Vape Regulation Is Coming
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
The extreme anti-tobacco people don't believe in harm reduction. They also battle snus, which is far healthier than smoking and is probably far less harmful than other forms of "chewing tobacco" due to the way it's processed. Rather than seeing fewer health problems from tobacco related products, these people would will stand on principle while people continue to smoke.
It doesn't make it ok, just how some people seem to think.
I don't vape, but I wish that everyone who smoked in public spaces would just switch to vaping because of how much better it is on everybody around them.
There's a way to getting to what regulators want, but demanding things happen on a timeline that not even they can keep up with is ridiculous and needs to be rethought.
Can we be certain of that? How do we define safety? The FDA focuses on ensuring that no one is harmed by the use of a product, but they pay very little attention to those who are harmed by the lack of access to a product. The institutional incentives that exist encourage this conservative approach to drug access.
There are also many forms of regulation outside of governmental regulation. No bureau is needed to verify the quality of my Uber driver, but they still tend to be better than most taxis I've ever taken. 10 years ago you could have said "formal review of taxi drivers is important for safety" and most people would have agreed with you, but fortunately some entrepreneurs realized there was a better form of regulating driver quality.
It's really simple: Make vaping less accessible, continue to destroy the lungs of children and others with secondhand smoke.
I'm always trying to cut back and quit, but I'll switch right back to smokes if I can't vape.
People thinks it's ok to blow those things in your face or near people.
It's basically spitting to me.
I also think Vape is bad for you and is up there with smoking. Just cause it less bad than smoking doesn't mean it's not harmless, it's just an excuse to not quit a harmful habit.
It's a free country but still I wish they can't vape in certain area or have a designated area so they can vape.
I'm not going to argue that it's healthy or harmless, but I can guarantee you that it is less harmful than smoking. After switching to a vape my cilia healed, I had better lung capacity, my gums stopped swelling, and my sense of smell and taste returned to normal. Vaping also allows you to control the amount of nicotine you consume, so you can slowly decrease the amount and ween yourself off of it once and for all which is what I did.
This is a big public health issue. E-cigs are one of the most effective methods for quitting altogether and they're about to ban it; that should be an outrage.
I'd rather take a puff of someones second hand vaporizer smoke then to breath in the shit that comes out of your tail pipe.
Full Disclosure: Vaper for 2 years & counting, I take that shit outside and keep it out of people's face.
Your statement about exuses to not quit imply that you believe that quitting is easy, or even possible, for all smokers. This is certainly not the case. Studies have shown that it's easier to kick a heroine habit than it is to quit smoking.
> ...if a public e-cigarette ban reduces the number of smokers who switch to e-cigarettes by 2%, you’ve just killed an extra 9000 people per year...
So if anything, e-cigs should be subsidized, not banned.
1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/28/thank-you-for-doing-som...
Downthread, you suggested you were unfamiliar with the notion of having a week of migraines from quitting coffee. I think what's happening here is that you're not very familiar with the downsides of serious coffee/caffeine habits, and that's why the comparison seems silly to you.
I don't think it's a silly comparison.
Ultimately, anybody can choose to stop drinking coffee at any time. I know people who have tried to make that choice with nicotine and failed repeatedly.
I've seriously attempted to quit intake of caffeine about 6-8 times over the last 2 decades. In each case, I was able to temporarily quit, with withdrawal symptoms being more in the 2-4 week range. However, in each case, a small amount of caffeine at a casual event lead to intake of "normal" (for me) amounts of caffeine immediately. I would love to quit it (as I understand it's health consequences).
As a reference, I would say that I would be in the "heavy users" category with a daily intake of about 750-1000mg.
If you look at the sources the Wikipedia articles cites for its mentions of Griffiths, the National Geographic article compares caffeine addiction to heroin addiction and attributes to Griffiths a claim that as little as half a cup of coffee a day can produce physical dependence. The paper appears to agree, from the information in the abstract.
I agree I'd rather not sit next to someone using one on a train but I'd also rather not sit next to someone eating strong smelling food.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-an-e...
So it will probably take several decades until we can begin to asses the actual health impact, and considering how many variations of possible variables (liquid base, nicotine level, nicotine source, flavor base, flavor components, wattage, coil type, wick material etc.) are there it might not be a clear cut case either.
And I also hate people that "vape" in confined spaces such as trains, luckily in the UK most places put on signs that do not allow you to vape anymore, I've been seeing people do that in the movies and that's probably the most annoying thing to see as the clouds of smoke constantly catch the light from the projector. Vaping should be treated as smoking as far as other people go if you are with some one that would not want you to smoke near them do not vape near them, having separate vaping areas might come in the future but I don't expect to see that anytime soon, sadly the place that is affected the most is the airport, especially those with the "phone booth" style smoke areas which I couldn't stand to enter even when I was smoking.
Vapor condenses very quickly, and the secondhand effects are below the threshold of measurement. This is a marked difference from smoking.
I'm getting the impression you haven't done any research about this, though, and are just ranting.
PS: Smoking kills 50% of its users. What percentage of vapers have had their equipment blow up in their face? (Hint: it's not 1%.)
You'd be right, except that the vapor condenses in seconds and the effect on others nearby is below the threshold of measurement, whereas secondhand smoke lingers for minutes or hours and is extremely measurably harmful to anyone in proximity of a smoker.
Nicotine itself isn't that harmful.
the same is for caffeine, addiction hits at very low level of consumption :
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/BPRU/docs...
Now imagine if every cup of your coffee came with a spoon of asbestos mixed with cadmium and radon powder.
