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Comment by ptaipale | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. It seems that two very different sects combine forces in the battle against e-cigs: traditional tobacco industry, who sees e-cig transition as a threat, and health authorities and activists, who see second-best (e-cigs) as the greatest threat to what they think is best (total abstinence).

This unholy alliance seems unfortunately quite strong. I'm not a smoker, but I'm all for every smoker around me converting to e-cigs, and even at the "risk" of having some non-smokers start e-cigs it's really a no contest: if some e-cig flavourings are unhealthy, investigate and regulate those, but please please do not stop the transition which is great for absolutely everybody (except traditional tobacco providers).

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The transition is indeed an improvement, but there is a dangerous myth spreading: that e-cigarette smoke (as exhaled by smokers) is "completely harmless". I've heard people describe it as "just water vapor".

Well it isn't harmless, and transitioning from a traditional tobacco cigarette to an e-cigarette doesn't mean you can just start smoking everywhere.

In my experience, walking twenty paces behind a vaper vaping is even more unpleasant than walking four paces behind a cigarette smoker smoking.

I'm the opposite. I think the e-cigs often smell kind of good and the scent is quickly gone. Also the smell doesn't instantly get into my clothes. Different kind of particulates I guess.

What do they put in those e-cigarettes then? :o. I've personally converted my ex-gf to e-cigarettes and I'm spending a lot of time around people smoking them, and not only I can barely see the smoke, I can't smell it even standing in front of a smoker and having them breathe in my direction.

There's a breed of e-cig smokers that are doing what humans always do when they get a new hobby- take it to the extremes.

I walked down the street a couple of weeks ago and saw massive smoke coming from around the corner. And when I smelled it I thought "Someone's really hitting that BBQ!". It was a guy standing on his balcony vaping. Releasing giant clouds of vapor.

I'm all for vaping, but I imagine that the people who take it to the limits are gonna find out eventually that it can be unhealthy too (as anything done in excess)

Personally I'd be scared shitless if I were to vape stuff like what you're describing. I'm genuinly curious, what are they vaping and why they think it is a good idea?

I use a kanga subtank mini on a kbox mini - and mostly liquids from BordO2, a French producer of some repute. This isn't some pile of parts I scraped together in which I'm smoking shale oil...

I'm one of the "thick clouds" crowd - because my first attempt to switch from "traditional" cigarettes failed because the feel of smoking was missing. I'm now on nicotine-free oils, and plan on stopping outright over the next few months, as the physiological need is now beaten - just the psychological "what to do with my hands" end of things to treat.

As to why I think it's a good idea - don't know if I do, but I think it's a better idea than smoking. I'm no longer constantly phlegmatic, I don't wake up in the morning out of breath, I can taste things again, I've stopped wheezing. Those all seem like good things to me.

Finally, I've never seen someone going "cough cough urgh" at a fog machine at an event or disco - and it's the same damned stuff.

" I've never seen someone going "cough cough urgh" at a fog machine at an event or disco - and it's the same damned stuff."

That's precisely why I don't go to discos or theaters that say they are using fog machines.

> I've never seen someone going "cough cough urgh" at a fog machine at an event or disco - and it's the same damned stuff.

Whut. I'm a smoker, and standing next to such a machine, definitely makes me go "cough cough urgh", if I happen to breathe a lungful when it goes off in my face. Even while smoking :) (back in the times when you could smoke inside clubs) (not that I want those times back, mind you, it was a good change and it's making it easier for me to try and quit)

Current generation e-cigs can supply up 200 watts just for vaporizing the E-liquid. That's almost 1/3 of a horsepower and can be used to create obnoxiously large clouds. Many 'Vape Shops' now even sanction tournament-style 'cloud competitions' where 2 participants stand back to back and try to blow the biggest/longest/thickest cloud: https://youtu.be/9oIo_nKOGlQ

You say that like its a bad thing. The only thing going on here is you're expressing your puritanical urges. "People are having fun, there must be something wrong with it!"

"obnoxiously large clouds"

Yes, I don't like winter either.

The vapor isn't what you should be worried about. It's called "Cloud Chasing" and most of the hardcore of them have to build their own hardware to get to these insane levels. And sometimes they screw up. This leads to battery explosions that have seriously hurt people.

I was worried about this part of Lewton's comment:

> And when I smelled it I thought "Someone's really hitting that BBQ!"

