Did you read either article? The CNN one you link to was a study that compared cold turkey vs gradually scaling down.
> "Researchers looked at nearly 700 long-term heavy smokers in England who wanted to kick the habit. They instructed half of the participants to quit abruptly -- that is, pick a quit day when they would give up smoking entirely. The other half were told to scale back their cigarettes gradually for two weeks leading up to their quit day.
> But even the abrupt-quit group was not exactly going it alone. The researchers gave them nicotine patches to use for two weeks before their quit day. During this period, the gradual group also got patches, as well as gum, lozenges and other types of short-acting nicotine replacement therapy to help them as they cut back. After the quit day, both groups got patches and short-acting therapy, in addition to counseling. "
Did read both articles. Not an expert by any means on smoking, but often e-cigarettes are also a way to quit by scaling back the nicotine content in the cartridge.
At the very least, nicotine-free e-cigarettes allow people addicted to cigarettes to maintain the habit of smoking -- going outside, taking the mental break associated with cigarettes -- but without the damage of actual smoke or nicotine.
That doesn't follow. We know for an absolute fact that cold turkey doesn't work for most people. We also know that many people want to smoke even when knowing the dangers. A safer alternative is working better than anything before it ever has.
>We know for an absolute fact that cold turkey doesn't work for most people.
No, you know that most people who attempt to quit "cold turkey" decide that quitting smoking permanently isn't as important as relieving their current symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Its a minor point but an important distinction.
So, in other words... it doesn't work. Yours is in fact a completely unimportant distinction unless you're using it to support ecigs because...
...guess what they get with ecigs? A far safer alternative which allows them to continue their nicotine habit and enjoy the pleasures of smoking. So you're in support of ecigs now?
People should be able to consume what they want, but what you argue is like saying a chemotherapy doesn't cure cancer because patients give up on it after it makes them feel ill.
If ~90% of patients did actually give up on it in reality then yes, I would say that because it wouldn't work for 90% of patients. The medical community would move away from it.
Of course, that's not the reality. every single one of your arguments are hypothetical metaphors that have no connection to the facts of the issue at hand. You have no practical solutions. You're only answer is for people to 'toughen up'. Quite the problem solver you are.
Is it ever appropriate for people to engage in self determination or should the lack of an easy solution always be an excuse for an individuals actions?
I was just dropping in with a success story (which is important for anyone trying to quit because it's 1 more data point to reference).
The reason most people fail to quit isn't because they are weak, or anything like that. It's simply because they don't want to really quit.
I know of 6 people (including myself) who quit cold turkey after many years. The only thing we had in common was we were serious about quitting. One other person I knew who quit used the patch, but she was separate from the 6.
I sometimes feel like I'm in loony land with all the e-cigarette FUD. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the cancer causing potential of smoking lies primarily in inhaling smoke containing a large number of carcinogenic combustion products. Vaporizers completely eliminate that; it's why "medical marijuana" is a thing, they couldn't prescribe it when the side-effect is cancer.
While I agree I think the one unfortunate side effect, that i do not have quantitative evidence of, is that more people are vaping who would not have picked up cigarettes.
It could be purely anecdotal evidence but it sure seems like it.
At this point I'm convinced that this e-cig FUD is a combination of intentional misinformation and general population not being able to think clearly about degrees of things. One would think that "a significantly less harmful thing is better than a harmful thing" is a tautology, but apparently it's not obvious to everyone.
The current scientific consensus is that e-cigarettes, although they may still have some risks, are far less harmful than conventional cigarettes.
"This systematic review appraises existing laboratory and clinical research on the potential risks from electronic cigarette use, compared with the well-established devastating effects of smoking tobacco cigarettes. Currently available evidence indicates that electronic cigarettes are by far a less harmful alternative to smoking and significant health benefits are expected in smokers who switch from tobacco to electronic cigarettes."
Not convinced switching people to a just as addicting, just as nasty way of killing themselves slowly is any better.
More research is required on long-term effects, but e-cigarettes, regardless of whatever other problems they may have, are likely far less damaging to users than continuing to smoke cigarettes.
As someone who has recently quit cold turkey I totally agree with you. Learning the skill of changing difficult habits is part of the process of giving up. A lot of addiction is learning to control what you want to believe, building startups is too, being happy also, papering over the cracks by adding a new addiction I would say is harmful on many levels. I say deal with the smoking addiction finally once and for all and never smoke again. To do that a mildly stoic acceptance that you are going to have to suffer needs to occur.
vaping definitely isn't healthy but it doesn't take much time vaping to determine that it's less bad for you than smoking.
i still want to quit nicotine entirely one day but until that day comes, my vape pen and i are good friends. 9 months ago i tried one out, and that same day was the very last day i ever smoked a cigarette.
It used to be most people who quit permanently did so by going cold turkey. That was true even after patches and gums, but I'm not sure if it's still true with vaping.
Though I have a theory cold turkey quitting normally happens after a health scare of some variety. My father was a 45 year smoker and quit the day of his heart attack.
My mother smoked for around 45-50 years herself and quit immediately after her heart attack last year. As a former 17-year smoker myself who started vaping almost 6 years ago when my kid was born, I'd been trying to get her to replace the cigarettes years ago. Didn't work.
Another spot of anecdata, when I was a smoker I couldn't go a few hours without a cigarette. After 6 years of vaping, I can pretty much go 8-10 hours with no real craving.
It's unreal how much less of a hold vaping has on me versus cigarettes when that nicotine isn't coming along with a few thousand other chemical compounds.
His sentiment is actually a very common one. Many smokers who try vaping find that they actually prefer it, and have no inclination to go back. And it allows for a level of control over the nicotine content that cigarettes never will.
Is vaping unhealthy because nicotine is inherently unhealthy or are there other harms associated with vaping itself? Need to quit smoking cigarettes myself.
What are the health risks of vaping with non-nicotine-containing fluid? I thought that it was just atomized vegetable glycerin with a bit of flavoring, but I've not done much research into the matter.
Personal anecdote: I was never a cigarette smoker, but I started vaping because I tried a friend's vape once and liked it.
