Forgot how Pro-drug the fediverse is as well; vapes should be regulated as heavily as cigarettes and other tobacco products. Just because it’s less harmful doesn’t mean it’s not harmful.
The laws around vapes are nonsense and pseudoscience. That’s what really pisses people off.
Flat prohibitions aren’t saving any lives or ending any health crisis. Meanwhile cigarettes are widely available with a dozen flavors.
The laws around vapes are nonsense and pseudoscience.
Recognising that there are health issues, without fully understanding them yet due to there having not been enough time to form complete and solid conclusions, doesn’t make it pseudoscience. It means we should be cautious and continue to study, and certainly not widely adopt their use in the mean time assuming everything will be fine. Especially as it directly interacts with such a sensitive part of our inner bodies, and especially as the largest group taking up their use are teenagers.
Flat prohibitions aren’t saving any lives or ending any health crisis. Meanwhile cigarettes are widely available with a dozen flavors.
I disagree, to blanket suggest prohibitions don’t save lives is not based in fact. Even the misguided alcohol prohibition over in the USA saved lives, reducing the number of deaths that would have otherwise been caused by intoxication (dangerous driving being an obvious example, domestic abuse, etc).
And take this example from literally only yesterday, where a child almost died due to electronic cigarettes and the complications therein (often when people discuss the danger of X and Y, they assume a completely healthy person to begin with, and ignore that a large percentage of the population has at least one illness or environmental factor that it can complicate).
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-67081855
Also, yes cigarettes are available, but their use in public is heavily restricted, and they aren’t attractive to young people any more thanks to decades of hard work in education. Electronic cigarettes however are targeted directly at teenagers in a very predatory way, suggested to be safe and clean, and thus we have these new issues.
In the end, I suspect electronic cigarettes are less dangerous than breathing in smoke from tobacco, which is insanely dangerous, but that will not make them safe, either, and the cumulative effects of electronic cigarette use over decades simply isn’t fully known yet.
We’re working on it, and where our health is concerned, especially that of our impressionable youth, an abundance of caution is always the best course of action.
Thank you for taking the time to develop a well thought response. I learned some things and it got me thinking in a new way!
I was under the impression that prohibition of alcohol did not reduce any harm, because people flocked to speakeasys, and the quality of the homemade alcohol was not good. A good chunk of the alcohol beverages people drank during prohibition would give them poisoning of some kind.
People didn’t stop drinking, they just started drinking homemade alcohol made with industrial alcohol. The US government also made sure that the only kind of alcohol people could aquire to make drinks was not good for human consumption.
Your comment is the first time I’ve ever heard anybody say anything good about prohibition. Maybe it saved a few people, like you said, but overall alcohol related deaths probably stayed around the same, or even went up thanks to all the poisoning. It’s hard to tell, because the US didn’t keep track of these numbers at the time.
I’m more worried about the shit in the air around me than what is in my vape juice. At least I know what’s in that
you’re very wrong. Prohibition ONLY means lower quality, more dangerous products on the streets and it’s another excuse to criminalize poverty/mental illness.
Yawn. Prohibition is not about protecting youths, its about protecting income. Your conclusions regarding the supposed benefits of prohibition are largely opinion, a generally refuted by historians. Flat bans produce unregulated markets, which lead to excess death and injury.
Maybe both should have restrictions?
Well they are bad for you so it’s not exactly pseudo science, and the problem is that kids are using them.
Vapes come in candy flavour which is ridiculous, not because it exists, but because is sold to children.
At the very least I think we should say that you have to be at least what 18 to buy them. I don’t think that’s too bad.
How exactly are they bad for you? Where’s the studies? You gotta be 21 to buy them, at least in the US. I quit smoking and use vapes exclusively and I can tell a huge difference in how I feel and breathe
I’ve been vaping for 10 years and you’re kidding me with this right? Of course it’s not good for you.
Yeah I was about to say, I quit smoking like 10 years ago. Then due to stressful situations and poor decisions making skills, I began vaping (I want to quit, fuck past me). I 100% know for a fact my lungs are way worse than before. Not as bad as when I was smoking a pack and a half a day, but I play guitar and sing often. It’s noticable.
Just because it isn’t good for you doesn’t mean it is bad for you
In this case yes, it absolute does. But justify it however you need.
Do you think inhaling anything besides air on a regular basis could possibly be good for your lungs?
There’s multiple completed ten-year studies on vaporizer use available with pretty high N. More frequent sickness and lung injury are shown to raise demonstrably over a five to ten year use period. It’s less pronounced than cigarette smoking, but it is an unhealthy choice.
So you’re breathing slightly less toxic gas and therefore clearly it’s great and good for you.
Absolutely zero logic.
I’m not going to try and find the studies for you because I’m on a phone right now, you can go Google it if you’re actually interested, not that you will, but be assured the studies are out there otherwise they wouldn’t be talking about regulation.
you can go Google it if you’re actually interested
Fuck that, you made a claim and the onus on you is to back it up.
Ah the classic except it isn’t on me because my claim isn’t extraordinary, your claim is your claim is that in taking toxic gases is not bad for you that’s the extraordinary claim the onus is on you to back it.
Quote me where I made that claim, much less any claim at all, go ahead.
The only comment I have in this entire thread is calling you out about your “you google it” bs.
Where did I say vapes are good for you? Still don’t see any links to any studies. They’re better than cigarettes, period.
Vaping should be limited to 18+ consumers just like “standard” nicotine products. But we shouldn’t pretend, like the WHO and other organizations do, that Vaping hasn’t been used by many (myself included) to effectively quit nicotine. Personally I kicked a 2 pack a day habit because of vaping and today I use no nicotine products (including vaping) because of it.