This implies that there is some serious crap in the vapor, so that you can smell it from the distance (and it smells like BBQ).

I have noticed that some people vaping tend to take really hard drags from their devices that I doubt they would from a cigarette

if you need nicotine, get the patch. if you need to quit cigarettes or even e-cig the patch is probably good too and in most cases free from your health plan

You're being puritanical. Using Vegetable Glycerin you get large volumes of "smoke" as it is what is used in smoke machines. Its non toxic, you can drink it. This is what I use, with flavor, and no nicotine.

Your assumption that I'm doing something wrong is silly. I'm must a human "smoke" machine.

The thing is, after 30 years of puritans campaigns against smokers, they have managed to teach you that anyone who produces white clouds is somehow dirty.

Does anyone know if the vapor, once exhaled, can carry bacteria/viruses?

Well, every breath you exhale does, so odds are, yes.

but there might be an anti-microbial action to the nicotine or flavourings.

True - nicotine is anti-microbial, that's kinda why plants make it - but flavourings can probably go either way - although essential oils tend to be a pretty hostile place for any microbe.

Propylene Glycol - the base of many e-juices - is sometimes vaporized in hospitals to prevent airborne infections.

http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476%2842%2980046-3/abstr...

"In my experience, walking twenty paces behind a vaper vaping is even more unpleasant than walking four paces behind a cigarette smoker smoking."

That's psychological issue of yours. You think that, so you "feel" that.

So let's put this fair - e-cigarette smoke is basically the same stuff we've been using for ages as the stage smoke. If you aren't afraid of going to a concert, you shouldn't be afraid of passive e-cig smoking either.

I choose to go to a concert. Choice is a very very significant thing here. Choice is the difference between donation and theft.

True, but what I wanted to focus on with this example is that this stuff is mostly harmless - as evidenced by the fact you can deploy it on concerts.

Also, you don't go to a concert every day, multiple times.

That argument only makes sense if you had a relatively precise idea (up to a factor of 3-5 at least) of how many concerts equate to inhaling second-hand e-cig exhaust, health-wise. Which you don't, at all.

Or even better, they're doing a Christmas market here, many stalls have smoke machines going for that "authentic" wintry feel... and vaping is banned, because it's "smoking".

There's a logical fallacy here somewhere.

I'm sure stage smoke isn't also a viable insecticide.

Growing up around people in the tobacco industry I know nicotine is lethal and easily absorbed through the skin, and not something you want to be around if you don't have to -- and especially not if someone has breathing problems.

The long term consumption data will take a while to build up about all the health effects. It's not a good idea to be a guinea pig for that.

The logical fallacy is on the side of anti-e-cig arguments here. It's moving the goalpost from talking about smoke to talking about nicotine. And yes, you're probably better off not ingesting nicotine than ingesting it, but if you do ingest nicotine, you're significantly better off getting it from an e-cigarette than from a standard one. Also, dose matters; I don't recall studies showing that pure nicotine is harmful in the amounts usually consumed (addiction being created by its interaction with other substances in tobacco smoke).

Did the goalposts not move first with the implied argument that "we ingest this all the time, ergo these things are safe?". They aren't containing just those chemicals.

I'm saying I don't want to breathe any of it I don't have to second hand, and the argument that I breathe liquid smoke at concerts or Christmas festivals is beside the point.

Forget addiction in users who decide to smoke it, nictotine a neurotoxin and exhaling it to people who don't want it in public places is inconsiderate.

> I'm saying I don't want to breathe any of it I don't have to second hand, and the argument that I breathe liquid smoke at concerts or Christmas festivals is beside the point.

It's not, it's about magnitude of danger and pointing out it's not a kind of danger that's worth worrying about. This is the rational approach; contrast with media fear-mongering that likes to point out "a connection" between X and some illness, without mentioning how insignificant the connection is. Or, in this case, without noticing that you ingest the exact same thing in similar amounts from different sources, and those sources somehow aren't considered bad for you.

> Forget addiction in users who decide to smoke it, nictotine a neurotoxin

So is water, when overdosed.

> and exhaling it to people who don't want it in public places is inconsiderate.

I totally agree with that! But let's call a spade a spade - it's inconsiderate, not dangerous.

You have zero rights to harm my health.

So, it's not that bad is simply not a defense. If you want nicotine ware a patch, chew gum etc. If you want some other crap in your lungs, do it somewhere that does not impact me.