I am a pretty serious athlete. Vaping - whether it was 3mg or 0mg e-juice - fucked with my lungs pretty badly, and caused a noticeable drop in athletic performance. Also made me feel way less motivated to lift weights and train, which I chalked up to the instant gratification of nicotine. When I did lift weights and train, I always felt like I wasn't able to give 100%.
I quit, but goddamn it was a pain in the ass to quit. It's not even the nicotine I miss, really, so much as it is the whole experience. The heat, the vapor, the flavor, the habit.
Friends of mine that have switched from smoking cigarettes to vaping e-juice have reported an increase in cardiovascular capacity; but as a non-smoker that started vaping, I definitely noticed decreased performance.
I wonder about this every time I replace a coil that is toasted. There are several types of coils now (Ni, kanthal, stainless) - it'd be nice to know more about the degradation of the metals and its effects for sure.
Kanthal is basically stainless steel with more chromium and a slight amount of aluminum. Which one is better depends heavily on the exact alloys and how they are assembled, unfortunately.
Kanthal requires a very specific heating profile after installation to develop its protective coating. Without that its basically just weird, fancy stainless steel. It becomes very brittle after the heat treat which causes gradual degradation especially during repeated, fast heating cycles. I would not use it.
I would also avoid low-alloy stainless like 400 series. That's the cheapest kind and at elevated temperature it oxidizes and corrodes. 300 series would be better, 500 would be best. Even within those two series though, some alloys will be much better than others.
Nickel... I don't know. It's very sensitive to composition and some can leach into liquid and others don't. It's more toxic than iron or chromium, but pretty resistant to temperature. Kind of a wash.
Heating glycerin can produce acrolein and formaldehyde, and this has been reported in ecigs in several studies. The amounts are minuscule compared to cigarettes and don't seem to show up in second-hand vapor, but it's plausible that this could cause some long term harm.
This is why I really wish someone would sell an ultrasonic vape, which the original patent included. That should be far safer, but so far, nobody seems to be making them.
It's quite hot air in your lungs, and isn't gonna do anything good. Not hot enough to scald you but the interface in alveoli is very sensitive to changes in consistency, thickness and makeup and it'll change how well you can absorb oxygen. Plus it's irritating which can cause inflammation, making it harder to breathe. Not something you'd notice normally but all of that will lower your lung capacity for quite a while.
At super low power it's pretty much totally safe and the impact on breathing is temporary[1]. At ~>18 watts formaldehyde starts to become a possible irritant, and there are also lots of other carbonyls. One of the really fun ones in the graph in [1] is acrolein- it's still at extremely low levels but that shit is not anything you want in your body. It's generated in small amounts any time anything fatty is burned, but absorbing it through your lungs daily is a totally different thing.
Vaping at low power (<20 watts) is pretty safe, but my girlfriends vape goes up to 200 and she uses it constantly at 85 or so. There are definitely significant amounts of chemicals besides glycerine and propylene glycol.
I might be wrong but I thought the whole point of vaping was you are getting the liquid/material hot enough for it to turn into vapor but not hot enough to burn. Same principle with vaping weed. Sure its not "healthy" but its much healthier than burning. I think your example is extremely wrong.
I don't think nicotine itself is that bad for you, it seems like nicotine inhaled via cigarettes is an entire different league to other nicotine/tobacco forms.
Cigar and pipe smokers as a rule don't have the kind of compulsive many a day habits that cigarette smokers do.
It's not just the burning, many toxic chemicals are already present and the processing[1] makes it worse. The processing converts things like nicotine, and happens at relatively low temperatures- lower than those in vaporizers. Plus, keep in mind that nicotine is in tobacco as a poison for insects. Tobacco doesn't want to be consumed by humans either.
Because you are inhaling foreign chemicals into your lung in higher then normal dosages.
How is that a bold statement? People run around vaping like there are zero consequences, but I wouldn't be surprised if research eventually emerges saying certain lower quality fillers/vape mixtures will result in mechanical damage and cancer of the lungs and esophagus. Something similar was apparent with flavoring agents being used in the vape world.
"I wouldn't be surprised..." isn't really a strong enough sentiment to support the statement "vaping definitely isn't healthy". At the moment, the harms of vaping are speculative.
Actually, as I already mentioned, there are cases with flavoring additives and other chemicals in the vape causing lung disease and other problems. I don't have it offhand but google should help you.
My sentiment is more about where I think the research will go.
I think that is kind of the major one that sticks out in my mind. But, its just more sinister then that IMO. Being that it is something newer, I have a feeling more will pop up.
I was friends with a major twitch streamer who used to vape literally 24/7, every stream. He got esophageal cancer and died after fighting it for ~1-2 years, roughly around age of 23. Now, obviously this is anecdotal, and obviously it could have just been bad luck/other factors/coincidence. But, I have always raised an eyebrow towards vaping since then. The only forms I consider safer with minimal consequence is dry herb based vaping with convection heat --- See silver surfer vapes for example.
Lung cancer is known to be caused by carcinogens in smoke, vapor is not smoke, you cannot simply transfer the ills of smoking to vaping just because.
Nicotine alone is not harmful, it's addictive, but not harmful, it's not what causes cancer from smoking.
All apparent evidence is that vaping appears vastly healthier than smoking and there's no reason yet to believe vapor is harmful to the lungs; you breath water vapor all day every day. Calling something "foreign chemicals" might sound scary, but is not a plausible reason to call something definitely unhealthy. The word definitely is very bold, and not remotely justified.
> People run around vaping like there are zero consequences
No, they run around like it's vastly safer than smoking, which it clearly is. There's zero evidence anything to do with vaping has the cancer causing effects of smoke and burnt carcinogens.
> Nicotine alone is not harmful, it's addictive, but not harmful, it's not what causes cancer from smoking.
Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor. It substantially increases the risk of Deep Vein Thrombosis, especially when combined with another chemical that produces clotting enzymes, such as estrogen. Speaking of estrogen, nicotine also antagonizes the estrogen receptor, which is pretty bad if you're a woman. Ever notice how women who have been smoking for a long time look pretty bad? It's not your imagination, it's because nicotine shuts down their bodies' ability to use estrogen (and estrogen is what causes smooth skin, curves, etc.).
