It's not chemical nicotine that people abhor. It's nicotine specifically in conjunction with a bunch of awful toxins that we collectively call "tobacco."

Similarly, people are much more against caffeine in the form of sugary energy drinks than caffeine in the form of tea, because energy drinks are bad for you while tea is moderately good for you on the whole.

Which raises the question of why so many of these people are vehemently opposed to e-cigarettes, which are essentially just a mechanism for delivering nicotine with some inert vapor.

> Which raises the question of why so many of these people are vehemently opposed to e-cigarettes

I'm a smoker myself (quit a few times, for periods up to a year, I will quit again, but damn that addiction is going to chase me for life).

I'm not "vehemently" opposed to e-cigs, but I don't like them either. When they first appeared, I saw a few friends switch to e-cigs, and considered perhaps getting one for myself. But after a week or two, every single one of them "cheated" and occasionally smoked a real cigarette, citing that it just wasn't really the same. By now, nearly all of them have switched back to smoking real cigarettes.

Then I realized, e-cigs just keep the cravings and addiction going. I knew I wanted to quit, and quit for real. For me personally, from experience, only the first week or so of quitting is the hardest, after that the craving subsides (for some people this takes longer). Then comes the period where you're really happy you're no longer a smoker, feel cleaner, smell more things (not always good, but very worth it, and sign of progress). Then comes the long stretch where you just need to never, ever smoke a cigarette again, for the rest of your life. Because even just smoking one, after half a year, weakens that resolve, and I should consider myself "on notice" for at least a couple of weeks, because the threshold for smoking another one becomes so much lower, and before you know I'm back at step 0. It's (for me) not particularly hard on the day-by-day basis, it's the part that you can't ever give in to it again, for the rest of your life, that makes it hard to keep up.

That's why I don't like e-cigs. For someone who is really addicted, it just keeps the door open to fall back to regular cigarettes any time, because you don't do anything about the habit and nicotine addiction, you just make it less unhealthy as long as you stick to e-cigs only.

The only positive thing I have gained from smoking, is learning what addiction really means, therefore understanding other people's addictions better, and decidedly staying away from other addictive substances.

Just a small counterpoint, I'm a huge cigarette hater and I love the fact that e-cigarettes are catching on. They still smell crappy and suck to be around, but they're nowhere near as unpleasant and vomit-inducing as cigarettes are. Addicts are going to be addicts; for my sake, I'd much rather have them vaping than smoking.

Nicotine is directly harmful to your heart.

One of the more interesting bits of trivia about nicotine and caffeine is it is the mode of delivery that makes nicotine so addictive. If you smoked caffeine it would be as addictive as nicotine. Given we now have vaping it should be possible to smoke caffeine - I haven’t looked, but I would not be surprised if someone out there is selling smokable caffeine.

> Nicotine is directly harmful to your heart.

Yes, but it's worth noting that the increased risk of heart disease from smoking is due to more than just nicotine.

Sure - the harm is is going to be greater when you add in all the other nasty compounds in tobacco smoke.

It in not only smoke that is harmful as people who chew tobacco suffer an increase in mouth cancer. While vaping should have a lower risk than smoking, it is not risk free. Since it is so new we won’t know for sometime how dangerous it is.

We are all going to die anyway. Non-smokers often seem to overlook that fact.

The problem with cigarettes is not just that they kill you a little bit sooner, but that they cause many years of life of reduced quality. There's a bunch of stuff like COPD or stroke that don't always kill smokers but do make their lives much less pleasant.

Non smokers often make smokers lives unpleasant. :)

The children of smokers need hospital treatment more often than the children of non-smokers.

Of course that selfish harmful-to-others behaviour is going to attract condemnation.

Not quite as bad as dealing with relatives dying with cancer way too soon in painful ways, and in some cases orphaning their children.

I'm not sure if you were making a distinction between vaping and smoking, but I checked and there is indeed vapeable caffeine (plus taurine and flavoring.) I feel weird dropping a link, but search "Energy Shisha" if you're interested.

I have no issue with the nicotine. I have issues with the acetone, ammonia, arsenic, butane, cadmium, formaldehyde, lead, etc.

When caffeine contains the above and my act of consumption means others also inhale those chemicals (SHS) then I'll care about caffeine as much as I do tobacco smoke.

It's quite clear to me that I'm addicted to caffeine. If it had carcinogenic effects even beginning to approach those of cigarettes, I would quit immediately. I'm pretty sure a lot of people have a similar relationship with caffeine.

"Stimulant" is a very broad category of drugs. Bath salts also fall into that category, for example.

Are you meaning to suggest that they have the same pharmacokinetics, or similar acute or chronic use symptoms?