Agreed.
More restrictions is uncalled for.
I quit smoking cigarettes using a “box mod” in 2016 and gradually tapered down from a very high nicotine blend to 0 nicotine using 100% vegetable glycerin and peppermint flavoring and then I finally literally lost my vape and just never bothered to replace it…
So anyways, I started smoking over 30 years ago and I don’t vape or smoke anymore.
We need stricter regulations on the production of disposables or ingredients. Like, using diacetyl which is known to cause popcorn lung. Or the whole vitamin E oil causing lung disease in black market vapes…
Maybe something similar to the regulations around alcohol. We know alcohol is bad, but the long term effects are much different than going blind from methanol.
Smoking or vaping isn’t good long term, but it shouldn’t be able to kill your lungs after a few uses.
While the popcorn lung and vitamin e oil shit were both real they were not truly widespread problems and they were already regulated /legislated against.
Those people broke the fucking law.
More regulations don’t prevent lawbreakers.
That was a problem with black market and unregulated Vape production, especially in the early days. It was never widespread, it just happened in a few places where people were buying vape products off of some random guy on the street. This was mostly a problem when this stuff first came out, because there wasn’t a lot of legitimate companies making the vape juice and cartridges at first.
I do agree that we need regulation on the disposable vapes just for the amount of trash that they create. Disposables are so much worse for the environment than refillable vapes.
Shouldn’t that be an argument to regulate it less, not “as heavily”?
Many mundane things are less harmful than cigarettes and shouldn’t be regulated as heavily.
Edit: typo
yup zero logic in his comment, still has 30 upvotes right now.
I mean what I said reflects reality, is that so troubling for you?
If it’s less harmful why on earth should it be regulated just as heavily? Of course I agree it shouldn’t be sold to kids, but what the EU did to vaping is a massive shit show.
I quitted smoking overnight thanks to vaping and then also stopped vaping a few years later. That was before the regulations though. I honestly don’t believe I could pull this off today with all the braindead rules and let’s not forget the massive price increase for liquids.
I agree it should be regulated. But that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is prohibition.
What’s too heavy about how cigarettes are regulated in your country? I’m in Canada and when I smoked cigarettes I never felt like I was obstructed in making my own choices.
Many mundane things are less harmful than cigarettes and shouldn’t be regulated as heavily
Why not? We regulate the shit out of food and medicine and those are the exact opposite of harmful when everything goes as planned.
vapes should be regulated as heavily as cigarettes
My comment referred to this quote. It’s a comparison between how heavy two things are regulated. Neither needs to be heavily regulated for this comparison to work.
What’s too heavy about how cigarettes are regulated in your country? I’m in Canada and when I smoked cigarettes I never felt like I was obstructed in making my own choices.
I’m fine with how cigarretes are regulated in Germany. Could be still heavier. I’m not fine with regulating vapes as heavy. Especially taxes.
It’s ridiculous when vaping becomes more expensive than smoking. This creates incentive to quit vaping and smoke. Should be reversed.
Many mundane things are less harmful than cigarettes and shouldn’t be regulated as heavily
Why not? We regulate the shit out of food and medicine and those are the exact opposite of harmful when everything goes as planned.
That’s two different kinds of regulation. You’re referring to regulations to make things safer. These are great.
I was talking about regulations to make things less accessible. These are great if the things are dangerous.
It makes sense to make things less accessible which are more dangerous.
I’d ban cigarettes and legalise heroin
fuck vapes and drug abuse in general, but the fedi isn’t pro fucking anything. Just because you see a pattern doesn’t mean it’s there.
I thought vaping was fine because I didn’t know it had nicotine in it.
Super fucking addictive, it should absolutely be regulated because currently in most places it isn’t, as evidenced by all the kids buying vapes.
it should absolutely be regulated because currently in most places it isn’t, as evidenced by all the kids buying vapes.
They’re regulated the same as cigarettes. Kids find ways to get cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, too, despite how regulated they are.
It’s more to do with the fact that they’re intentionally marketed towards kids in a way cigarettes and alcohol aren’t so much anymore.
People say that but I’ve never seen a vape ad for kids.
In what way are they marketed towards kids?Bright colors doesn’t count.
https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article/20/8/954/3926044
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460319305891
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07439156231189181
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X16301598
Just a few examples. I sure hope you don’t think Philip Morris is too ethical to use this kind of advertising science.
Very little is known about how e-cigarette marketing is being perceived by youth…
Very first sentence from the first link lol.
Of course PH wants young addicts. They always have.
I’m asking for advertisements aimed at kids because I have never seen any. None of those links show any ads. All they’re saying is that vapes were advertised and people bought vapes.What even would meet your standards here? Only an ad that started “Hey, kids!”?
Juul was buying ads on Cartoon Network/Seventeen/Nickelodeon and youth education sites. They got sued for it. They then fired the ad firm that developed an adult-oriented campaign for them in favor of the vaporized campaign which I definitely see plainly targets teens – and the courts agreed, since they paid over $400 mil in fines because of it.
Companies do what they can to maintain plausible deniability. But it’s also an absolute fact that the fruit/candy-flavored vapes are vastly more popular among youths. The FDA has entire teams dedicated to “advising” producers on how not to market these things to kids based on expert advice.
Your position here is one where you default to giving the producers of harmful, addictive products the benefit of the doubt. When I see Puff Bar being ranked among the most popular vape brands for teens, my assumption is that there is actual malice leading to that position.
And to be clear, the youth vaping market did not exist until the era of Juul reinvented it through advertising. These were not particularly new products, just new ways of selling them. Smoking was solidly on the decline among teens. It was new sales strategies that reversed that trend.
