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Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

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Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#51

Post by psyc »

pessimizer wrote: post #42
stinos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also highly recommend e-cigarettes, your story is of course the ideal picture of how it should go. But it might not go that easy for everyone: even with the use of it I'm having a hard time to quit the actual cigarretes completely and it's not due to the nicotine (in fact I do not know what exactly still makes me crave for those hand-rolled cigarettes). Also nicotine can be a pleasant drug to use. Which is li…

Rolling cigarettes feels good. E-cigarettes allow you to keep all of your addictive habits and mannerisms other than rolling, and it's all of those habits that are the addiction; you're physically off nicotene in a couple of weeks, and you're mentally off within a month or two. I was once able to roll a cigarette while riding a bike; now I have a skill that I'll never use again. I'm creeped out by whatever's in e-cig…

I hate to say it, but after puffing an e-cig for a couple years, it became extremely painful for my throat and lungs, to the point I couldn't even bear a single puff anymore without pain and a coughing fit. I actually went back to tobacco.

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#52

Post by tmearnest »

Spooky23 wrote: post #38

How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients, particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.

I would never claim that they are safe without a lot more scientific evidence, but safer is plainly obvious. Vaporizers do not combust the material. Incomplete combustion of plant matter generates tons of carcinogens. The material in ecigs is vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol, nicotine, and flavors. The first two have been inhaled regularly for decades (asthma inhalers for one). Nicotine has been shown to be mainly harmless. The only thing iffy is the flavorings. They are well-known to be safe to ingest, but there's no real data on their regular inhalation.

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#53

Post by soylentcola »

Spooky23 wrote: post #38

How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients, particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.

Well, you can get the ingredients list for one. Like a lot of things, there are some less reputable companies making it and a lot of reputable ones. If anything, I've been pleasantly surprised at how seriously a lot of the vaping "community" takes this, sometimes going as far as to have samples analyzed in a lab and sharing the results when there's a concern about one of the flavoring agents in a mix.

Then there's people like me and the person who replied to your comment earlier who just make our own. It's surprisingly simple and pretty inexpensive. The other commenter eschews flavoring altogether whereas I only use a small amount of it and only buy stuff from companies that list the compounds included so I can make sure there are no particularly nasty components that would make them dangrous to inhale in typical concentrations.

I agree that there are no long term studies on the effects of inhaling this stuff for years on end but a lot of the things that stick out as hazardous are easy to identify and even when they exist, it's typically at a level that's a small fraction of what you'd run into when talking about combustible tobacco.

Basically it's harm reduction. Like how you read about the dangers of eating char-grilled meat because it has some of the same things as cig smoke. That may be the case but you're not getting nearly as much of it so you won't likely get cancer from eating a seared steak a few times a year like you would from smoking cigs daily.

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#54

Post by SparkyMcUnicorn »

Spooky23 wrote: post #38

How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients, particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.

It's true that flavorings are the biggest variable and it's a risk that people are taking because many feel that risk is extremely low.

For example; some flavorings contain diacetyl which, if inhaling too much, will lead to Bronchiolitis Obliterans or "popcorn lung", but the amount actually inhaled in e-cigarettes is 750 times less than cigarettes and vastly less than the amount inhaled by people that have developed popcorn lung.

Yes, there are some chemicals in the flavoring, but the amount is fractions of that in cigarettes (flavorings usually account for less than 10% in my liquid, and much of the flavoring is more base liquid; VG and PG). I've taken the risk assessment and decided that e-cigs are much safer. Each person must do that for themselves.

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#55

Post by NTripleOne »

thirdsun wrote: post #14

For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes without any desire to quit. The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. On…

There is also another outcome from this - the one where you turn into an insufferable 'vaper'.

