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

nytimes.com

61–70 of 269 posts

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

#61
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.

Yep, as someone else who also smokes rollies exclusively (straights are disgusting and so fucking expensive), I can attest to that.

Vaping just didn't fill that void and I think that's part of the reason I gave up (the other being that I just couldn't find a flavour I actually liked, no matter how close the name of it is to 'golden virginia', it never tasted remotely as close)

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

#62
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds like a PG or VG sensitivity issue to me.

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

#63
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in U.S. cities will I see scare-tactic advertisements against e-cigarettes. What's strange to me is that the Truth campaign is sponsoring some of them. The Truth campaign is a result of a liability suit of several states vs the cigarette companies, and it is intended to pay for anti-smoking advertisements and smoking cessation programs. It appears to be a blatant violation of the terms of the judgement.

Wow, that's a dirty tactic. Especially when you consider that what's bad about smoking is tobacco and e-cigs don't necessarily have tobacco.

What's bad about smoking is burning tobacco.

Important distinction.

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

#65

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'.

What's insufferable about it exactly - that you are constantly espousing its "benefits" or that the people around you find it insufferable?

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

#66

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…

I bought one for my mother because her health seemed lowering. She didn't like it and didn't want to spend time searching for the right device and/or liquid.

She had an infarctus (not myocard it seems though) last month, obviously cardio told her no more cigarettes. She was worried about nicotine addiction, I mentioned e-cig, I got angry eyes, borderline saying it was worth than cigs.

I understand their concerns about untested liquids turning into other kinds of carcinogens, but I'm still surprised about the reaction. I expected that some doctors would be able to either mention calmly "no vaporized liquids is free of dangerous particles" or redirect to well tested brand and suppliers. I guess it's just hurried scare tactics.

In the mean time, it's nicotine gums diet.

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

#67
post #23

Do e-cigarettes really have a reputation as a 'menace'? I've never heard anyone express any significant concern about them on an individual level (certainly nowhere near as much as about traditional cigarettes), and yet I've read countless news articles decrying them. It seems odd.

There's a couple of big things against them right now.

A) they are unproven. Many people believe that something that isn't proven safe or unsafe is not better than something unsafe that has been heavily scrutinized and studied. What if there's a much worse effect that we dont' know about yet?

B) They are unstandardized. Each producer can be putting who-knows-what in the oils.

C) It's still smoke. When they first came out, a lot of people got e-cigs with the idea that they could get around smoking bans, such as on planes or in bars (in places that banned that). This has resulted in a massive backlash, because it really wasn't health problems that caused those bans, it was the fact that nobody wants to sit in someone elses smoke cloud. This is causing a big social stigma against e-cig users.

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

#68
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's a dirty tactic. Especially when you consider that what's bad about smoking is tobacco and e-cigs don't necessarily have tobacco.

What's bad about smoking is burning tobacco. Important distinction.

You can be even more general than that. Inhaling burning organic matter is probably worth avoiding. There is some good evidence that wood smoke is also quite bad for you.[1]

[1] https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf

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

#69
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should not care that they aren't collecting the mo…

>>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool. There are almost never any actual legal rules that req…

That varies per country, I don't know how it's in the US but there are countries (for example: Brazil) where some taxes can only be spent on specific areas and those are determined by the law that created them.

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

#70

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…

This is my experience as well. 10 years of smoking analogs lead me to ecigs. Used ecig for 3 years. Went from 18mg to 0 in the last 6 months of me using. Continued using 0 nic for 2 months. Now I am 8 months clean of all nicotine products and 6 months clean of ecigs in general.

It was easy because of how gradual it was and that I was still able to satisfy the oral habit of smoking while kicking the chemical dependency. Smoking while driving was a huge hangup.

As a side note - if you buy good hardware and good quality liquid, the whole experiene is better than smoking as well. Forget the vape "culture". IMO ecigs are more convenient, taste better, feel better, and so on.

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