What even would meet your standards here?
An actual advertisement, for one.
That’s all I’m asking for. An advertisement for vapes directed at kids. That’s it. Just an example. Preferably two, but one is fine.
I’m not asking for essays about how it’s possible kids are attracted to bright colors or how ads cause sales to increase. Especially when those essays admit front and center that no one actually knows the answer.
Just link to an ad. Goddamn lol
Bright colors absolutely does count, but so do candy-like flavors. We’ve actually seen similar issues with cannabis edibles, selling the oil or butter is fine but selling cannacandy or brownies causes a big uptick in teen use and the health effects of heavy cannabis use during puberty aren’t well understood yet (mostly because America is a fucking asshole).
So I can’t enjoy a candy taste as an adult? Just because children like it?
Yeah, me too. But I think the point was about ads, not usage.
No, you can, but for a dangerous product like this it’d be more responsible for the company to sell the flavoring in a separate package that can be mixed with the actual vape juice and let consumers combine them.
With nicotine in particular, that would be a fatal idea. It doesn’t take much nicotine at all to kill a human, and it absorbs through your skin, so… Yeah. Pure nicotine shouldn’t be sold to just anyone.
but so do candy-like flavors.
Only kids like candy. Got it
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379716306201
Banning candy and such flavors was provably effective at reducing youth smoking rates in many studies, even knowing that other flavored tobacco/nicotine products were still available to absorb some of that demand. There’s no reason to think vaping would be different.
And banning walking I’m sure would lead to fewer falls
They absolutely are. Even the anti-vape ads seem to be made to promote it. They look super friendly and don’t show the actual harm it does like smoking ads used to.
And in what way are they marketed towards kids?
In the same way everything is. It’s friendly and bright, and yes those are valid criteria.
Edit: I’m being downvoted, but how else do you advertise towards children? If your vape ad looks like the toy aisle then who is it marketing towards? Toys are marketed towards children by being bright, colorful, and friendly looking. They aren’t marketing towards the parents with that, right? If it’s valid to say that about toys then it must be valid about other products as well. Disagree? Give a counter argument. Can’t come up with one? Why do you disagree then?
Idk but you’re probably being disagreed with because by that line of thought adult products can’t have any color on them.
Which is exactly what I mean. Just because something has brought colors it doesn’t make it for children.
Super fucking addictive,
Nicotine on its own is ballpark as addictive as caffeine, vapes lack the MAOIs contained in cigarettes which on their own are much more addictive (atypical antidepressants, hardly surprising) but in synergy with nicotine even more.
as evidenced by all the kids buying vapes.
They also bought fidget spinners. Also I’ve never seen a kid with a vape.
Nicotine by itself is less physically addicting than caffeine, and no more harmful. It’s the 9000 other chemicals in cigarette smoke that increase the addictive properties and cause cancer.
A large part of the reason smoking is so addictive is because it integrates into every part of your life. This is why vaping is by far the most successful method of quitting smoking.
Also, in the US it’s illegal to sell nicotine of any form to anyone under 21. But kids will always do the things we tell them not to do exactly because we tell them not to do them. I’d 100% prefer a kid vape than smoke.
Nicotine is absolutely addictive wtf are you talking about. I smoked cigarettes for 6 years and then used a vape to quit cigarettes, it took about 3 months to wean myself off cigarettes and get used to vaping full time. My original plan was to use a vape to get off nicotine completely by gradually lowering my nicotine from 24MG to 0MG of nicotine in my vape juice but that didn’t work.
Now here I am 8 years later, vaping my 3MG juice daily and just as additiced to the vape as I was to cigarettes. I have literally the exact same habits with my vape as I did with cigarettes, as soon as I finish eating I pull out my vape, I wake up and have coffee, I pull out my vape, I have some drinks I have a vape. Nicotine is nicotine regardless of how you get it. I’ve literally tried to quit by going to 0MG juice or going cold turkey 6 times over those 8 years and I just can’t do it. It’s to fucking hard. I’ve given up on trying to quit because life sucks and I have no good reason to quit anymore, getting lung cancer is basically my retirement plan at this point. (no clue what the actual health effects are regarding vapes, I’m just being hyperbolic)
Don’t get me wrong, vaping is definitely a MUCH better alternative than smoking cigarettes but don’t try and downplay just how addictive nicotine is. Nobody should touch nicotine vapes unless you’re using it to quit cigarettes.
I 100% agree that kids will get a hold of vapes or smokes regardless of whether it’s legal or not to sell it to underagers, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. Vaping is definitely preferable to smoking, but not getting addicted to nicotine is WAY better than either of those options.
Don’t downplay how addictive nicotine is.
Former smoker here. Instead of trying to use zero nicotine juice. Take advantage of the fact that you can control how many drags you take per session. For me I hit a cig about 10 times. So when I vaped I was sure to only hit it 10 times. Then I lowered the hits from 10 to about 3 and from there I was able to cold turkey.
I don’t think they’re intentionally downplaying how addictive nicotine is, I think you’re underestimating how addictive caffeine is. Caffeine is ridiculously addictive, it just doesn’t seem that way because its use is normalized. Try skipping caffeine for a full week and see how that goes for you. In my experience, going without caffeine is way more painful than going without nicotine. Going without nicotine makes me kinda groggy and irritable. Going without caffeine gives me headaches, makes me achey and feel mildly ill, and I don’t drink a lot of caffeine to begin with (I typically drink a single soda throughout the day, rarely coffee or energy drinks).