Are you telling the same thing to every driver that drives past you? To every person that breathes near you? Or to God himself, for creating the Sun that spews way more UV than you need for healthy existence?

There are countless things that are "not that bad" and yet shown to be linked to various diseases. We don't care about them because that's the very definition of danger being not in any way significant.

If someone is driving a SUV down the sidewalk I would probably call the police. The EPA is legally empowered to deal with air pollution, sure we carve out exceptions for the common good, but the default is not dump whatever you want into the air.

Yes, but for better or worse[0], smoking is considered common good. Here we're talking about replacing smoking, which is clearly very harmful, by e-cigarettes, which are maybe somewhat but insignificantly harmful. The cost-benefit analysis of that alone[1] should convince everyone to cheerfully advocate for them.

In the course of this discussion thread, we've jumped from the danger of e-cig vapor (which is nil) to the danger of pure nicotine (which is also nil) and now we're talking about pollution. Can't we just agree that those are three separate issues (two of which are non-issues, and third isn't really discussed by people right now)? So far everything is showing that e-cigs are a neglible hazard to smokers and their surroundings. We should be happy we've found a good alternative for the decades-old problem, instead of trying to destroy it by overblowing its negative effects by orders of magnitude.

[0] - Googling just now, I found that there are reasons for considering cigarette smoke an air pollution - http://epi.yale.edu/the-metric/considering-smoking-air-pollu...

[1] - I haven't seen any analysis about potential of e-cigarette smoke becoming a significant pollutant; it most likely won't be in terms of particulate matter, but maybe the smoke itself is bad for atmosphere. I don't know. But even if, that's a discussion about environmental impact (and a one that no one is having right now), not about direct health effects.

> danger of pure nicotine (which is also nil)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_poisoning#cite_note-L...

"An accidental ingestion of only 6 mg may be lethal to children. [16]"

So, safe as long as you ignore the dead people?

Please read the entire article to see why this is a non-issue. Can't access the paper to determine just how old the "children" are in this study, but given that you absorb only 1 mg of nicotine from breathing in smoke of a 12mg-nicotine cigarette[0], I'd again treat nicotine poisoning as something not relevant to smoking in the real world.

[0] - http://www.electroniccigaretteconsumerreviews.com/how-much-n...

You get 1 mg of nicotine directly. The other ~11 to 19 hang around. In areas with minimal ventilate the dosage can ramp up.

aka second hand smoke is not limited to other people.

What area are you in that you are worried about airborne nicotine building up to fatal levels? If there is that little airflow, you should be more worried about suffocation.

Do you also apply this sense of morality onto yourself and the damage you might cause other people? Because in that case, get. the hell. off. my planet.

It's only the right thing to do.

Safe, as long as you're not boiling down a pack of cigarettes and precipitating out all of the nicotine in order to then deliberately poison a child, yes. Pure nicotine is absolutely lethal. It's also hard to come by unless you make your own - which you'd only do if you wanted to poison someone.

I was directly quoting someone that said Pure nicotine was safe which it is clearly not.

"If someone is driving a SUV down the sidewalk I would probably call the police"

That's just obnoxious.

"the default is not dump whatever you want into the air."

Lol. Pass the news to industry. And seriously, with your attitude, you should be living a 100 miles away from the nearest car.

> Or to God himself, for creating the Sun that spews way more UV than you need for healthy existence?

but if the Sun had less UV, you would see its texture map all tessellated.

> You have zero rights to harm my health.

> So, it's not that bad is simply not a defense. If you want nicotine ware a patch, chew gum etc. If you want some other crap in your lungs, do it somewhere that does not impact me.

Dude, the health-impact of getting worked up about this is already magnitudes more than the health-impact of the thing you are worried about.

It's one thing that there are studies showing nicotine is a harmful substance (which isn't even quite as straightforward as it seems), it's an entirely other thing to quantify the risk of exposure to an occasional whiff of e-cig exhaust, in the context of traffic pollution, fireplaces, incense, air fresheners, people farting, or investigating where a burning smell comes from.

The latter 9 times out of 10 involves burning plastic, which going near to instead of away from, for a minute, just to check, is way super more stupid harmful to your health than actually taking a full drag of an e-cig. I owe my life to people that weren't afraid to do that (still insignificant) damage to their health, which is a million times worse than the perceived harm you are whining about.

Hell your presence on my planet is already more damaging to my health than you catching a whiff of e-cig. So nothing personal but kindly maybe get off it. That, or learn how to rationally deal with very very tiny probabilities (it's not intuitive, but also not that hard).

