I really want vapes to be available as an alternative to conventional smoking but the companies pushing them now are addicting a lot of new users, if the market participants were more responsible these devices could have been all positive.
In this debate people really underestimate how bad smoking is for you.
UK NHS estimates e-cigarettes about 95% less damaging than smoking. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/vaping-quit-smokin...
Huff post says that in 2011 it was 16% for youth.
So if you know 20-30x vapers than smokers that's incredible evidence that vaping is reducing the number of smokers dramatically.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cigarette-smoking-decline_n_6...
For some historical context when I started college in mid 2000's 20-30% of the people I knew smoked.
There are a few dangers to vaping.
The biggest one is having a vaporizer that is malfunctioning and is burning things instead of heating them up. The complex chemical reactions are difficult to predict. But it has the side effect of tasting like shit.
The second biggest danger is the flavorings. However the community has been very good at self-policing and eliminating flavors that are found to pose a risk.
The last danger is a sort of being a idiot and using way too much nicotine.
On the flip side you can have zero nicotine. So peer pressure isn't really even a problem as you can get zero nicotine juices.
Sounds like something for a Youtuber to measure. :)
I never tried a Juul, just regular mods and vape pens if that makes a difference.
Maybe some of the flavours have impact too, I don't know. One thing that is different is it's "just" a cough from immediate irritation. None of the horrible green and yellow crap coming up from a coughing fit next morning that you got from tobacco.
That's ignoring Juul which works differently, I have no idea what goes on in those.
I have a feeling most of your college friends will grow out of vaping.
Of course, I'm also biased by having only lived in LA and the Bay Area where I bet smoking is less prevalent than other parts of the country.
Without vaping, that smoking rate would probably be 1/6 people, which is worse than everyone vaping.
Are you calling vaping "smoking"? Because that would be disingenuous.
Also you may as well just say "since e-cigs were introduced" since there was never a time that they weren't flavored.
Vaping isn't a euphemism. It's really a different thing altogether. In fact, I euphemize it back to "smoking" because I hate the term "vaping". It sounds so lame.
E-cigs are essentially a very addictive substance (Nicotine) and a bunch of unregulated (and unreported) substances + flavor.
They're also disguised as usb-keys and hard to detect (not like a cigarette).
I'm sure SF lobbied with JUUL before laying down the ban-hammer.
JUUL absolutely should be banned from marketing at children, it’s blatantly obvious they know what they are doing.
I’m generally not in favour of legislation because it often either doesn’t work or has bad 2nd order effects but this is one of those cases I’d make an exception for.
Over here in the UK they limited the max strength of vape fluid to 18mg (previously 24mg was common) and reduced the max tank size (I kept my old one as the they are where interchangeable).
It remains to be seen what effect if any that has though.
No, that's incorrect. Juul manufactured "Fruit Medley" and "Mango," both of which are now restricted to online-only sales through their age-verification platform. There are thousands of other vendors who sell sweet-flavored nicotine solutions, though.
I also fundamentally disagree that only children like sweet flavors, and I wonder why fruit-flavored ciders and liqueurs are still legal.
>E-cigs are essentially a very addictive substance (Nicotine) and a bunch of unregulated (and unreported) substances + flavor.
So are regular cigarettes. But regular cigarettes also include the inhalation of a significant amount of tar.
>They're also disguised as usb-keys and hard to detect (not like a cigarette).
It's not a disguise. When first released, Juul's form factor was fairly distinctive but there are a wide variety of commercial e-cigarette form factors now. I'm also not sure what "hard to detect" has to do with anything -- by who, when, in what context?
>I'm sure SF lobbied with JUUL before laying down the ban-hammer.
What does this mean? The phrasing is usually "Company X lobbied Politician Y" or "Company X hired a lobbyist to lobby members of Legislature Z."
People cite this as if its the end of the justification for legislative action. No, it's merely the beginning of the argument. So the rate of e-cig usage is growing rapidly among teens. Why should I care?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -- CS Lewis
> E-cigarette use among U.S. youth and young adults is now a major public health concern. E-cigarette use has increased considerably in recent years, growing an astounding 900% among high school students from 2011 to 2015. [0]
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/e-cigarettes...
And when were E-cigs invented anyway? Comparing against 2011 may be a way to get big percentage numbers, without describing much about prevalence.
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0211-youth-tobacco-...
And despite the scary stories, it seems reported vaping use hasn't sharply risen. It peaked in 2015, substantially declined in 2017, and for 2018 seems to have returned to 2015 levels. But overall vaping use has at worst replaced cigarette smoking and possibly accelerated the long-term decline in smoking. A recent study, https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2018/10/31/toba..., concludes
> If our primary concern is population-level trends in youth and young adult smoking, which we believe is appropriate, then vaping has not shown to be a serious cause for concern, even if the catalyst hypothesis is correct, and it is possible that vaping may be playing a contributing role to the recent steep declines in youth and young adult smoking.