. I have literally the exact same habits with my vape as I did with cigarettes
And there you go, you’re not addicted to nicotine. You’re addicted to your habit. It’s why I can’t stop biting my nails, they don’t have any drugs in them at all, yet I’ve been doing it all my life and have tried to stop multiple times.
Habits easy to form and super hard to break.
Dude that guy said very clearly his method was to lower the nicotine dose in his vape to ween down to 0mg/nicotine free vape. He isn’t trying to quit the habit, you didn’t even read his post.
You might want to understand what a habit is. The nicotine isn’t what kept him hooked, the habit of it is.
Why did you reply again without reading either post?
The post said they are trying to vape and gradually reduce their nicotine intake to 0. I don’t know how it can be made any more clear in stating that their near term goal is not to stop vaping, but to reduce the nicotine dose in the vape to 0.
They are trying to reduce their nicotine dosage in their vape but due to their addiction, are having withdrawals and ultimately re-adding the dose. This is 100% due to nicotine, they are not trying to reduce how many times they inhale the vape.
Re-read what I said. I said physically addictive, not mentally.
You’re talking out of your arse pal. Nicotine is the addictive substance in cigarettes and vape fluid. Furthermore, it is still toxic, but vaping is simply less harmful than smoking - not harmless.
From my own experience of quitting smoking, I can tell that you’re spreading lies.
I was on IQOS before I quit entirely and let me tell you, the addiction was real, I couldn’t think straight, I was extremely dizzy all the time and generally unusable for pretty much anything.
I had to take some meds to actually help me with the physical withdrawal symptoms, otherwise I would be of no use for 3-5 days (or so I’ve read) which I couldn’t really afford at that time.
IQOS is not a vape it’s a “heat not burn” product. Completely different category of product and very much not only nicotine when it comes to neurologically active substances, but the whole cigarette spectrum of stuff.
Yeah, that’s nonsense.
Our heated tobacco devices are electronic devices that heat real tobacco.
Sometimes these are also called “e-cigarettes”. But they’re definitely not vapes, which are devices which vaporise a mixture of (generally speaking) propylene glycol, glycerine, water, nicotine, and aroma, no plant matter, no tobacco, involved. You can even get nicotine that’s not derived from tobacco if you care (IIRC they use tomatoes but any nightshade has nicotine, you only need to extract and refine it).
Truly, I cannot fathom the mind of someone who sticks a literal stick of literal tobacco held together by literal paper, just like a literal cigarette, into their device and thinks that that’s the same as squirting liquid into a tank.
You where trying to break a physical habit. Nicotine is not a super addictive drug. It’s why pipe and cigar smokers aren’t addicted to smoking. Most of us quit in the winter months with no issues because we’ve not created a habit of smoking 5 cigars a day. It’s the same reason vaping has such a good track record of getting people to stop smoking and then quitting vaping, were the drugs the pharma companies sell that are NRT like patches and pills have like a %10 success rate and people relapse to the sticks constantly, even though they’re getting the same or more amount of nicotine from the patch or drug than from cigs.
I broke my addiction to nicotine, which is indeed very addictive. Not sure what your half-truths really are good for.
I am having real difficulties deciphering your comment… the reason pipe and cigar smokers have an easier time quitting is due to lower intake of nicotine because it’s generally a more casual habit. Vapers tend to vape as often or more often than smokers smoke… and vaping is, itself, highly addictive. Your comment is full of quite a few logical statements tied together with giant unsubstantiated leaps of faith.
If you think cigars have lower amounts of nicotine in them vs cigs…I got bad news for you. Most cig smokers get sick from cigars. Snus and nasal snuff also carry a lot of nicotine in them, but easy to stop as well.
I don’t think that pipe tobacco or cigars are inherently more healthy… but most consumers smoke significantly less frequently than cigarettes. I agree that smoking twelve cigars a day is definitely worse than twelve cigarettes… I’m not familiar enough to know anything more precise than that though.
IQOS is still not nicotine on its own, and if the symptoms you described were while you were using the IQOS, it sounds like a nicotine overdose.
Just for a record: Dizziness is not a nicotine overdose. At low doses it excites, then it calms, then it makes you dizzy, and several parsecs beyond that you lose consciousness, and even more parsecs beyond that you die, which would be an actual overdose.
It’s actually quite hard to do. Trying it orally will make you puke as nicotine is a powerful emetic, via the skin you have to literally bathe in high concentrations. Intravenous would be easy but lots of things are fucking dangerous when you put them in a syringe with pointy end. Pretty much the only realistic variant is having high-purity nicotine (which isn’t available on the open market), taking enough of a whiff to directly lose consciousness, and then lie in the fumes for a while.
It’s actually much easier to overdose on caffeine.
…that might’ve taken a dark turn. In any case if you continue when you’re dizzy, when your mind isn’t actually enjoying the act, you aren’t serving your nicotine addiction but your habits. And withdrawal from habits can feel physical, that’s for sure.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21582-nicotine-poisoning#symptoms-and-causes
Dizziness is absolutely a symptom of a nicotine overdose.
Note how it says “early phase symptoms”?
Now of course the term “overdose” is kind of fuzzy, in a personal sense you might say “yo I ate too many cherries, now my stomach hurts”. But in a medical sense that’s not an overdose: You’re simply at a point where you get a clear-cut signal from your body that it’s time to stop, powerful enough to overpower “mmmh cherries, tasty”, you are nowhere close to having to have your stomach pumped.
Also on a more general note be careful about public health information about nicotine, much of it still hasn’t been corrected.
In a medical sense an overdose is just taking more than the recommended dose. That clear cut signal from your body is a symptom of an overdose.