Also, go look up "Green Tobacco Sickness" [0]. Too much nicotine can have all kinds of adverse effects, and since it can be absorbed by the skin, people who handle wet tobacco plants get all kinds of health problems. Oh, and too much nicotine can stop your heart. I've seen people seriously suggest it as a suicide method.
And too much water will kill you; too much of anything is bad, the question is in what amount. However, I was unaware of the estrogen thing, very interesting, you do see that in women.
As for it being a vasoconstrictor, so is caffeine and any number of other stimulants, that itself in not inherently bad, it's simply an effect.
That's not remotely whataboutism; whataboutism is when you're deflecting to another bad to justify something, I'm not deflecting nor justifying, I'm using reductio ad absurdum to make a point that everything is bad with enough quantity so simply calling nicotine bad because it's a vasoconstrictor-as stimulants tend to be-is not a valid argument. I suggest you learn the difference.
There is a lot of wrong in this comment. While I agree with most of your sentiment about vaping being a safer alternative, it is wrong to assume that the chemicals introduced via vaping are not carcinogenic because there is no smoke.
I agree, but people who vape are (generally) moving from something that has a lot of known risk. Moving from smoking tobacco to vaping is likely orders of magnitude lower risk, just from the fact combustion isn't happening.
I agree that we should get more information about the risk of vaping, but the wholesale banning of vaping is likely to be more harmful than just leaving things as is.[1]
[1]Not saying you are arguing for banning vaping, but FDA did take that position originally until they got smacked down
"Also there is evidence that e-cigs deliver some toxic stuff of their own such as formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), nitrosamines (linked to cancer) and lead (a neurotoxin). Though the toxicant levels of e-cigs may be “9–450 times lower than in cigarette smoke,” as this study suggests, levels of formaldehyde andmetalshave been found to be comparable to or higher than those found in conventional cigarettes.*Silicate particles, which are a cause of lung disease, have also been found in e-cigarette vapors."
I'm not sure why you consider the OP's statement to be bold as I don't think there are many instances where ingesting chemicals into the lungs is considered healthy.
There's a whole lot of may and might in all that; but you have to see it from the perspective of a smoker, not a non-smoker. It's clearly vastly safer than smoking. Any smoker who switched can tell you how they're starting to be able to breath well again, the smokers cough is going away, the lungs feel better and not full of shit. Yes, eciggs may still be more dangerous than nothing, but smokers aren't approaching it from doing nothing.
Eciggs make quitting smoking vastly easier, and eciggs are easier to quit than cigarettes. I routinely go half a day without hitting my ecigg, that never happened with smokes.
Might and may are one thing, the OP said definitely, and that's a bold claim as we don't yet know if it's definitely anything. Had he even said probably that'd be ok, but definitely, no, that's not supportable.
> it doesn't take much time vaping to determine that it's less bad for you than smoking.
At least for commercial cigarettes. It's less clear how large the benefit would be for those smoking pipes or cigars, hookahs, using wild tobacco, freebasing tobacco, etc.
I was a pack-a-day clove smoker for years, and eventually one day I switched to an e-cig. I switched hard to vaping and didn't touch a cigarette again. Soon, I geared down to 4mg nic, and then I just... stopped about two months in. One day I realized I hadn't touched my e-cig in a week, and that was it for me.
That was four years ago, and I've only touched nicotine once since then (I smoked a single clove for old time's sake about two years after I quit... and then I declined a second one).
I use nasal snuff, the least damaging and least intrusive form of tobacco use.
I vaped pretty hardcore for 3 or 4 years, it definitely has an effect on your lungs, especially if you're into dual-coil sub-ohm builds and all that jazz.
Nasal snuff has been a God-send and is much more enjoyable, at least to me. I still smoke a nice briar pipe with a few different pipe tobacco blends on occasion, but nasal snuff has definitely curbed my tobacco/nicotine usage.
I could never go back to cigarettes and dip is just kind of gross, although I think it's better than cigarettes.
Anything by Poschl, Wilsons of Sharrow, or Ozona. There are many good brands though. Some of the recipes date back to the 1700's. In the states it is harder to get snuff though unless you want an American Scotch, which is smokey flavored, they are ok, but the Euro snuffs are much more enjoyable. https://www.mrsnuff.com is the site I use for getting European snuffs in the states.
Our society's tendency to moralize or rationalize issues has made it tough to talk about harm reduction.
Moralizers focus on the corrosive elements of addiction and rationalizers say that e-cigs are still harmful but they miss the point that many people who smoke e-cigs are better off than they would be if they used cigs to get their nicotine.
E-cigs offer a better path to cessation through better control of the nicotine concentrations than cigs do, and e-cigs are probably one of the least harmful ways to get nicotine (and they're certainly cheaper than gum and patches).
I was very disappointed that the Obama administration tried to apply such heavy-handed regulations to the industry, it has its place and I think we'd be better off tolerating e-cigs. Give people an alternative to caffeine.
I think most productive people are dependent on some stimulant or at least most people find their productivity is enhanced through stimulation. Whether it's coffee, nicotine, or amphetamine, we should be honest about why people use it and focus on access that doesn't cause undue suffering.
>E-cigs offer a better path to cessation through better control of the nicotine concentrations than cigs do, and e-cigs are probably one of the least harmful ways to get nicotine (and they're certainly cheaper than gum and patches).
Alternatively, e-cigs have made nicotine consumption cheaper, faster, more convenient, more socially acceptable, and available at much higher concentrations than tobacco. The aggregate being that nicotine addiction could very well increase overall, even if smoking rates drop. Most people don't realize that it's not really the smoke and lung cancer that leads to a majority of smoking deaths. It's the cardiovascular effects of nicotine leading to heart disease. Equating that to caffeine is ridiculous.
Do you have a source on that claim? I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the cardiovascular effects of smoking, and attributing all of those effects to nicotine, which is incorrect. Everything I've read on the subject indicates that nicotine's role in cardiovascular disease is quite minor.