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#56

Post by fizzbatter »

elorant wrote: post #27
thirdsun wrote: post #14

For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes without any desire to quit. The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. On…

As a former smoker I believe that the best way to quit smoking is cold turkey. Sure, the withdrawal phase is a hell but in my case that helped me realize just how addictive that shit was. Before I’d never imagine that quitting would cause me depression or sleeping problems. All that, and a lot more, helped me understand how much my body was reliant on cigarettes. From my experience most smokers don’t realize how addi…

For a year or so I smoked casually when i was a teen in the 90s (to look cool) with intermittent bouts of heavy smoking over days at friends homes/etc. Probably average ~1-2 packs a week. One day i just got bored and stopped. Never felt any withdrawal signs.

I'm not countering your point of it being addictive. I was so, so so lucky not to have been hooked by that at all. I don't know if i just didn't smoke enough, or what... but it's one of the few points in my life i feel like i made the right choice. Weirder yet, it wasn't even a choice.. i just sort of stopped.

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#57

Post by NTripleOne »

josho wrote: post #31
jrockway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why the goal is quitting. Nicotine itself isn't the problem with cigarettes, it's just a stimulant and has the usual stimulant effects. If you have high blood pressure or trouble sleeping, probably not a great drug to use. But the same can be said of coffee, which is perfectly legal. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine is interesting reading. Of course, e-cigarette liquid is not only nicotine, so who knows wh…

> Nicotine itself isn't the problem with cigarettes, it's just a stimulant and has the usual stimulant effects Agreed, it's tobacco that is the primary issue. I've been curious to adopt the e-cig for the stimulant aspect. I likely won't, but will admit to being curious if it would be a productivity boost. I'd bet the e-cig companies could gain a whole new market if they published some quasi-scientific material on the…

The problem is any potential productivity benefits are usually shut down at the employer level - I've never seen an employer (specifically office environment) that allows vaping in the workplace. My employer requires people to clock out for a smoke break and go outside anyway, so to get the next hit people have to go break momentum away from their desk for a while - and that'd probably be quite frequently too; from my somewhat brief stint(s) of trying to adopt vaping over combustion, I'd find myself puffing on it far more frequently than I'd go for a smoke (which at work is about 1 every 1-2 hours or so~)

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#58

Post by notahacker »

jrockway wrote: post #2

The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their revenue stream too. It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescripti…

Tobacco taxes tend to represent a very small part of government revenue, and fairly large parts of government costs and revenue are affected by the adverse effects of tobacco use (healthcare costs, sickness benefit, reduced taxable income from people becoming seriously ill). Even if the two don't balance, the government has plenty of scope to adjust the tax base over time. Many if not most other sources of tax income are far less predictable. The prospect that public infrastructure will "tank" as a result of people choosing to smoke less is simply not a real world problem.

Tobacco levies being disproportionately a "tax on the poor" is true, but health problems also are suffered more by the poor and one of the side effects of high tobacco levies in an era where e-cigarettes are a widely-available commercial product is nicotine replacement becoming much more affordable than tobacco

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#59

Post by jonlucc »

tomtoise wrote: post #25
stinos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also highly recommend e-cigarettes, your story is of course the ideal picture of how it should go. But it might not go that easy for everyone: even with the use of it I'm having a hard time to quit the actual cigarretes completely and it's not due to the nicotine (in fact I do not know what exactly still makes me crave for those hand-rolled cigarettes). Also nicotine can be a pleasant drug to use. Which is li…

I found it harder to quit as a rollie-smoker myself. My theory is the ritual of rolling up a quick cigarette is just as compelling as the actual smoke. I'd find myself rolling at my desk when in a stressful situation a fair bit.

I wonder if another fidget would help. I just heard a recommendation in this week's MacBreak Weekly, but I don't remember the name of the company. Maybe it was called Fidgetopia?

Re: Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

#60

Post by adrianN »

choko wrote: post #10
adrianN wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't people who can't afford cigarettes stop? Is nicotine gum that much more expensive than cigarettes?

Because it's an addiction and by design, very difficult to quit. As for the gum, I can tell you that it's a rather poor replacement for cigarettes. It doesn't really eliminate (and barely curbs) the need for a cigarette.

But it's addicting regardless of your income. Is there some expensive magic that makes quitting easy?
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