG and PG). I've taken the risk assessment and decided that e-cigs are much safer. Each person must do that for themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans
http://www.snopes.com/vaping-causes-popcorn-lung/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/sifting-the-evidence/201...
At the end of the day though, if you're a smoker, the choice is pretty straightforward, and you should use a "vape". You should however, be considerate of others, and unfortunately also accept that for a while you're going to be lumped in with the more anti-social element of society.
I'd imagine alot of reasons you don't see more vaping is age. Younger folks don't care as much(and smoke less in general) but some dude smoking malboro at 50 is far less likely to roll up with an ecig at a casual BBQ. Its a hard enough battle getting old people using email... Let alone vaping.
This was after many failed attempts to quit from around a pack a day with the longest cessation time being around half a year.
I don't think that vaping is harmless and I would not be surprised there are adverse long time health risks. But compared to real cigarettes this was a godsend for me. It is much cheaper, it does not have that disgusting smell, and it is much easier from the logistics side compared to having to buy cigarettes every day, feeling like some lowlife addict in the process. What I have now is a hobby, tinkering with my devices, building coils, trying juices (since some time I got rid of any flavours and just vape pure VG/PG). Gone is most of the shortness of breath when working out, disgusting mouthfeel in the morning, cold hands and feet and this permanent feeling of being poisoned. I gave my father a starter-kit for Christmas and he managed to quit cigarettes completely on that very day after heavily smoking for 30 years, trying to quit and suffering from the effects of smoking much more than a relatively young person does. I might have saved his life that day.
So yes, maybe vaping is bad, maybe it will kill you when you are not able to quit timely. But the time spend with the addiction is a whole lot more pleasant with vaping than with cigarettes and I cannot imagine it being remotely as deadly as smoke/tar. Banning vaping because of unknown health risks is complete madness in my opinion.
NONE of the people I know who used e-cigarettes were able to quit for good.
Here's my recipe:
1. Quitting sounds hard but it isn't. The majority of people who try to quit, actually succeed. 2. Don't use ANYTHING as a substitute (no chewing gum, no patches or e-cigs). Substitutes usually can never replace the original and will just keep you "hooked". 3. Read affirmative stuff (like news stories, studies). Reading about a study that showed most people quit for good, actually helps. As does reading about the consequences for continueing to smoke.
That's it. Just quit. It's easy, you'll be off cigarettes in no time.
Everyone can do it. Smoking is totally a 90s thing.
Everything anyone here will say is anecdotal of course.
If it's easy to switch back after you've had your relapse, the only real issue is with the all-or-none definition of quitting.
I try pretty hard to not subject people to my disgusting habits. How is it that people expect inhaling chemicals to be any different? They act like they are surprised that you don't want to be exposed to their disgusting clouds of stink.
If you can't tell, I'm agreeing with you. I pray something is done about vaping before the horse has bolted like it did with cigarettes. Just because it could be less dangerous doesn't mean it should be encouraged or indeed allowed at all. Every vaping liquid being sold should have to be tested thoroughly for safety IMO, and really I'm amazed that it doesn't have to be.
Vaping is too new for long-term studies to have been performed, and also with the zillions of different kinds of vaping juices, each one with a different formulation, how can we know that they are all safe?
It's an absolute joke how much secondhand smoke a non-smoker is forced to inhale nowadays with what we know about how dangerous it is, and I live in Australia, with relatively progressive smoking laws. I don't want to be subjected to secondhand smoke in public places, and I don't want to be subjected to secondhand vapor either, regardless of whether or not the inhaler considers it "safe enough".
Actually it is illegal here to sell nicotene-containing liquid. I do think that nicotene-containing liquid is being sold however, as I do see people vaping around the place, and just quietly, they don't seem like the kind of people who could get their stuff together enough to make their own ecig juice.
This is total nonsense. You can use e-juice at a level that will give you nicotine poisoning.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...
Every variety of plastic or food additive that ended up being proved harmful was thought safe for years. People are right to be skeptical of them for the next thirty years or so.
This is true.
You can see the same thing during the (alcohol) prohibition era: because ethyl alcohol is necessary for other uses, it was mandated to be "denatured" by adding chemicals that made it less appealing to drink. When they found people still drinking it (or managing to separate the alcohol from the denaturants), they increased the toxicity of the chemicals until they were actually poisoning people.
In this case, the primary goal is to prevent new smokers. Since many of the e-cigarette flavors are pleasant, they regard it as attractive to children. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that.
On the other hand, if you are already smoking, your soul is lost and, to a first approximation, it would be better if you were to die as soon as possible---outside of pharmaceutical companies, there is no serious interest in cessation. Inside those companies, making nicotine gum and patches is big business, and I know people who have been chewing the gum frequently for nearly a decade.
There is a certain amount of the same feeling in those who have quit smoking. To paraphrase an old joke, how do you know someone quit smoking? Don't worry, they'll tell you. If you can quit cold-turkey, good; if you can't, you are weak willed and a lesser human.
In any case, the bottom line is, like in all Puritan situations, that results matter less than perceptions.
