Thanks to e-cigs, teen cigarette (not e-cig) smoking has started increasing after decreasing for years. Teens that would have never started smoking are introduced to it with e-cigs.
I don't know how these 2 phenomenons balance out. Does the number of cigarette smokers moving to e-cigs counterbalance the number of younger people starting to smoke cigarettes because of it ?
In all cases, I have no issue with more studies on the direct impact on e-cigs themselves.
Just ban cigarettes if that is the problem.
The aggressive taxation, cultural shaming, disallowing smoking in public places, health warnings etc. seem to be more effective than most blanket prohibitions, even against the addictive properties of nicotine.
I can accept them as cessation devices, but all their value in this realm should be weighted against the new users they introduce, chief among them: Kids.
Where is this fear coming from? The reason you pick up cigarettes is being around other people who smoke. I have seen zero evidence that cigarettes are on the rise among kids or that vaping somehow acts as a gateway drug. Using this to justify restriction of access to a cessation aid has always struck me as myopic, ineffective, and killing people. Granted it hasn’t happened quite yet, even in SF, so maybe there’s still hope. I’m certainly not looking forward to buying juul pods at extreme prices on the street.
Why not ban the goddamn cigarettes? People will complain and then roll their own anyway if they really need it in their life, and I certainly don’t see otherwise healthy teenagers rolling cigarettes again. It’s disgusting seeing arrays of cancerous easily smokable sticks in gas stations and corner stores.
I don’t think they should be outright banned like SF is doing, but some regulation and understanding (sci studies) would be good.
I mean, what argument is there for e-cigarettes to be banned or heavily regulated when anyone can go buy cigarettes?
If they ban both, fine. If they just go after e-cigarettes, this is the work of the tobacco lobby, end of.
I suppose the question is where the moral outrage originates - with the puritans, or did someone plant that idea in their minds by hijacking the agenda?
To me is sounds like someone saying "I don't smoke any more, I just use cigars instead".
I started smoking at age eleven (it was perfectly legal, and I'd been buying cigarettes legally for more than half of my life by that point - it was as much a normal part of an errand as picking up a quart of milk or a loaf of bread), and can't say I put a lot of consideration into it at the time. Over then next four and a half decades, I tried quitting, unsuccessfully, dozens of times. Vaping means I haven't been inhaling burning plant matter for years. I'm happy with the harm reduction. The "quit or die" attitude is what needs to die.
The history of smoking is one of killing people more efficiently, ecigs feel like a continuation of that great tradition.
With the exception of certain nasty flavoring agents and such, I think this is quite unlikely. There's certainly no evidence to support it.
I went from pack-a-day Newports to Vaping at 36mg/ml. Within a week I was down to 18mg/ml. Within a year I tapered all the way down to under 3mg/ml (I mixed all my own juices).
I stayed right around 3mg/ml for about a year, then I moved jobs and could no longer vape in my office. It seemed quite pointless to go outside and vape since I didnt really have the urge, I was still vaping in the evening after work for another 2-3 months. I finally reached the point where the trouble was more than it was worth, and just stopped entirely.
So yes, I'm a big fan of vaping. Is it "safe?" Probably not. Is it less harmful than cigarettes? I dont think that is even in question, at all. Vaping is, at worst, a significant harm reduction for smokers and those around them. At best, it is a method of quitting cigarettes and have proven successful for MANY former smokers.
I really hate the direction things are going with regulation, because to me it looks a lot like PM and friends are using regulatory capture to ban everything but menthol vapes that they can afford to get tested, thus perpetuating their existence and granting them a lock on the market.
If there is unequivocal, unhacked evidence that e-cigarettes reduce mortality by a sensible comparison in adults, obviously nothing will be banned, but you ought to be able to see why this is a high bar to meet for children.
Tobacco: 500,000
Alcohol Deaths: 88,000
All Non Alcohol Drug Overdoses (including prescriptions): 64,000
Marijuana Deaths: 0
Yearly statistics for the USA. Seems your 'obvious' might not be so obvious for the rest of us.
But then again, I think many 'obvious' things for you are not obvious to the rest of us. Like the muddled thinking related to children: 1st, it's already illegal to sell them to kids 2nd, will kids get them less if they are removed from local retail locations that check ID? Will driving it underground reduce consumption or only increase the dangers of use?
For some, it's obvious that they see it obviously. Others... we see nuance and no clear cut answers. Though many of us dislike such strong and rash positions backed by emotive, reactionary, broad stroke arguments and so little data.
What you say is common sense. Like the earth being flat and the sun revolving around the earth, though, it just happens to be completely wrong.
My post with statistics, while downvoted, is correct.
While you're probably right about primary carcinogens, the tobacco plant pulls radioactive isotopes like Po-210 and Pb-210 out of the soil and air, and those concentrations have been growing as Polonium levels rise in soil from years of fertilizer use[1]. So to say 'it's not the tobacco' is a very dangerous comment.
Moreover, cardiovascular disease is the primary cause of death for smokers, not lung cancer, and while extracting nicotine from tobacco and vaporizing it in a PG/VG solution might mitigate risk of the latter there's no reason to believe it'll do anything for CVD. If anything, without the MAOI in tobacco that increases the nicotine's effect, on average folks vaping probably have higher levels in their bloodstream than folks that smoke.
that alone tells nothing, cardiovascular disease is the primary death cause for general populace, that why you need to work out incidences, and guess which one has greater variation?
cardiovascular disease: 4x more likely
Cancer: 23x the risk compared to general populace
respiratory disease: 17x the risk
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
funny how you had to cherry pick stats to present your point while accusing people of being shills.
smoking is bad, we get it. not everyone that can see a larger picture are part of God knows what conspiracy.
and I specifically did not say "tobacco without the other stuff is fine" so go grind your axe somewhere else
This is not a thing that's true, it's a thing you assume. Having different smokes or vapors in your lungs can have different effects, just as drinking different liquids can have different effects. Tobacco smoke causes cancers. The more elements in another smoke that are shared with tobacco (or other plants that cause disease) the more the new smoke should be suspect, and it suggests a direction for initial testing. We can't just treat all odors as cancer-causing; vaping doesn't even involve burning vegetable matter, so even if burning some chemicals common to all plants causes cancer, that wouldn't make vaping suspect.
Actually the substrates are PG or (more popularly) VG. That’s propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin. The latter is obviously plant based and studies have even measured the concentration vapers breathe as meeting OSHA standards.
The real dangers of vaping are: the vasoconstriction of nicotine, the flavoring (which famously caused issues when a substance that was safe to consume but not inhale was used), and the free radicals from burning cotton or oxidizing metal in the coils.
Low quality coils can be very dangerous.
That is why open and free access to products consenting adults want to use is important.
Most quality vaping is done with ceramic coils.
There are facts and nuance and reason. Or reactionary emotive perspectives that only hurt everyone involved. The choice is yours.
It's like they want it both ways.
I finally quit cigarettes by switching to ecigs, and eventually quit those as well. Actually, I just passed the 5 year mark nicotine-free a couple weeks ago.
Point is, doctors are happy prescribing Chantix, which is bad, and the better option may simply not be prescribed to folks for whom it would to a lot of good.
The article mentions that the group which filed a lawsuit is disputing the effectiveness of e-cigs as "smoking cessation" devices. From my personal experience they most definitely function.