The problem with nicotine and its addiction isn't the nicotine or the addiction itself - they are basically harmless, like coffee.
The problem is that typical nicotine delivery method - tobacco cigarette - causes people to inhale whole slew of carcinogenic chemicals. The vaping eliminates all those bad factors thus converting a very harmful habit into a habit of mild relaxation (basically the only effect of low levels of nicotine). The best one thing a government can do right now to improve health of the nation (and decrease Medicare expenses) in near future is to give away the e-cigs everywhere where tobacco is sold.
To the Wikipedia link in the comment below - with all the respect to Wikipedia, my link above is from John Hopkins.
Being grumpy because of lack of coffee is generally understood and sympathized with. Being grumpy because you haven't had a bump today is considered a cocaine problem and compulsive behavior.
There is so much socialization and stigma around various substances, that terms like compulsive and pathological are hard to use objectively.
Nicotine is addictive on a scale far beyond that. Comparing caffeine and nicotine is like comparing nerf and 9mm. That's my argument, and even though every single comment I've made on this thread to that effect has been downvoted into the negatives, I don't care. Apparently that's the hill I'm dying on today, and I'm just fine with that.
A huge factor in how "bad" each is however seems to be in the responses to relapse. There's disapproval in people's responses to someone taking up nicotine again, but if someone is back to drinking coffee, there's at most a "oh drinking coffee again bob?". These factors in the consequences regarding a slip up or relapse make it hard to judge how "addictive" something is independent of the socialization of it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
According to the above chart, tobacco, whose addictiveness is driven by nicotine, ranks above the following in dependence: meth, alcohol, steroids, ketamines, and barbiturates. It's only slightly trailing cocaine.
Caffeine isn't even on the chart, but even if that were due to "sociological perception", I've no doubt that it would be at the bottom-left of that chart.
Further, while the addictiveness of tobacco is primarily driven by nicotine, it is enhanced by MAOIs in tobacco as well by other substances: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/toba...
Therefore the chart you link is not really that valid in terms of nicotine vs caffeine.
In fact - many people who switch from tobacco to vaping report that it is a difficult switch. Part of it is that the act of vaping isn't the act of smoking, and it's a habit replacement problem. But other parts of that can easily be explained by the MAOIs (more studies are required of course). The other thing reported often, by people who switch to vaping then successfully quit all nicotine is that it's easier to quit vaping than it is to quit tobacco directly - this is probably due to just nicotine vs nicotine+ in tobacco.
Finally - it is very hard to find studies on nicotine addiction independent of tobacco use. Seriously, until very recently, the way to get nicotine was via tobacco, so almost all claims about nicotine use are about tobacco use in general. The chemical pathways are understood, but the effects of just nicotine on long term dependence are all in the context of tobacco. Conversely the page on caffeine in wikipedia - under the heading "Reinforcement disorders" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Reinforcement_disorde... ) does discuss that the claims of caffeine not being addictive are pretty contested.
Basically your points about nicotine are not quite as solid as you claim.
>Nicotine is addictive on a scale far beyond that. Comparing caffeine and nicotine is like comparing nerf and 9mm.
You seems to have nor knowledge nor direct experience to talk from. Video games, HN/FB/email checking and nicotine - all cause neurotransmitter release. That's what makes them addictive. And video games or the Internet related activities seem to release more of the neurotransmitter (dopamine) and as result much more addictive than nicotine. People quit nicotine (i stopped smoking 13 years ago after a decade of enjoying pack-a-day and i think all this "nicotine addiction" is almost non-existent thing, a scarecrow elephant that tobacco companies inflated out of a small fly to scare people from quitting) while people can't quit video games or the other Internet related activities once they got hooked up on it, ie. once the addiction got developed by establishing stimuli->dopamine reward cycle in the brain for that specific stimuli like the video game or HN comments.
Personally, I'm all for anything that reasonably reduces risk and improves health care outcomes.
>"Skin: In case of contact, flush skin with plenty of water."
>"Inhalation: If inhaled, remove to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration."
I remember in the mid-1990's, there were many articles pointing the finger at propylene glycol in personal care products for increasing cancer rates. Even to this day I use Thai salt for deodorant as I don't want to be slathering propylene glycol all over me.
I quick google search for 'propylene glycol' doesn't turn up too much for health risks. But still, I don't want the stuff touching, and I wouldn't want it in my lungs either....
Edit: and to the down voters, I am not anti-vape or anti tobacco. I think both are pretty cool. But as a neat freak, I don't want all my stuff smelling like smoke. And as a health conscious person, I don't want my last days on this earth ending with me on a hospital bed gasping for air from a failed respiratory system.
>Skin: May be absorbed through damaged or abraded skin in harmful amounts. Allergic reactions have been reported. A single prolonged skin exposure is not likely to result in the material being absorbed in harmful amounts. Prolonged contact is essentially non-irritating to skin. Repeated exposures may cause problems. Negative results have consistently been obtained in guinea pigs studies for sensitization. 1,2-Propylene glycol is not considered an occupational skin sensitizer. (CHEMINFO)
>Inhalation: Low hazard for usual industrial handling. Inhalation of a mist of this material may cause respiratory tract irritation. Material has a low vapor pressure at room temperature, so exposure to vapor is not likely.
"Inhalation: Low hazard for usual industrial handling." <- Industrial handling probably doesn't include smoking it....
and so the coffee for caffeine
>Not to mention the vapor is just as obnoxious as smoke.
and so the vapor from your hot coffee.