Edit: To clarify, there is still no contest at all between potential long term harm from smoking, and massively reduced potential for harm from vaping. Sorry for my lack of responsibility in making that point clearly, or at all.
"Clinical trials of NRT in patients with underlying, stable coronary disease suggest that nicotine does not increase cardiovascular risk. At worst, the risks of NRT are no more than those of cigarette smoking. The risks of NRT for smokers, even for those with underlying cardiovascular disease, are small and are substantially outweighed by the potential benefits of smoking cessation."
Yeah, they discuss various mechanisms by which nicotine could increase risk, but unless I missed something, every time they look for an actual long term impact, there's no demonstrated risk from nicotine alone.
I’m not arguing that vaping isn’t massively better than smoking, but harmless? That’s a high bar. Edit: you’re correct about my irresponsibility, I apologize and have edited my post.
But you were replying to my comment questioning the outrageous claim that smoking's chief risk is cardiovascular disease caused by nicotine. You replied with only a link to a journal article, which could easily, at a glance, appear to back up that claim, although upon further reading, it certainly does not.
"Acute exposure to electronic cigarettes with nicotine increases cardiac sympathetic nerve activity in a pattern of heart rate variability that recapitulates the same heart rate variability pattern associated with increased cardiac risk in multiple populations with and without known cardiac disease."
I'm not arguing that e-cigs may not be healthier than smoking tobacco for a current smoker trying to quit. But they are lulling people into a false sense of safety which may be even more dangerous in the long run.
Your claim above is much stronger than what the study suggests (though it does at least point in the same direction).
> Most people don't realize that it's not really the smoke and lung cancer that leads to a majority of smoking deaths. It's the cardiovascular effects of nicotine leading to heart disease.
As described downthread, they keep finding associations that indicate that nicotine/heart disease associations may occur. But when they actually study the association, the association consistently fails to materialize.
I'm quite sure that your claim is flat wrong as stated.
I'd have to dig around to find it - but Snuff and chewing tobacco manufacturers actually changed their manufacturing process to being their product nitrosamine levels within the standard europe uses for snus production.
"Could be even more dangerous in the long run" is about on the same level of plausibility as vaping actually being healthier than not smoking or vaping. Sure, it's possible, but there's no good reason to think it's true.
Yes, there is so much public material implying that e-cigs are basically just as bad. It seems so irresponsible to me.
I think in part it's driven by how low-status smoking is these days, to the point that some people even hate the optics of it. It looks like smoking so it must be just as bad, or close.
Public service billboards, ads on buses, things like that. They don't claim it directly- they imply it by saying that smoking is bad, but so is vaping, so don't let your kids vape. Things like that.
Look at this: http://stillblowingsmoke.org/ I mean right off the bat they're calling it smoke. That is so obviously an attempt to link e-cigs to tobacco. Hell, they even use the word tobacco on the page.
I didn't think the regulations were heavy-handed. Such devices should be tested and certified to make sure they aren't, for example, leaching heavy metals into the liquid and vaporizing it. Devices sold with cadmium-plated heating coils or lead solder joints could easily poison millions of people, so I think it's reasonable to require safety testing.
I personally think ecigs are an interesting experiment in free markets.
A bunch of like minded people who had a habbit which was the leading cause of preventable death coming together to figure out a way to kill themselves less.
Have there been things in the industry which were poisonous and could kill you over the course of it's history. Yes. Lots. Have those been slowly fased out as concerned consumers voice opinions, yes. Ni200 wire is a good example. Battery mooch is another.
The lack of regulation has certainly led to it being more dangerous for uninformed consumers, but it has also lead to lots of independent entrepreneurs innovating fast in the space.
Personally I see it as a great example of free markets vs. regulation. I also think it's only been able to exist because it's in a market which of its own is hazardous to health.
Also this entire industry as I understand it came from China.
So your argument is that because e-cig users are coming from one harmful product, that we should do nothing to prevent the new product from causing undue harm, and that eventually (decades?) e-cigs will become safer because someone (who?) will eventually phase out the harmful ones?
Why not stop wasting time and lives, and prevent the harmful ones from being produced/released?
I think regulations are certainly warranted, but the ones the FDA has implemented are heavy handed. I don't think anyone in the industry is opposed to common sense regulations.
Ni200 which is a pure nickel wire was invented for temperature control. Required a specific device and chip to use as it has almost 0 resistance. Some stupid uneducated people or vendors sold it and and used it in non temperature controlled devices and poisoined themselves (not fatally), or blew up their batteries on non-regulated devices.
I just started vaping last month, and while I bought some kanthal wire, I also bought some ni200 and Titanium wire, which is dangerous if not used correctly. I personally didn't know, but also didn't use it until I looked it up.
With that said, ni200 wire did invent temperature control, which is a method of vaping these days.
316L stainless steel is a much safer option than Ni200 or titanium wire, shame it's not more commonly used (Kangertech sells 316L coils, but they're awfully hard to find compared to the Ni200 ones).
I don't think he's making the argument that on principle there should never be any e-cigs regulations because cigarettes are harmful.
The algebra for e-cig regulation is
# of people saved by regulation
- # of people killed by regulation(people who smoke more cigarettes because of the increased cost, and decreased variety of e-cigs)
And because cigarettes are sooooo dangerous even a small increase in smoking can causes the second term to overwhelm the first.
The tobacco industry has completely failed to improve safety, because [long historical discussion elided]. There are lots of dubious additives in cigarettes that might enhance the flavor somewhat, but don't seem worth the health risks. I worry that the e-cig industry will go the same way, if we take the view "there's something inherently unsafe about it, so users forfeit all their rights to safety".
The motorcycle industry bifurcated, with one segment trying to maximize safety while still being fun, and the other focused on looking bad-ass with little regard for stability. That's a possible outcome for e-cigs, with some medical-grade and some vape-nation-grade.
>there's something inherently unsafe about it, so users forfeit all their rights to safety
I absolutely hate when this happens via regulation.
Consumers should be presented the information required to choose for themselves. If people aren't making the choice other people want them to make then incentives and presenting information that pushes people toward the "right" choice is still better than legislating what a product must do.