I think that's hugely simplified. There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use recreationally:
- Crack
- Meth
- Nicotine
- Heroin
People who use those at all are very likely to use them a whole hell of a lot, and they have terrible health effects. I don't think it's Puritanism to recommend staying away from highly addictive substances.
Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that.
According to HHS (http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substanc...):
"Eighth grade students who use e-cigarettes are 10 times more likely than their peers who do not use e-cigarettes to eventually smoke tobacco cigarettes. This trend continues to a slightly lesser degree for older adolescents. Tenth and 12th grade students who use e-cigarettes are eight and six times more likely, respectively, than their peers to smoke tobacco cigarettes. This suggests that youth who use e-cigarettes are likely to become tobacco cigarette smokers as they age."
Certainly. And the proper response is to discourage their use. But how do you treat those who do use them? As a health problem or as a moral failure?
Thanks for the HHS link!
Totally agree, but that's an entirely different conversation.
Nicotine alone doesn't have 'terrible health effects' for those that are otherwise generally healthy. Yes, it is addictive and can exacerbate existing conditions (e.g. high blood pressure), but nicotine consumed through methods like lozenges, patches and gum poses negligible health risks.
[1] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php
Ohm's law really needs to get more exposure in the classroom.
I was pretty scared of ecigs before, seeing so many exploding.
What happens when you hotwire a battery (a wire between positive and negative)? Current flows, discharging the battery but also often melting or exploding the battery. Normally current flow is the whole reason for a battery, but why is hotwiring bad as opposed to tossing a LED+resistor in the circuit?
In a circuit, heat accumulates where majority of resistance is. So when your element has less resistance than your battery, more of the stress is going there than on your heating element. So it's hard on your power supply. If it's a cool 5v hobbyist power supply, you're probably cool. They're durable. Don't stress too much, you're more likely to break the element. But if it's a battery, you're sinking heat into something that is ultimately full of volatile chemicals and has limited capacity to fight back.
You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by transferring the charge to an intermediate element (obviously your ecig rig hasn't popped yet).
Of course, most people use regulated mods which do just that.
As someone who vapes, I wouldn't be opposed to banning the sale of mechanical mods (i.e. mods which are literally just a battery, a button and a resistance element in a circuit). They're dangerous. On the other hand, people would just build them themselves, they're not difficult.
Also, the mechanical mod crowd is a rather small part of the e-cig community overall. Vocal, but small.
https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
Personally I think it's mainly to do with the optics of it. As a society we've spent all kinds of money and effort to stop smoking, and it's now heavily stigmatized. So to see something come around that appears similar to smoking seems to drive a lot of people nuts.
Although I would recommend e-cigs as a temporary quit smoking aid only and not as a replacement. I noticed I got more lung infections while vaping and my brother noticed the same thing. Also I wouldnt trust some of the flavors out there, they put anything in there. So if its a temporary measure taken as a quit smoking aid, great, as an alternative to cigs - that Im still on the fence about.
Every time you drive your car, you damage the road, increase traffic congestion, and put toxic chemicals into the air.
The purpose of a gas tax is to discourage marginal usage.
Since driving is more expensive, it makes that person who was deciding between driving their car or taking a bike to work and makes them just a little bit more likely to use the bike.
Related: a usage tax for maintenance of roads and bridges has a far simpler option than taxing gas that may be used in boats, tractors, and other non-road uses: toll roads, which tax everyone who uses the roads equivalently. And before anyone argues that such a tax is regressive: a gas tax is far more regressive, as those with older, less efficient vehicles are hit harder than those with the money to buy a Tesla.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel#Taxation
However, if you're talking about a carbon tax instead of a roads maintenance tax, burning diesel or gas is the same, whether it's in a car or not.
[0] https://www.juulvapor.com/
only a big shift in marketing of these things can change that. if e cigarettes where seen as the Apple of smoking surely they'd sell better.
I used to date a girl who used an ecig and would exhale a cloud of vanilla cookie aroma everywhere we went. I thought that was pretty cool to be honest.
There seems to be a vocal battle between e-cig users and scientists each having their own claims about diacetyl. It's the famous fake butter compound for microwave popcorn that caused lung cancer in the workers who handled it.
My dad has IPF and COPD two lung diseases from years of working a blue collar job breathing in small damaging particles over time. Sawdust, paint drops, metal from grinding, probably welding fumes, etc. any small particles may seem harmless but over time damage lungs.
What concerns me about e-cigarettes is maybe the damage doesn't appear until 30 from now. Will we see an increase of lung disease 30 years from now?
In any case, I doubt there's a very significant amount of people who've started ecigs who wouldn't have started cigarettes, and cigarettes are well known to cause lung damage.
I'm personally not comfortable inhaling your random unknown vaporizer gases. Many chemicals are dangerous at levels you are not able to smell, or indeed have no odor.
In my case, every friend I know who's started using e-cigarettes took them up without having an existing tobacco habit. Some of them add nicotine to the vape juice, some don't.
I don't know how common this is, but it's certainly given vaping a negative impression for me. At the very least, it seems like an unnecessary risk given how little public health data there is.