It's not beside the point-- when I vape, there is no nicotine, it is literally a human smoke machine.

Your anti-nicotine crusade is attacking people who aren't using nicotine, without making the distinction.

There is no crusade. However, most people who are vaping into public airspace are in fact using nicotine with a very high degree of correlation -- this is not something many people do just to taste 0-nicotine air flavors. This started off by saying "vaping is probably safe, because similar things are used for special effects at concerts". In this case, there is at least one factor not included in those concerts - the drug most people are obtaining through vaping.

They say "this is safe", while ingesting a particularly evil toxin that is lethal in very small quantities (like a drop or two will make you violently sick). Yes, there are other toxins, but ... again, this is perfectly avoidable and nobody has any business making others who do not choose to be exposed to it.

People should have the right to not come in contact with that.

> a drop or two will make you violently sick

can we please stick to the facts?

a drop of nicotine will kill you. it's easily more than the above stated lethal dose of 6mg.

and before you think that proves your point, it actually just proves that you can't properly keep orders of magnitude apart.

if you consider "a drop or two" as "very small quantities" then I have some news for you: there's essential nutrients your body needs to survive, that would be lethal if you ingested "a drop or two".

how much mg nicotine is there in a whiff of second-hand e-cig smoke?

how much whiffs are there in "a drop or two" of nicotine?

It's pretty bold to bring up the word fallacy and to go on saying that because nicotine is used as a pesticide, it's bad for humans at the levels found in cigarettes or e-liquids. Anything is lethal at a high enough dose; no one is advocating rubbing pure nicotine on your hands. Also, I'm very interested in knowing what nicotine (outside of cigarette smoking) has to do with breathing problems.

"Smoking excessive amounts of tobacco has also led to poisoning; a case was reported where two brothers smoked 17 and 18 pipes of tobacco in succession and were both fatally poisoned."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_poisoning#cite_note-L...

One case. In 1920.

Please read the rest of that article, including the paragraph you quote from, to see why you generally can't get nicotine poisoning from even hardcore smoking.

Also, this doesn't answer GP's question about nicotine causing breathing problems - besides the pedantic observation that your lungs will shut down with the rest of your body when you get lethally poisoned.

> then go on saying that it's bad for humans at the levels found in cigarettes or e-liquids

Is it bad to jump to conclusions that it's safe and everybody else should be happy inhaling your exhaust believing so?

What someone does in their own homes is fine, though this thread was discussing vaping-exhaust being fine in public, and I don't believe people have that right.

Smoking was predominent in restaurants and public areas a while back and we thought it would be impossible to go away, and now that it has, it's been absolutely fantastic.

This is basically just a "safer", not "safe" method that still affects people in a given area.

I'd rather people just use patches or something else rather than vaping down the street, in malls, or sidewalks. This would be completely fine - mind you - that it is likely to have very negative health consequences to those people.

> What someone does in their own homes is fine

Why?

Vaping e-cigs in your own home is merely a bunch of orders of magnitude less harmful than doing it in your face.

And according to your reasoning so far, several orders of magnitude less harmful, means you should only be mildly less concerned about that.

Quickly, I hear someone's burning plastic in China.

> Is it bad to jump to conclusions that it's safe and everybody else should be happy inhaling your exhaust believing so?

Are you sure you replied to the right comment? I don't see how any of this relates to what I said. Also, by all means, please show me studies linking nicotine (outside of cigarette smoke) to serious health problems.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487037495045761723...

Then tell me how much nicotine one would ingest from second-hand vaping in public places. Harm by homeopathy?

I'm less concerned with the safety of second-hand vapor than the offensive odor. It has been so nice these past few years to be able to go to bars and restaurants and not come back with my entire wardrobe reeking. I don't want to give that up.

I think that perfumes are a more relevant problem than e-cigs.

Fair enough. I sympathize with that concern, though as 'ptaipale pointed out, at this point you should start worrying about perfumes as well. But it's no longer about danger - it's just about being nice to other people.

With perfumes it's also a somewhat actual health hazard, for some people (if someone is allergic or over-sensitive).

For me it is just an inconvenience, but I do feel a bit sick in department stores because in so many of them, you have to enter via the 1st floor fragrance department. But apparently that makes commercial sense, i.e. the additional sales to impulsive perfume-buyers (profiled mostly to be women) is more important than the non-sales of anything to me.

e-cigs do not confer a smell to walls or clothing. That's one of the draws for smokers.