Let people choose but incentivize the right choice.
Counterargument: I have seen vaping be MUCH more popular among people who would not otherwise smoke, and relatively little impact among people who do smoke. That's anecdotal obviously, but I think its pretty clear that the less noxious and more convenient nature makes vaping way more popular among younger people, potentially starting lifelong addictions.
There isn't a whole lot of reason to believe these products are particularly safer, either. The heating coils are in direct contact with the fluid and get easily hot enough to decompose it. Glycerine is food-safe and very probably alright to inhale- the other products used in vape fluid and the unwanted side-products from overheating them are reactive unknowns.
E-cigs and vaporizers are/have the potential to be way more popular among people who wouldn't otherwise use them and they are not as simple or safe as just nicotine (which itself isn't as simple or safe as just being a stimulant). Because of those two factors and the current and past massive negative effects of smoking, it's an extremely good idea to regulate them carefully or even heavily. We already know how hard it is to get the genie back into the bottle from cigarettes.
I find it very disappointing that people resort to anecdote when data is available. Granted, it's a new area and there hasn't been enough time for proper longitudinal studies, but what data we do have generally supports EC's for smoking cessation, and also functioning as a replacement for young people that would likely otherwise start smoking cigarettes.
As for the safety of the vapor itself, it's a little tricky. Some studies faced a lot of criticism because the 'vaping' method did not reflect actual usage. In one protocol (unfortunately I can't recall the article) it was found they basically burned up the coil and reported combustion products as the vapor profile.
A few takeaways from the article: no long-lived free radicals present, and short-lived radicals in the range of 100 to 1000 fold less than cigarettes. Their estimates for a typical 'vaper' would be about a 10-fold higher dose than typical air pollution exposure for a 24 hour period (200 puffs/day). This certainly represents a real potential hazard, but is also a clear improvement over cigarettes (especially because this isn't the major hazard in cigarette smoke).
However, the protocol uses 5 second 'puffs' on a 1.5 ohm coil with an absolutely pathetic 500ml/min flow rate. For reference, 500ml is the typical breath volume for a human at rest, with >10,000ml/min being typical breathing for a person at rest (https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-06...). In actual use, a puff is usually larger than the typical breath and taken in a span of 2-4 seconds. A flow rate of 20,000-40,000 ml/min is much more representative. It's no surprise that a coil with such a low flow rate would get far hotter than what is seen in actual use. Worth noting that high flow rates make for more comfortable and pleasant vaping, so are common in actual use.
Some good work has looked at variation in vaping protocol https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24832759 These findings show just how drastic the differences are when you start to use higher power levels in ECs.
The data clearly show that high-power vaping likely presents a significant risk, but to date I've yet to see data that is convincingly representative of anything like normal use.
I was disappointed to see that the city I live in (Oakland) had banned the sale of vaping materials and e-cigs, along with menthols and other flavored tobacco products, to "protect the children". I know many people who have stopped smoking real tobacco because of the introduction of gaping, so Oakland's decision just seems ignorant to me.
An intervention that has proved effective for saving lives from tobacco use is MPOWER from the World Health Organization. Raise the cost of tobacco through taxes, ban smoking in public places, hard-hitting, scary, anti-smoking ads, doctors talking to their patients about quitting, nicotine replacement therapy, telephone counseling support. In NYC the age for purchase is 21 as it is nationwide for alcohol. In NYC, the minimum cost per pack is $13.
NRT is nicotine patches, nicotine gum, the drugs Chantix, and Zyban (Bupropion). These are FDA recommended treatments to help with nicotine craving. If you read the reference provided, the FDA is against e-Cigs.
I quit smoking a while ago for 4 months using a vape, then Thailand's military junta banned them and most shops closed.
It's been a couple years now and tonnes of online shops started to sell and I'd see lots of local vapers while having coffee, so decided to give that a go.
It's been a month since I've had a cigarette now since I've started vaping. Energy is up and sense of smell is coming back. Used to smoke a pack a day.
I do run the risk of deportation, jail or heavy fines/bribes if caught with the thing, but I feel it's worth it for health reasons.
Also gov just increased tax from 130THB a pack to 150THB a pack.
I'd rather they represented the number a extra days alive. "Switching to vaping would bring XXXXXX more days of life to Americans".
If those 660,000 people were on average 95+ years old and would have died soon later anyway, then "saving" their life has a much lesser meaning. Of course this isn't the case, but the statistic is not very helpful as a measure.
Yeah. I hate cigarette smoke with a passion but don't care if e-cigs puff all they want because it has almost no odor and little/no noxious particles. Therefore, it makes sense to tax the heck out of cigarettes and place them in anti-marketing packaging, and perhaps subsidize (no sales tax/VAT) e-cigs. Cigarettes are engineered to be as addictive as heroin, but Prohibition is never a good solution, so the best compromise is something like e-cigs which solves both harm-, litter and nuisance-reduction.
I wonder if this obsession with saving lives will end when we hit the maximum human capacity of Earth, sometime in the next 1000 years. Though perhaps we could be multi-solar-system by then.
Ecigs have helped me quit smoking and they are the only thing that worked for me. However, out of all the smokers I know, I only know one other person who managed to quit smoking and stay quit with ecigs. The vast majority of people I know who tried ecigs kept smoking and eventually gave them altogether in favor of cigarettes
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadhttp://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/15/health/quit-smoking-cold-t...
Not convinced switching people to a just as addicting, just as nasty way of killing themselves slowly is any better.
> "Researchers looked at nearly 700 long-term heavy smokers in England who wanted to kick the habit. They instructed half of the participants to quit abruptly -- that is, pick a quit day when they would give up smoking entirely. The other half were told to scale back their cigarettes gradually for two weeks leading up to their quit day.
> But even the abrupt-quit group was not exactly going it alone. The researchers gave them nicotine patches to use for two weeks before their quit day. During this period, the gradual group also got patches, as well as gum, lozenges and other types of short-acting nicotine replacement therapy to help them as they cut back. After the quit day, both groups got patches and short-acting therapy, in addition to counseling. "
This link refers to smokers switching to e-cigarettes, which is considering significantly less harmful than normal cigarettes, e.g. https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/e-cigarettes-95-less...
