I don't think it is intentionally on purpose, but it sure does seem this way sometimes.

A specific example that comes to mind: city of San Francisco banning sale of e-cigs completely, while keeping regular cigarettes just as legal as before [0].

0. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/25/7357140...

My guess is that banning cigarettes would go too far. It's unrealistic to expect cigarette smokers to quit over night and start using patches and lozenges.

It's a little more realistic to expect that people who vape to do so.

Why?

>It's a little more realistic to expect that people who vape to do so.

From personal observations, what would actually happen is that those people will just switch to smoking cigarettes.

Vaping is really hard to tax unlike cigarettes. State and local governments are addicted to cigarette tax revenue, but that has been evaporating quickly, so outlawing vaping and not cigarettes is really profitable to them, even if causing more harm overall.

This is absolutely true. Inhaling propylene glycol and glycerine daily for thirty years might cause you to grow three heads or have babies with 27 fingers. But the results of every reputable report I've seen until now has indicated that vaping is much, much better than smoking cigarettes.

The nicotine salts in Juul pods are a type of nicotine that supposedly feels more like a cigarette when inhaled, as opposed to other vapes that use freebase nicotine.

Philip Morris strategy to create confusion is obviously working. Don't buy from big tobacco if your goal is to quit smoking.

In a month I cut down my smoking by over half and I smoke less and less as time goes on. I find the flavours bother me though and is the main reason i haven't quit entirely. I actually enjoy the taste of cigarettes, I haven't found any ejuice I actually like the taste of it all reminds me of candy, even the ones that are supposed to taste like tobacco.

I eventually settled on a juice with a coffee caramel flavor that smelled like someone just made a cake.

Go and try several combinations in a store that is specialized. The Juul is Big Tobacco still giving you an old fashion hit of nicotine.

Edit: if you are located in Europe this was my favorite.

https://ea-sigaret.nl/e-liquid-kopen/100-vg-eliquid/vg-e-liq...

Then there's the matter of, freebasing an alkaloid makes it more bioavailable to your brain, you may be smoking lower concentrations, but your body's absorbing more nicotine per puff.

Kind of like the difference between snorting coke or smoking crack. Cocaine hydrochloride is cocaine in salt form, crack is the freebase form. Both are addictive nasty drugs, but with crack, you need less to get high, the high lasts longer and in the long term tends to really fuck people up from what I've seen.

Also, the first time I ever heard of freebase nicotine, was when I was reading about how it was added into cigarettes to increase the addictiveness and rush you get.

That cake flavoured one still sounds unappealing. I'd really prefer some kind of savoury or smokey flavour. I've never really enjoyed sweet things.

I'm not a chemist so you good be spot on in the information you provide. I'm just sharing my positive experience with freebase and hope more people can quit smoking.

Taste is such a personal thing, I don't like sweets either and this flavor was delivered by accident because the store made a mistake.

>Freebasing is a more efficient method of self-administering alkaloids via the smoking route. For example, cocaine hydrochloride decomposes at the high temperatures necessary for smoking. Free base cocaine, in which the cocaine alkaloid is "freed" from the hydrochloride salt, has a melting point of 98 ℃ and is volatile at temperatures above 90 ℃, therefore providing an active drug for smoking. After inhalation the alkaloid is absorbed into the blood stream and rapidly transported throughout the body. However, since blood is buffered with carbonate at physiological pH (near 7.4), free-base amines will be rapidly converted back into their acid form. In fact, 94.19% of cocaine will exist as the acid form under equilibrium at pH=7.4, calculated using the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation assuming a pKa of 8.61[1].

If you were vaping off one of those little pens, then 10 makes a bit more sense, and maybe even a bit low. But, those never really hit right for me. I cough when I hit a Juul though, so idk.

Smoking is one of the most harmful things you can possibly do to your body. Many people underestimate how much of a low bar being better than smoking is.

E-Cigarettes are only now becoming mainstream, and have only been in use for the better half of a decade.

We wont truly know the effects until we have a large sample size over a long period of time.

Ultimately, saying it's conclusively better for you than smoking is short sighted. We thought smoking was good for you in the 1920s...

But best available evidence says 5% right now.