And yeah, the lethality of it is way over stated. Especially the “it can be super absorbed by the skin” stuff. I’ve spilt 250mg of nicotine on my hands and left it for a few minutes before washing it off, and all that happened was the spot was tingly for a minute or two.
If I could just push a button and make all non medical use tobacco become impossible to grow, I would push that button a million times just to be sure. I hope everyone working for Philip Morris gets lung cancer.
That should just be an accepted cost to enter the industry.
Double standards everywhere, Alcohol should get kicked too.
Frankly, we need fewer prohibitions on substances, not more. I drink responsibly and like it. We also know you can’t ban alcohol without a black market, so why even feign that it could be done?
We need better enforcement to prevent people acting like idiots when they drink. I don’t have ideas to offer on how, as I haven’t pondered it at length, but that’s the best path in my mind.
Thank you for having some common sense. If we know anything about history, prohibitions on substances just lead to worse outcomes with black market activity and criminal enterprises.
Tobacco is a weird one, because most people I know that smoke, don’t really enjoy it, they are just literally addicted. Still, I don’t think banning nicotine would be a great move.
I think the taxes are pretty effective. I smoked for a few years in my younger days, and I quit when the prices started to go way up, thanks to taxes.
I don’t smoke but I love nicotine. Hope they don’t go too wild trying to regulate smokeless alternatives out of existence. Nicotine is a fun drug.
I agree with this. I used nicotine lozenges to wean myself off cigarettes and this was successful.
However, I did notice as a side effect that they helped me concentrate on complex tasks.
So, although I don’t use them daily, I leave a pack lying around just to suck on in the same way I might use a cup of coffee to sharpen up in the morning.
I genuinely believe this does me no harm. I think the debates started to get heated when inhalation is involved.
My bourbon French toast says otherwise.
Hence, double standard lol
true, but most if not all tobacco users get addicted and smoke every day, killing our young people.
alcohol, while dangerous is not as habit forming, but I see where you’re coming from
It’s entirely possible to enjoy alcohol responsibly and the vast majority of people do. Shall we can cars because some people can’t stop getting in them while inebriated and crashing them?
99.999% of smokers are doing substantial damage to themselves and others.
Fuuuuck Philip Morris. Tax them heavily and use the proceeds to pay their customers’ medical expenses
I interviewed with them once, and they swore up and down that they were cleaning up and divesting of all the harmful stuff, and wanted me to trust they were all about health and a smoke-free future.
Thankfully they were so staggeringly full of bullshit during the interviews that I quickly realized it’d be an absolutely horrifically toxic (groan, yes, sorry) place to work irrespective of my other doubts, and I ended up telling them I didn’t want to continue the process and that I was so unhappy with the assorted bullshit during the process that I didn’t want to ever be approached by them again.
That’s the very long way of saying I’m not the slightest bit surprised it turns out they are in fact still massive asshats, and I’m very happy I caught on early enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a message sent by the PMI’s senior vice-president of external affairs last month and seen by the Guardian, staff were told to find “any connection, any lead, whether political or technical” before a meeting of delegates from 182 countries.
The email sent on 22 September by Grégoire Verdeaux, the senior vice-president of external affairs at PMI, said: “The agenda and meeting documents have been made public for the main part.
Unfortunately they reconfirmed every concern we had that this conference may remain as the biggest missed opportunity ever in tobacco control’s history … WHO’s agenda is nothing short of a systematic, methodical, prohibitionist attack on smoke-free products.”
Without “reasonable, constructive outcomes” , Verdeaux wrote, the “WHO will have irreversibly compromised the historic opportunity for public health presented by the recognition that smoke-free products, appropriately regulated, can accelerate the decline of smoking rates faster than tobacco control combined”.
Tobacco companies are not invited to the event and Verdeaux said despite this he would be in Panama “to publicly denounce the absurdity of being excluded from it while PMI today” was “undoubtedly the most helpful private partner WHO could have in the fight against smoking”.
Asked about the leaked email, Verdeaux said in a statement: “What I say publicly and what I say to our employees is exactly the same: I am proud to make the case to governments and media that innovation drives down smoking rates faster and for that reason should be supported and regulated.
The original article contains 880 words, the summary contains 246 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
deleted by creator
That’s metal!
That’s iron… In ya blood!
so glad I quit.
Given the damage they have done to society is there a good reason the fines aren’t all your companies money and all of your executives money we seize and destroy and products farms and machinery that can’t be sold for non-tobacco use?
Now can someone give a probability for the success of that?
It’s an international organism, with scientific input from almost every nation of the world.
Tell me more about this organism.
Wikipedia is your friend for a quick overlook. Next stop would be their own site.
I think he was taking the piss out of your use of “organism” instead of “organization”.
Couldn’t care less.
Cool, thanks for letting me know
Really, it’s fine. Of by small means it contributed towards the persons happiness, great. Doesn’t diminishes me in any way.
^ This is what happens when someone’s only social interaction is their parents.
Vaping seems to be healthier than cigarette smoking from what I’ve read, and it makes sense. Burnt particulate matter is hell on your lungs.
But it should be used for smokers to break addiction. And recreational use needs to be heavily regulated until we can do long term studies that show it’s relatively safe.
I’ll explain as someone with professional chemistry experience. Vaping vaporizes water to deliver the nicotine – or just to deliver flavored vapor without the nicotine. This process gives me two major concerns:
-
It isn’t pure water vapor, there’s additives and oils even for juices with no nicotine. We don’t know what breathing in the vaporized flavor additives does. And, we don’t know if the process is generating enough heat to cause chemical reactions and degradation of the non water components. It’s completely possible that carcinogenic or toxic compounds could come from this. This warrants a lot more study, and fortunately, it should be quite doable. Spectroscopy could tell us a lot.