It is in ecigs
I smoked a pack a day for over 10 years and quit cold turkey without any patches or vaping.
The mental break thing is definitely real. I highly recommend just going outside. Maybe do a couple of laps around the block.
We have decades of data showing that isn't the case.
No, you know that most people who attempt to quit "cold turkey" decide that quitting smoking permanently isn't as important as relieving their current symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Its a minor point but an important distinction.
...guess what they get with ecigs? A far safer alternative which allows them to continue their nicotine habit and enjoy the pleasures of smoking. So you're in support of ecigs now?
Of course, that's not the reality. every single one of your arguments are hypothetical metaphors that have no connection to the facts of the issue at hand. You have no practical solutions. You're only answer is for people to 'toughen up'. Quite the problem solver you are.
The reason most people fail to quit isn't because they are weak, or anything like that. It's simply because they don't want to really quit.
I know of 6 people (including myself) who quit cold turkey after many years. The only thing we had in common was we were serious about quitting. One other person I knew who quit used the patch, but she was separate from the 6.
It is, which is why ecigs are so great and why patches and gum have largely failed.
It could be purely anecdotal evidence but it sure seems like it.
Best? No. Better? Probably.
One of the funny things with vaping is after two weeks smoking a cigarette becomes disgusting.
I'd say it's also a lot easier to quit vaping than smoking cigarettes. So that as well is a move in the correct direction.
"This systematic review appraises existing laboratory and clinical research on the potential risks from electronic cigarette use, compared with the well-established devastating effects of smoking tobacco cigarettes. Currently available evidence indicates that electronic cigarettes are by far a less harmful alternative to smoking and significant health benefits are expected in smokers who switch from tobacco to electronic cigarettes."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4110871/
What are you basing that ludicrous statement on?
More research is required on long-term effects, but e-cigarettes, regardless of whatever other problems they may have, are likely far less damaging to users than continuing to smoke cigarettes.
i still want to quit nicotine entirely one day but until that day comes, my vape pen and i are good friends. 9 months ago i tried one out, and that same day was the very last day i ever smoked a cigarette.
Looks like he's doing pretty well. Nicotine is extremely addictive. One does not just quit smoking.
Plenty of people do.
Though I have a theory cold turkey quitting normally happens after a health scare of some variety. My father was a 45 year smoker and quit the day of his heart attack.
Another spot of anecdata, when I was a smoker I couldn't go a few hours without a cigarette. After 6 years of vaping, I can pretty much go 8-10 hours with no real craving.
It's unreal how much less of a hold vaping has on me versus cigarettes when that nicotine isn't coming along with a few thousand other chemical compounds.
I'm thinking of articles like https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nicotine-all-b...
I'm obviously talking about moderate doses. I know concentrated nicotine is very toxic :)
Best summary I'm aware of (note the many caveats): https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
I am a pretty serious athlete. Vaping - whether it was 3mg or 0mg e-juice - fucked with my lungs pretty badly, and caused a noticeable drop in athletic performance. Also made me feel way less motivated to lift weights and train, which I chalked up to the instant gratification of nicotine. When I did lift weights and train, I always felt like I wasn't able to give 100%.
I quit, but goddamn it was a pain in the ass to quit. It's not even the nicotine I miss, really, so much as it is the whole experience. The heat, the vapor, the flavor, the habit.
Friends of mine that have switched from smoking cigarettes to vaping e-juice have reported an increase in cardiovascular capacity; but as a non-smoker that started vaping, I definitely noticed decreased performance.
Kanthal requires a very specific heating profile after installation to develop its protective coating. Without that its basically just weird, fancy stainless steel. It becomes very brittle after the heat treat which causes gradual degradation especially during repeated, fast heating cycles. I would not use it.
I would also avoid low-alloy stainless like 400 series. That's the cheapest kind and at elevated temperature it oxidizes and corrodes. 300 series would be better, 500 would be best. Even within those two series though, some alloys will be much better than others.
Nickel... I don't know. It's very sensitive to composition and some can leach into liquid and others don't. It's more toxic than iron or chromium, but pretty resistant to temperature. Kind of a wash.
This is why I really wish someone would sell an ultrasonic vape, which the original patent included. That should be far safer, but so far, nobody seems to be making them.
At super low power it's pretty much totally safe and the impact on breathing is temporary[1]. At ~>18 watts formaldehyde starts to become a possible irritant, and there are also lots of other carbonyls. One of the really fun ones in the graph in [1] is acrolein- it's still at extremely low levels but that shit is not anything you want in your body. It's generated in small amounts any time anything fatty is burned, but absorbing it through your lungs daily is a totally different thing.
Vaping at low power (<20 watts) is pretty safe, but my girlfriends vape goes up to 200 and she uses it constantly at 85 or so. There are definitely significant amounts of chemicals besides glycerine and propylene glycol.
[1]: https://monq.com/vg/
I don't think it takes a huge leap to realize inhaling smoke is not good for you.
Cigar and pipe smokers as a rule don't have the kind of compulsive many a day habits that cigarette smokers do.
http://www.medicinenet.com/smokeless_tobacco/article.htm
To me it's unclear whether or not nicotine itself is actually bad.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco-specific_nitrosamines
That's a bold statement, how exactly is vaping definitely not healthy?
How is that a bold statement? People run around vaping like there are zero consequences, but I wouldn't be surprised if research eventually emerges saying certain lower quality fillers/vape mixtures will result in mechanical damage and cancer of the lungs and esophagus. Something similar was apparent with flavoring agents being used in the vape world.
My sentiment is more about where I think the research will go.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/flavorings/
I'd be interested to hear of more.
I was friends with a major twitch streamer who used to vape literally 24/7, every stream. He got esophageal cancer and died after fighting it for ~1-2 years, roughly around age of 23. Now, obviously this is anecdotal, and obviously it could have just been bad luck/other factors/coincidence. But, I have always raised an eyebrow towards vaping since then. The only forms I consider safer with minimal consequence is dry herb based vaping with convection heat --- See silver surfer vapes for example.