It has literally everything that the original vapor has; where do you think the compounds 'go'?

Nicotine, flavorings, everything else, goes in your lungs and plenty of it comes right back out.

"Everything else" is literally just stage smoke.

You don't get a nicotine from stage smoke, thus your clearly wrong.

You're saying this like nicotine is bad for humans. It's not been shown to be in the levels found in cigarettes, gums, e-liquids, etc. Don't confuse the word nicotine, which has often been used as a synonym for cigarette (even in serious publications), with cigarette smoke.

You can OD and die from smoking to much. The dramatic convulsions kick in before that which means is really rare, but nicotine is known to be very toxic. And does kill people who apply to many patches etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_poisoning#cite_note-L...

"Smoking excessive amounts of tobacco has also led to poisoning; a case was reported where two brothers smoked 17 and 18 pipes of tobacco in succession and were both fatally poisoned."

The very first paragraph of that Wikipedia article tells that this is a non-issue. To get any serious nicotine poisoning, you'd have to start eating insecticide or pure tobacco.

"The estimated lower limit of a lethal dose of nicotine has been reported as between 500 and 1000 mg.". To get directly hurt by nicotine available in consumer products, you'd have to either drink up 20 bottles of high-nicotine-concentration e-cig liquid or be an infant.

That case you quote (surrounded by the context which says that you can't get serious nicotine poisoning from smoking in any reasonable way) is equivalent to drinking up 10+ liters of water in succession, at which point you also die.

So, you admit Nicotine is not harmless, that's a good step 1.

But, Death is not the only harm. Kids have gotten series nicotine poising from smoking less than a pack. It's only fatal poisonings that are rare. "The initial symptoms are mainly due to stimulatory effects and include nausea and vomiting, excessive salivation, abdominal pain, pallor, sweating, hypertension, tachycardia, ataxia, tremor, headache, dizziness, muscle fasciculations, and seizures.[4]"

Sure, being stuck near an e-sig users may only cause a massive headache, nausea, and a case of the shakes, but that's still not OK.

Nothing is harmless, not even water. Dose matters.

Let me illustrate what I mean:

> "The estimated lower limit of a lethal dose of nicotine has been reported as between 500 and 1000 mg."

The highest commercially-available concentration of nicotine in ready-to-vape e-juice is 36mg nic/ml. This is considered extremely high nic, and is rarely purchased anymore. So, if you drank 14-28ml of this juice straight from the bottle, that might be a lethal dose (typical bottles are 15-30ml). I can think of several substances you likely have in your house today that have similar levels of toxicity.

My e-cig is loaded with 1.5mg/ml or 0mg/ml juice depending. I vape ~3ml/hour at full-bore. If I absorb only 50% of the vaporized nic, I am releasing 2.25mg of nic into the air over an hour. At 2 puffs per minute that's 0.02mg per puff, distributed over the volume of the vapor cloud.

If you walk through my vapor cloud on a sidewalk, your nic exposure is truly insignificant.

I -- and all friends I have who also vape -- make it a point to not subject others to our habit, out of simple human decency. But let's be real: you're far worse off walking by an idling car than you are walking through a single vapor cloud.

Domenic_S that's reasonable for a single group in a well ventilated area.

However, your friends are not the only smokers. A doorman may be slightly down wind of a 'smokers area' which get's a long swath of people over the day. Sure, he might get 0.1mg per smoker but multiply that by 200 people who go out twice a day and that's 40mg which is probably not lethal but still plenty to cause issues. Not to mention withdrawal issues on his days off.

In terms of e-sigs, the second hand dose is likely lower. Assuming the unregulated doses are as described. But, if people assume a poorly ventilated break room is ok then people who work next to it may also get a fairly high dose.

How many cars were upwind of that poor doorman throughout the day? Did he survive?!

You forgot to divide by the volume of the vapour-cloud, there, as the hypothetical doorman is not getting his nicotine mouth-to-mouth from each smoker in turn.

This volume increases by the third power of distance--give or take a factor of 3 depending on wind strength and direction, it'll roughly be a cone of sorts.

So start with the quoted-above 2.25mg per hour of "in your face" nicotine, which we'll assume you could ingest if you keep breathing within a cubic foot (0.028 cubic metre) of a single smoker's mouth for the entire hour.