-
Remember how Flint had a lot of lead in their water? Heavy metals in water come from surface atoms on the metal leaching into the water. You can treat the water to either discourage this or cause it to precipitate out. Heat increases the frequency of leaching – so vaporizing water with the coils is going to lead to heavy metal particles in the vapor. This is where we really don’t have information. We can likely determine the quantity and type of metal atoms, but we can’t determine what it’s going to do to the lungs. A big safety concern with tiny particles is breathing them in, because nanoparticles and the like will also ravage your lungs when inhaled. Doesn’t even matter what the solid particle is.
The latter concern is where we need long term research. We need to know if the heavy metal particles in the vapor are causing damage in the same way that nanoparticles do. And we need to know what prolonged exposure to those metal particles does. After 40 years of vaping, would enough metal have deposited in airways to cause health issues? It’s very possible.
Is that to say stop right this second? No, but just be aware of the risks and don’t go overboard. Heavy drinking is probably still worse for you than this, and smoking is definitely worse.
Let’s be clear: inhaling anything that isn’t gaseous and/or meant to be in your lungs is inherently going to kill them.
Water? VG and PG.
It’s not just glycols/oils for all of them at least I thought
-
There seem to be a few people who have unfortunately believed the anti-vaping propaganda.
If you think that vapes are more harmful than smoking in any way, this is for you. I’ve been following the actual science on this for almost 15 years and have peer reviewed the studies.
Every single study in the US that produced negative results either had methodologies designed to only produce negative results, or the negative results were orders of magnitude lower than OSHA levels, or even lower than atmospheric levels.
The only things the anti-vaping campaigns can rely on is bad science and purposefully misrepresenting study results. Well, that and the “think of the children” bullshit.
There’s also a belief that nicotine is highly addictive and very harmful. This is incorrect. Nicotine on its own is actually less physically addictive than caffeine (shorter withdrawal period), and actually has heath benefits.
Now, to the “think of the children” bullshit. For one, children can’t legally purchase nicotine in most countries. If you want to say the flavors attract children, then we need to ban any sort of flavored alcohol. Also, children can buy as many energy drinks as they want, which are actually harmful to them.
The real reason that vaping is being demonized is because the state governments are losing tobacco tax revenue faster than they planned, and they’ve already budgeted the money they expected to get. But, instead of imposing a reasonable tax to fill the gap, they tried to make a 30ml bottle of eliquid (normally ~$10-20) cost upwards of $100.
Don’t bother asking for sources, because I won’t Google for you. I am educated on the topic, and this isn’t a formal debate.
I will answer any questions you may have, though.
Don’t strawman the argument to “vapes are worse than smoking” - vaping is actually dramatically less harmful than smoking. If you have a nicotine addiction it’s quite beneficial to switch to vaping.
BUT both of them are quite harmful to you and vapes were popularized with candy-like flavors that attracted young adults in droves… and continuously use deceptive marketing to play down health effects. Tobacco is a product you shouldn’t use every day in any form, full stop.
Yeah we need to find a way to get current smokers onto vapes if they can’t quit, but prevent any new people from gaining nicotine addictions.
In terms of harm reduction they are wonderful! But they are more harmful than not inhaling any smoke or vapour.
If this is a medical device for ending addiction, do we really need to have fruit/candy flavors lining the shelf in colorful bottles with cartoon mascots?
People weren’t smoking fruit/candy cigarettes. Those were banned and nowadays only barely exist. No reason to have vape flavors beyond cigarette flavors, if they are a medical tool.
Just looking at vape products on a store shelf is proof that the producers do NOT think about their product as a medical device. That entire argument, that it is primarily a tool for breaking a smoking habit, should be categorically dismissed. If it were a BTC or prescription-only product for breaking a smoking habit, no reasonable person would have negative opinions about it.
The reality is, vaping’s primary purpose is as a drug. An addictive drug that makes the user feel good to use and has certain provable short- and long-term side-effects.
I think people should be able to buy and use drugs. But only with informed consent. So long as the information is so poor around vaping, the consent isn’t informed and we need regulations. And if this is a drug, it should be getting sold in an appropriate dispensary by trained, knowledgeable staff and not from corner stores, bodegas, and sketchy website that don’t even properly screen out teen buyers.
Oh give over. Nice flavors are one of the things that get people off of cigarettes. If it stank of tobacco one of the big benefits for switching (not stinking all the time) would be gone. Adults like fruits too.
I agree the advertising needs to be cut back to a similar level as cigarettes. Plain white boxes with brand and flavors for example. But to outright ban flavors is a knee jerk reaction that sounds good but would cause more harm than good. I don’t think it needs to be licensed dispensaries either. Vaping is way less harmful than alcohol yet we sell that in corner shops.
Cutting down on selling to kids needs to be done for sure. How exactly that can be done effectively is tricky. It was very illegal to buy cigarettes when I was at school yet hundreds of kids managed to pull it off anyway. Short of requiring ID at point of sale and unique barcodes to identify which products were sold to whom by whom I reckon kids will find a way to get alcohol, drugs, vapes, and all the other shit we wish they didn’t have.
Putting in measures that mean fewer adults switch is guaranteed to lead to more deaths from smoking related illnesses. Harm reduction should be at the core of any policies around smoking and vaping. We don’t want to lose the gains we’ve made in cutting down on tobacco use because of some moral panic about strawberry flavours.
You’ve applied an argument I didn’t make to what I said.