Nicotine alone is not harmful, it's addictive, but not harmful, it's not what causes cancer from smoking.
All apparent evidence is that vaping appears vastly healthier than smoking and there's no reason yet to believe vapor is harmful to the lungs; you breath water vapor all day every day. Calling something "foreign chemicals" might sound scary, but is not a plausible reason to call something definitely unhealthy. The word definitely is very bold, and not remotely justified.
> People run around vaping like there are zero consequences
No, they run around like it's vastly safer than smoking, which it clearly is. There's zero evidence anything to do with vaping has the cancer causing effects of smoke and burnt carcinogens.
Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor. It substantially increases the risk of Deep Vein Thrombosis, especially when combined with another chemical that produces clotting enzymes, such as estrogen. Speaking of estrogen, nicotine also antagonizes the estrogen receptor, which is pretty bad if you're a woman. Ever notice how women who have been smoking for a long time look pretty bad? It's not your imagination, it's because nicotine shuts down their bodies' ability to use estrogen (and estrogen is what causes smooth skin, curves, etc.).
Also, go look up "Green Tobacco Sickness" [0]. Too much nicotine can have all kinds of adverse effects, and since it can be absorbed by the skin, people who handle wet tobacco plants get all kinds of health problems. Oh, and too much nicotine can stop your heart. I've seen people seriously suggest it as a suicide method.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Tobacco_Sickness
As for it being a vasoconstrictor, so is caffeine and any number of other stimulants, that itself in not inherently bad, it's simply an effect.
"Nicotine is bad for you."
"What about water??"
I don't know if it's intentional, but thanks for making my morning better. :)
We do that all the time. Ever worked in a newly constructed building? Wondering what that smell is? Plasticizers, monomers, adhesive solvents, etc.
Same with a new car. Or cooking over the stove, bbq'ing. Or walking down a busy street with cars on it.
Just because you are inhaling "foreign chemicals" doesn't mean there are significant risk associated with it.
I agree that we should get more information about the risk of vaping, but the wholesale banning of vaping is likely to be more harmful than just leaving things as is.[1]
[1]Not saying you are arguing for banning vaping, but FDA did take that position originally until they got smacked down
source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/e-cigs-and-second...
I'm not sure why you consider the OP's statement to be bold as I don't think there are many instances where ingesting chemicals into the lungs is considered healthy.
Eciggs make quitting smoking vastly easier, and eciggs are easier to quit than cigarettes. I routinely go half a day without hitting my ecigg, that never happened with smokes.
I was responding the the OP's statement that saying e-cigarrets were unhealthy was a bold claim.
There are always things that might be considered less harmful but that does not mean they are considered healthy.
"In its product safety assessment for propylene glycol, the Dow Chemical Company recommends individuals avoid inhaling the chemical"[1]
[1] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/122-a244/
At least for commercial cigarettes. It's less clear how large the benefit would be for those smoking pipes or cigars, hookahs, using wild tobacco, freebasing tobacco, etc.
I was a pack-a-day clove smoker for years, and eventually one day I switched to an e-cig. I switched hard to vaping and didn't touch a cigarette again. Soon, I geared down to 4mg nic, and then I just... stopped about two months in. One day I realized I hadn't touched my e-cig in a week, and that was it for me.
That was four years ago, and I've only touched nicotine once since then (I smoked a single clove for old time's sake about two years after I quit... and then I declined a second one).
I vaped pretty hardcore for 3 or 4 years, it definitely has an effect on your lungs, especially if you're into dual-coil sub-ohm builds and all that jazz.
Nasal snuff has been a God-send and is much more enjoyable, at least to me. I still smoke a nice briar pipe with a few different pipe tobacco blends on occasion, but nasal snuff has definitely curbed my tobacco/nicotine usage.
I could never go back to cigarettes and dip is just kind of gross, although I think it's better than cigarettes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2017/08/30/tobac...
Moralizers focus on the corrosive elements of addiction and rationalizers say that e-cigs are still harmful but they miss the point that many people who smoke e-cigs are better off than they would be if they used cigs to get their nicotine.
E-cigs offer a better path to cessation through better control of the nicotine concentrations than cigs do, and e-cigs are probably one of the least harmful ways to get nicotine (and they're certainly cheaper than gum and patches).
I was very disappointed that the Obama administration tried to apply such heavy-handed regulations to the industry, it has its place and I think we'd be better off tolerating e-cigs. Give people an alternative to caffeine.
I think most productive people are dependent on some stimulant or at least most people find their productivity is enhanced through stimulation. Whether it's coffee, nicotine, or amphetamine, we should be honest about why people use it and focus on access that doesn't cause undue suffering.
Alternatively, e-cigs have made nicotine consumption cheaper, faster, more convenient, more socially acceptable, and available at much higher concentrations than tobacco. The aggregate being that nicotine addiction could very well increase overall, even if smoking rates drop. Most people don't realize that it's not really the smoke and lung cancer that leads to a majority of smoking deaths. It's the cardiovascular effects of nicotine leading to heart disease. Equating that to caffeine is ridiculous.
http://www.onlinejacc.org/content/29/7/1422
Edit: To clarify, there is still no contest at all between potential long term harm from smoking, and massively reduced potential for harm from vaping. Sorry for my lack of responsibility in making that point clearly, or at all.
NRT: nicotine replacement therapy
Do you see how that's kind of irresponsible?
"Acute exposure to electronic cigarettes with nicotine increases cardiac sympathetic nerve activity in a pattern of heart rate variability that recapitulates the same heart rate variability pattern associated with increased cardiac risk in multiple populations with and without known cardiac disease."
I'm not arguing that e-cigs may not be healthier than smoking tobacco for a current smoker trying to quit. But they are lulling people into a false sense of safety which may be even more dangerous in the long run.
> Most people don't realize that it's not really the smoke and lung cancer that leads to a majority of smoking deaths. It's the cardiovascular effects of nicotine leading to heart disease.