The anti-vaping hysteria is irresponsible and to the extent it ignores the data and creates a boogeyman out of unknowns it's anti-science. Compared to the parade of horribles consequent to tobacco use and even marijuana use, not to mention alcohol and other drugs, nicotine itself should be the least of our worries. And that's before we even consider the efficacy of a ban in terms of preventing teen vaping. (And if we as a community could manage to have an adult conversation about nicotine, like we briefly did for THC, we might appreciate the benefits of nicotine--e.g. that it's used by a significant fraction of adults and teens alike to self-medicate real behavioral and mental health problems.)
But yeah, banning all of it (with priority on getting rid of the real cigarettes that cause others' harm) in public spaces would be my preference.
That's not a thing. Are you thinking of heated vaporization of tobacco leaf? Because what "vaping" is today is a liquid that's atomized by a heating element, not solid matter. There can't be ash from glycerin and propelyne glycol
Where's the proof that e-cigarettes are harmful?
We have mountains of evidence that cigarettes are one of the most harmful habits one can do.
Do we have proof e-cigs cause lung cancer, or other types of cancer? COPD? asthma? no, we do not.
edit: people seem to be very downvote-happy on this site when they disagree with something.
Combustion of tobacco produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) which are heavily carcinogenic. Vaporization of nicotine does NOT produce these compounds.
Additionally the UK Government claims that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, suggesting they are less damaging than junk food, soda, or car exhaust. Why not ban coca-cola and real cigarettes besides ecig?
This is going by the old "Fool me once shame on you, falsely convince me that tobacco products pose no health risks twice shame on me" - I think that's how that quote goes.
I'm not claiming e-cigs are _good_ for you, but greater harm than, say, soda and junk food, has not been proven.
The UK government claims they are 95% less harmful than cigarettes: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/vaping-quit-smokin...
Besides nicotine, e-cigarettes can contain harmful and potentially harmful ingredients, including:
>ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs
>flavorants such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease
>volatile organic compounds
>heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead"
UK government claims ecigs are far, far less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.
"Research estimates that, while not risk-free..."
Less harmful but harmful nonetheless. Not without risk. Contaminants and other unnatural elements are introduced into the lungs.
Vaping is harmful, too.
Best advice. Don't be stupid. Don't smoke anything at all. It's unnatural. Your lungs are trying to tell you something when you first try it. Listen to them.
Family member finally quit smoking to ride more, went a little too gung-ho on endurance and developed an afib. He couldn't take blood thinners due to arthritis meds. Mixing those is apparently worse than your stroke risk. But he lost that lottery and threw a clot a few years ago and things were pretty bad.
It's not about quitting anymore though. It's way beyond that.
Vaping is incredibly addictive, and because it's 'not smoking' and Juul is marketing it as 'cool' - it's massively taking over.
While vaping is obviously better than smoking, it has odd side effects due to the fact it's not, for example, I found myself vaping all the time, as opposed to just 'smoke breaks'.
Understand a few things:
1) Marketing works 2) Trends are real 3) Young people are very impressionable 4) The earlier addiction happens, the more life-long issues it causes 5) Critical masses are real: 5 kids in a high school doing it may not flip the school, but 25 might be enough and flip it into 1/2 the school 6) Supply and Demand is real. Make things harder to get, more expensive, higher barriers, the less people do it, the less likely there is to be a 'tipping point' collective behaviour.
I don't think they should have banned it, but they should totally ban all forms of advertising and promotion, there should be relatively high taxes on it, health warnings, and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school. At least if the kids can go all day without vaping, they might not fall into a hole.
In Canada, vaping among teenagers has increased 75% in one year this is quite a substantial thing to worry about. [1]
[1] http://www.cancer.ca/en/about-us/for-media/media-releases/na...
I think criminalizing drugs leads to a lot of societal problems. I don't think legalizing all drugs is the answer to those problems.
Info for those interested here: https://harmreduction.org/issues/overdose-prevention/dope-sf...
The analogy was not a comparison of methadone and vaping.
So regardless of anything else, it’s good that ecigs are banned as much as possible.
Even if there is no way to prevent more kids from getting addicted to vaping (and that's a big if), having less kids and many less adults smoking cigarettes is such a huge win for public health.
--
Anecdotally I went from 2 packs a day to chain vaping for a few years, health improved enough to start being much more active, finally weaned down nicotine, quitting vaping was hard but not near as yard as other cigarette quits, have been nicotine free for almost a year (not even a puff) and now I avg about 10+ miles a week running and 50+ miles a week biking and am in the best shape of my life at almost-40.