It should also be noted that abstinence only sex ed usually involves many outright lies, such as that sex outside of marriage is objectively immoral, that waiting until marriage prevents STIs, vastly exaggerated figures for the risk of disease and failure rates of birth control, etc. Whereas smoking is actually dangerous, and "don't smoke, it'll greatly increase your chances of getting these various horrible diseases" is actually truthful.

All I ever see is picture of black lungs, messages of certain cancer and death. To me, this is like those people who have pictures of dead fetuses for their anti-abortion message. It's extreme, and sets of red-flags in my brain.

I fucking love smoking. It gives me a way to chill out and unwind for 10-15 minutes. It's great for my mental health, because I won't do it in my house... I have to get away from the computer, I have to stop what I'm doing. It gets me away from everything.

"Light and intermittent smoking carry nearly the same risk for cardiovascular disease as daily smoking.... In addition, the risk of ischemic heart disease in light-smoking men and women aged 35 to 39 years who smoke 1 to 4 cigarettes per day is nearly 3 times that of a nonsmoker."

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/121/13/1518

There's nothing wrong with taking a calculated risk, but it is a risk.

I expect it's still a significant health risk, but I've never seen studies on people who don't smoke daily.

How the damage happens is not important, but consider the possibility of slowly accumulating effects because of a slow rehabilitation potential.

Me too. I haven't had a cigarette in over a decade, but I remain hopeful that modern science will find a cure for cancer and other smoking-related diseases during my lifetime, so I can resume smoking again. This probably sounds nuts to non-smokers and I won't bother explaining it any further.

As an aside, I am one of many who tried e-cigarettes when they came out because they were very convenient, and ended up quitting. They were new and not banned anywhere yet, so I could 'smoke' even more. I never liked smoking indoors and do not like the stale tobacco smell so they were great. For reasons I don't really understand my tobacco habit gradually tapered off and I no longer smoke anything, but I do miss it.

I think I have heard this from a couple of e-cigarette using colleagues: once the switched to e-cigarettes stopping became easier.

(One of them explained that he used weaker and weaker refills until it was basically just water. I guess at that point it just feels stupid.)

First of all, I envy you. You're a "chipper" and make up about 5% of the population of smokers. I on the other hand am in the Majority. It's either zero or a pack a day. The black lung photos didn't contribute to my cessation. Instead I had to grow up and decide I didn't like feeling like garbage. That said, If the black lung applies to that 95% of us that can't stop at just one, it's probably the right message.

5% source: http://articles.latimes.com/1996-09-18/news/ls-44883_1_heavy...

Though I think the true implication is "don't have sex until an impulse comes along to do so, that is strong enough to completely drown out the voice of your superego in your head. And then—if the impulse really is that strong—the 'proper' order to do things is to get married to that person, and then have sex with them."

Getting back to the original topic, we need to know more information about the other additives in e-cigs as well. There are kids at my child's high-school that smoke non-nicotine e-cigs supposedly because they like the taste (they come in fruity flavors).

If the risk profile for cigarettes is just barely too high for a non-smoker then e-cigarettes may be the last 'push' Although this does require some assumptions about why individuals start smoking cigarettes in the first place.

In any case, it seems like much of the e-cig debate comes down to this. Those in favor see it as an alternative to cigarettes for smokers. Those against see it as a way to get non-smokers to consume tobacco.

I expressed skepticism that burning random chemicals and inhaling the resulting smoke is healthy. Good to have some evidence to back that up.

Why? If it doesn't have health costs, there's not much reason you should care. This study isn't even on the same planet as measuring health costs.

To the first order of approximation, nicotine addiction is bad for your health because it causes you to burn and inhale plant matter, the common delivery methods of nicotine are horribly unhealthy but if you're talking about nicotine as such (for example, through a transdermal patch) then it doesn't really have significant adverse health effects.

Everything in it is evidenced by as much research as they can get.

https://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/50-years-of-p...

I agree that it's a bad idea to take nicotine in any form unless you need to, but it seems that nicotine is one of the less harmful parts of tobacco.

For chewing tobacco it's probably not the nicotine that's causing cancer, but all the other stuff.

But more to the point, there was little reason to believe it would cause cancer in the first place, compared to any other random compound. Its association with tobacco is a wash, because other compounds, like aldehydes, are completely sufficient to explain the carcinogenicity of smoking tobacco.

For analysis of nicotine as such, you can refer to the known side-effects of nicotine dermal patches; they're well researched, approved by FDA, etc - the place of application can get skin irritation and itchiness; overdose of nicotine can get dizziness, headache, rapid heartbeat, and nausea (same as for too much nicotine through other means), but they're not known to cause cancer or other significant damage despite being used by very many people over very long time.

Just like a light hit on the head would increase awareness, but increasing the force and repetition of the hits on the head is not well advised, when the effect wears off after overuse - to say nothing about the immediate effect of getting hit.

The perceived short term benefits are only secondary effects. And with regards to nicotine, all the arguments in favor are to be treated as extraordinary claims.

I wonder how the testing methodology works.

Nicotine also has benefits - most notably, it is a stimulant. The question is what tradeoffs you are making by consuming nicotine.

https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

I'd suppose other chemicals in traditional cigarettes fill very similar roles.

Imagine you want your house to smell like coffee. So you heat a baking tray until it is white hot. Then drip coffee onto the tray (don't actually try this). Much of the coffee will be vaporized with the water in it providing a nice aroma. But some of it will be in direct contact with the tray and will burn and have a nasty smell. The hotter the tray is, the more the coffee gets burned and transformed into not-coffee. E-cigs are like that, except one doesn't notice the nasty aroma of the accidental chemicals.

Same goes for almost everything.

And in that cotext such dismissive reaction makes sense to me.

That agreement isn't working very well, lots of sellers will sell to people who say "I've never smoked".

It's a shame, because that's the kind of thing that could force more regulation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39523857

> The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) said 87% of shops were knowingly or unwittingly prepared to sell e-cigarettes to people who have never smoked or vaped.

The whole idea seems kind of pointless. If someone want to vape, let them.

I think there's been a little bit of research showing some young people moving to smoking from vaping.