As described downthread, they keep finding associations that indicate that nicotine/heart disease associations may occur. But when they actually study the association, the association consistently fails to materialize.
I'm quite sure that your claim is flat wrong as stated.
I think in part it's driven by how low-status smoking is these days, to the point that some people even hate the optics of it. It looks like smoking so it must be just as bad, or close.
Which material are you referring to? This is an outrageous claim.
Look at this: http://stillblowingsmoke.org/ I mean right off the bat they're calling it smoke. That is so obviously an attempt to link e-cigs to tobacco. Hell, they even use the word tobacco on the page.
A bunch of like minded people who had a habbit which was the leading cause of preventable death coming together to figure out a way to kill themselves less.
Have there been things in the industry which were poisonous and could kill you over the course of it's history. Yes. Lots. Have those been slowly fased out as concerned consumers voice opinions, yes. Ni200 wire is a good example. Battery mooch is another.
The lack of regulation has certainly led to it being more dangerous for uninformed consumers, but it has also lead to lots of independent entrepreneurs innovating fast in the space.
Personally I see it as a great example of free markets vs. regulation. I also think it's only been able to exist because it's in a market which of its own is hazardous to health.
Also this entire industry as I understand it came from China.
Why not stop wasting time and lives, and prevent the harmful ones from being produced/released?
Ni200 which is a pure nickel wire was invented for temperature control. Required a specific device and chip to use as it has almost 0 resistance. Some stupid uneducated people or vendors sold it and and used it in non temperature controlled devices and poisoined themselves (not fatally), or blew up their batteries on non-regulated devices.
I just started vaping last month, and while I bought some kanthal wire, I also bought some ni200 and Titanium wire, which is dangerous if not used correctly. I personally didn't know, but also didn't use it until I looked it up.
With that said, ni200 wire did invent temperature control, which is a method of vaping these days.
The algebra for e-cig regulation is # of people saved by regulation - # of people killed by regulation(people who smoke more cigarettes because of the increased cost, and decreased variety of e-cigs)
And because cigarettes are sooooo dangerous even a small increase in smoking can causes the second term to overwhelm the first.
The motorcycle industry bifurcated, with one segment trying to maximize safety while still being fun, and the other focused on looking bad-ass with little regard for stability. That's a possible outcome for e-cigs, with some medical-grade and some vape-nation-grade.
I absolutely hate when this happens via regulation.
Consumers should be presented the information required to choose for themselves. If people aren't making the choice other people want them to make then incentives and presenting information that pushes people toward the "right" choice is still better than legislating what a product must do.
Let people choose but incentivize the right choice.
There isn't a whole lot of reason to believe these products are particularly safer, either. The heating coils are in direct contact with the fluid and get easily hot enough to decompose it. Glycerine is food-safe and very probably alright to inhale- the other products used in vape fluid and the unwanted side-products from overheating them are reactive unknowns.
E-cigs and vaporizers are/have the potential to be way more popular among people who wouldn't otherwise use them and they are not as simple or safe as just nicotine (which itself isn't as simple or safe as just being a stimulant). Because of those two factors and the current and past massive negative effects of smoking, it's an extremely good idea to regulate them carefully or even heavily. We already know how hard it is to get the genie back into the bottle from cigarettes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25301815 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25888354 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26597453
As for the safety of the vapor itself, it's a little tricky. Some studies faced a lot of criticism because the 'vaping' method did not reflect actual usage. In one protocol (unfortunately I can't recall the article) it was found they basically burned up the coil and reported combustion products as the vapor profile.
Similarly, this study appears to be reasonably executed, at least at first: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961046/
A few takeaways from the article: no long-lived free radicals present, and short-lived radicals in the range of 100 to 1000 fold less than cigarettes. Their estimates for a typical 'vaper' would be about a 10-fold higher dose than typical air pollution exposure for a 24 hour period (200 puffs/day). This certainly represents a real potential hazard, but is also a clear improvement over cigarettes (especially because this isn't the major hazard in cigarette smoke).
However, the protocol uses 5 second 'puffs' on a 1.5 ohm coil with an absolutely pathetic 500ml/min flow rate. For reference, 500ml is the typical breath volume for a human at rest, with >10,000ml/min being typical breathing for a person at rest (https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-06...). In actual use, a puff is usually larger than the typical breath and taken in a span of 2-4 seconds. A flow rate of 20,000-40,000 ml/min is much more representative. It's no surprise that a coil with such a low flow rate would get far hotter than what is seen in actual use. Worth noting that high flow rates make for more comfortable and pleasant vaping, so are common in actual use.
Some good work has looked at variation in vaping protocol https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24832759 These findings show just how drastic the differences are when you start to use higher power levels in ECs.
The data clearly show that high-power vaping likely presents a significant risk, but to date I've yet to see data that is convincingly representative of anything like normal use.
An intervention that has proved effective for saving lives from tobacco use is MPOWER from the World Health Organization. Raise the cost of tobacco through taxes, ban smoking in public places, hard-hitting, scary, anti-smoking ads, doctors talking to their patients about quitting, nicotine replacement therapy, telephone counseling support. In NYC the age for purchase is 21 as it is nationwide for alcohol. In NYC, the minimum cost per pack is $13.
[1] https://blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/2016/08/protecting-...
That's what e-cigs are.
I almost made the switch 2 years prior but I wasn't allowed to use it in my private office so I figured what's the point?
Call it habit or whatever but I still can't get as much work done at home when I'm not smoking so I consider it my weekend treat.
It's been a couple years now and tonnes of online shops started to sell and I'd see lots of local vapers while having coffee, so decided to give that a go.
It's been a month since I've had a cigarette now since I've started vaping. Energy is up and sense of smell is coming back. Used to smoke a pack a day.
I do run the risk of deportation, jail or heavy fines/bribes if caught with the thing, but I feel it's worth it for health reasons.
Also gov just increased tax from 130THB a pack to 150THB a pack.
If those 660,000 people were on average 95+ years old and would have died soon later anyway, then "saving" their life has a much lesser meaning. Of course this isn't the case, but the statistic is not very helpful as a measure.