If these are medical devices used to ween off cigarettes, they don’t need to be flavored. The alternative is cigarettes. People aren’t grabbing the next cigarette because they love the strawberry daiquiri flavor. The fact that they are basically all flavored is proof that anti-addiction is not their primary purpose.
I didn’t say they shouldn’t be flavored. I said the flavors are proof of what they are.
Harm reduction should be at the core of any policies around smoking and vaping
What if the outcome of that analysis is that the people being brought off cigarettes are not being outweighed by the people being brought into vaping? That vapes should be prescription medical devices for people who need them and not OTC feelgood drugs? Would you still make the same argument that harm reduction is foremost? I have a feeling you won’t.
There’s a perfectly coherent argument that tobacco trends were heading towards extinction until vaping reignited things. All the trends were heading that way. It was largely dying out as a habit among young people. Vaping completely changed that. It’s now a growing sector that has the potential to last for a long time and damage a lot of people. And we are still only in the early days of seeing how harmful it is – but just like with cigarettes, there’s a huge apparatus pushing out an information campaign that they’re Good Actually and Not Unsafe At All ™.
I don’t think you and I really disagree on any particular policy prescriptions here. I bet we want the same things, and want the same level of honesty brought to the debate. I just think we need to be very clear that the “vapes as useful medical devices” argument does not justify the “vapes being sold abso-fucking-lutely everywhere” result we’re currently getting. They are not popular because they are medical devices. Their usefulness as medical devices isn’t a significant part of the business model.
That’s disingenuous. Vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking. To say that the level of harm is anywhere close is a straight up lie.
It’s also not a tobacco product. You wouldn’t call green tea a coffee product because coffee has caffeine in it. There are absolutely companies extracting nicotine from other sources or synthesizing it.
So vaping is +5% worse for your health than if you didn’t do it. If this were a food additive, people would rightfully be losing their minds.
95% less harmful than pretty much the worst habit you can have for your long-term health is still pretty damn harmful, even granting the ass-pull number. And worse, most vape users go around preaching how harmless it is when it is factually and provably harmful, meaning tons of users (especially among teens/youths) aren’t even AWARE the addictive substance they are using is going to damage their long-term health.
The 95% number is from the NHS, not my ass
Please… keep beating the drum for vapes. It’s not any problem in any way right? Uh huh.
Vapes, chargers, and other ‘invisible’ e-waste are a 9-million-ton problem
Waste is a whole other argument than health. Different types of vapes perform very differently.
My refillable definitely produces less waste than regular smoking.
Single use vapes should be banned or much less accessible than refillables.
Or sent to me so I can harvest the batteries.
Blame the FDA for killing open systems that are actually reusable.
Pass blame? Got it. Very progressive. Not holding corporations responsible for their pollution and greed. Cool cool. Capitalism amiright 🥴
Vape juice was always a small business thing until the FDA started fucking with small shops. Now, instead of having someone local mix it, I have to buy mass produced juice off the shelf and my locally owned vape shop has one or two less employees in the store. Or people buy disposables to get the flavor they want.
Fucking small, local business in favor of big corps… how progressive.
Yea, Juul was really just a mom-n-pop shop. Shop local and save America’s main street and small businesses like Juul!
Bruh I’ve been vaping for 15 years off and on. Used to buy sketchy shit straight from china.
So ban the cartridge vapes that became popular after the Juul. Prior to those people reused their gear for several years.
There’s also a belief that nicotine is highly addictive and very harmful. This is incorrect. Nicotine on its own is actually less physically addictive than caffeine (shorter withdrawal period), and actually has heath benefits.
Bullshit. Quitting caffeine (multiple caffeinated drinks a day) was far, far easier than quitting cigarettes (a pack and a half a day).
Re-read the paragraph you just quoted. I clearly specified that the statement was about nicotine only, not cigarettes.
Cigarette smoke contains over 9000 chemicals besides nicotine, some of which are added specifically to increase the addictive properties.
I also said physically addictive, not mentally addictive.
That’s because cigarettes are also laced with MAOI’s.
The MAOIs increase the dopamine response from Nicotine when it is heavily desired.
Vapes are even worse than cigarettes, for real.
Care to cite your sources in that claim? I’m know they are far from anything that could be considered “good” but “worse than cigs” is news to me.
I am not the previous poster, but the argument that I’ve heard on that front is that smoking was already trending rapidly downwards in use and would have made itself obsolete within a couple generations.
Vaping on the other hand established itself as a “safer” alternative to smoking and became trendy with more younger people who wouldn’t have smoked in the first place.
Yeah, that’s in no way worse than inhaling smoke and dozens of proven carcinogens…
Vaping is worse than nothing, but the notion that it’s worse than smoking is completely deranged.
Unless those Truth ads are to be believed; the ones that claim vapes release toxic heavy metals from the coils.
They are not to be believed. I’m shocked you fell for a Truth campaign, if that’s what you’re insinuating.
No one claims vaping is good for you, but there is very little evidence of the damage they may cause up until this point, and basically anything is better than smoking a cigarette.
There are a lot of issues we could discuss, such as how addictive they are, or how they’re often owned by big tobacco rebranding themselves in deceitful ways, but the grandiose claims are overwhelmingly fabricated.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29467105/ so this study is bullshit? I know Truth likes to bend what the truth is, but there are several studies indicating the metal presence in many brands of vape products. Even the American Lung Association warns of it.
While I can’t speak to this specific paper, I know that the methodologies of several of these kind of “studies” are horribly flawed. I know there was one that found that heavy metals were released by coils … when the wattage was cranked up so high that no person would ever even be able to use the product that way. For non-vapers, if the wattage is too high, the cotton wick burns as well, and is impossible to inhale. The simple fact is that if the cotton wick isn’t burning, there’s no way the coil is getting hot enough to produce free metal vapors.
Remember when there was that rash of deaths? And nicotine vapes got the blame right away? Yeah, that was because some bathtub lab THC vape carts had vitamin E acetate in them. Remember when there was a lot of talk about popcorn lung? That was because of diacetyl, which is a butter flavor. Nobody has used it for a very long time.
I’m not trying to say that vaping is healthier than not vaping, but it is definitely safer than smoking tobacco. As a harm reduction method, it is a valuable tool.
Without access to the full paper, it’s hard to say. The abstract only mentions how many products they tested, but not what those products were. There’s no way of knowing if those products came from reputable manufacturers or if they were shady knock-off or low-quality products.
See the long reply to your comment. I’ve seen you around whenever I log on, and you’re often loud and wrong. I’ve discovered it’s a safe bet to go against most of what you say.
Whether metals are transferred from the coil to the aerosol is unknown.
In this study, they heated the coil to a very high temp that is not indicative of actual e cig usages.
Additionally, we use different metals for coils now. Instead deferring to stainless steel or ceramic heating elements which are not affected in the same way as this study indicates.
It’s still not as bad as smoking but it is dangerous, especially with off brand or damaged vapes. If you don’t regularly clean and inspect your vape you can end up getting terrible infections or some fairly toxic chemicals.
Vaping has also caused a spike in STDs which is fun.
Completely anecdotal, but it was able to get me, my wife and my father to all stop smoking by switching to vaping and then eventually quitting vaping.
Ditto. Both my wife and I were heavy smokers and moved to vapes. As soon as I used a vape I thought “this is the solution!” after trying to quit smoking many times for decades.
They really provide 80 to 90% of the satisfaction of a cigarette and take the edge off those moments when you damn well need a ciggie.
After a couple of years of vaping I find it now much easier to do without them for a few days, although I do like one with a beer.
You have to have been on that 10 or 20 year journey of smoking cigarettes to understand how hard they are to put down, and vaping was the tool that got me away from burning the evil tobacco leaf.
I was a a pack - pack and a half a day smoker for 12 years. Had tried to quit for many years and had all but given up when i tried a salt nicotine vape. A month later i was smoke free, and 2 weeks after that i had kicked the vape (was never a fan of nicotine by itself, so the vape was easy to kick). This was about 2 and a half years ago now. Vapes are an indispensable tool to quit smoking.
A wonderful outcome!
Nicotine pouches are same as any gum, patch etc.
Vaping is a safer alternative. 95% safer.
Nicotine is about as dangerous and addictive as caffeine (actually a bit less so, but that’s splitting hairs). You should really be more concerned about kids being able to buy energy drinks than vapes.
Source: Me. I’ve been following the research on this for nearly 15 years.
Nicotine is more addictive than caffeine in the quantities you regularly consume it and vaping has more serious side effects than drinking a cup of coffee. You’re completely correct about vaping being safer than smoking though - for life long smokers the vape can be quite impactful on their long term health… but it’s still much healthier to do neither.
Their sources are effective propaganda campaigns that greatly distort the validity or results of studies based on poor scientific journalism.
This is incorrect and an easy to debunk claim… the tar in cigarettes is extremely harmful and vaping removes that element. However, vaping is still bad for you and it is still just as addictive.
I found it much easier to quit vaping, compared to cigarettes. There are nicotine free liquids, so you can slowly wean off.
This is my experience, having quit my 10 year cigarette addiction via vaping (after dozens of failed attempts to quit), then accidentally re-addicting myself 5 years later (via vaping) — then quitting again after another year.
Vaping is arguably more addictive due to the nicotine salts, taste, and ease of use, but it’s also far easier to quit — plus my health improved dramatically when I switched to vaping.
When I first quit with vaping, I just gradually reduced the nicotine level down to zero, then continued vaping no-nic for months until I stopped completely; the key part is sticking to the no-nic no matter what (at parties or whenever drinking). Decoupling the habit from the addiction means you don’t have to stop both at once. The second time around it only took a single attempt, except I went straight to no-nic.
Yes, I think decoupling is worth a lot!
Also true what you say about more addictive due to reasons.
Overall very informative comment, thanks!
Do you keep your vape device stored somewhere over the years in case of a relapse? Or do you get a new one when needed? I see arguments for both sides.
That’s what I didm smoked cigs for 10 years tried quitting many times I bought a vape with blue raz juice all the way for the top to 0nic and every two weeks I would lower my nicotine levels after a few months I was on 0 and tossed it. Nicotine free for 6 years. Thank you vaping for helping me quit nicotine
Well done! Stay strong 🤜🤛
110% false. Vaping is far safer
It’s different from cigarettes. You don’t get all the tar and stuff, but many people get even more nicotine, which is bad for your heart and addictive. I would say it’s likely better, but it’s different.
(There’s also non-nicotine vape products which often aren’t regulated so can cause all kinds of issues.)
Easily the best answer i’ve gotten on this thread.
deleted by creator
I don’t see where they’re arguing that vaping is worse, that’s a strawman, they’re arguing that both are bad.
deleted by creator
Sure, but they’re clearly wrong in that and in the comment above they conceded the point. You’re just kicking a dead horse at this point.
deleted by creator
Nicotine isn’t bad for your heart. In fact, it can be beneficial.
If you’re going to make a claim like that, at least back it up with something, and no you’re almost certainly wrong.
I wouldn’t trust that meta analysis. It specifically states in the methodology that studies that mentioned smoking or cigarettes were excluded, but several studies that I spot checked were about smoking and cigarettes.