Say the doorman is standing 25m (~80ft) away. (if he lets a crowd of smokers gather much closer to his door, he's not really doing his job properly)

So that's distance times 80, meaning volume times 512,000. But it's a wispy wind-blown cone gushing in the specific direction of our poor doorman, so divide by 3, is 170,000 times the volume.

THEN, you multiply by the busy number of 200 people that are there all the time (very busy smoker's spot, this).

I get 2.6µg per hour. But only on the days when the wind has it in specifically for him. Standing within 25 metres from a crowd of 200 people constantly smoking e-cigs all day.

Two different situations. One a bunch of people smoking outside. Where each sig release 11-19mg of smoke with 500mg being a potentially lethal dose. And someone near it getting 1/2% of that is reasonable.

Case two, people thinking e-sigs are 100% safe and smoking inside.

In both cases each persion thinks there harm is meaningless but they add up.

THANK YOU! For being the first in this thread to actually estimate the difference in orders of magnitude we're talking about here.

That's demonstrably not true. Experiments have been done on this with animals. There have also been experiments with filling a space with ecig vapor, and calculating how much nic was is the air. It was extremely low. You don't know what you are talking about.

> Well it isn't harmless

You do not know this, no one does. At most, there is some evidence that some flavors might possibly be harmful - at what concentrations and for what duration of exposure, no one knows.

This is the same argument I heard when people started making "synthetic weed" and said its totally harmless:

Some comments from a 2007 article about Salvia: http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/mailbag/salvia-harmless...

Before the drug crusaders wheel out the usual hysterical lies in their attempts to outlaw salvia divinorum, it is worthwhile to notice that no serious problems have been associated with salvia divinorum to date. There are no deaths, no desperate addictions and no robberies, assaults or murders connected to salvia.

here is an herb whose effects last a matter of minutes. It doesn't produce a rush or euphoria. It's not addictive, and it makes users feel anti-social, so it's hardly going to become a fad among teenagers (unless, of course, you heighten its intrigue by making it illegal).

So why are legislators considering banning this plant? Do we even need reasons anymore to be reactionary and ban everything we don't understand?

Sound familiar?

Salvia and synthetic weed are two completely different substances.

Oh, come on. Seriously? Just google "e-cigarette smoke harmful" and click on any of the results.

Here's a random sample:

"Second-hand smoke from electronic cigarettes may be less harmful than their tobacco-laden cousins, but they still release toxins into the air, according to a new study.

For the study, published in the Journal of Environmental Science, Processes and Impacts, researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed second-hand smoke from e-cigarettes and found an overall 10-fold decrease in exposure to harmful particles compared to traditional cigarette smoke. However, they did find a significant increase in exposure to some harmful metals coming from e-cigarette smoke.

Second-hand smoke from e-cigarettes also yielded exposure to almost no polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — cancer-causing compounds known as organic carcinogens — that are released into the air as tobacco cigarettes burn. But despite having less harmful organic compounds and an overall decrease in toxic metal emissions, e-cigarette smoke did contain chromium and nickel at levels four times higher than tobacco cigarettes. Lead and zinc were also found in the smoke, but they occurred at levels lower than regular cigarettes."

What is the fallacy of "proof by existence of scare mongering"?

Nothing is harmless. To have a conversation that isn't just scare mongering and opinion pushing you have to actually mention risk factors. From everything I've read, e-cigs are so almost harmless that it doesn't even bear mentioning. Studies like this show that e-cigs are harmful on about the same level as eating too much kale is harmful.

People that fixate on the small but technically true fact that it is "harmful" are doing much more harm to people's health than e-cigs, because each comment to that effect potentially dissuades another smoker from making the switch.

I wonder why you're downvoted, but I fearlessly agree: comments about "it is harmful, as this study can reveal" are often grossly exaggerating risks that are extremely minimal and not relevant at all for the typical use case.

Of course, everything can be taken to extremes. Even drinking water can kill you, after all, and the dose is probably easier to get than in e-cigs.

Nothing is harmless. It's all shades of grey. And you won't be able to smoke everywhere. That ship has sailed.

"Smoking everywhere" didn't bother people until others suggested it should. Its just interesting...

I think the scaremongering is more to keep non-smokers from trying vaporizers.

If everyone who currently smokes traditional burnt-tobacco cigarettes switched to nicotine vaporizers tomorrow, the public health windfall over the next 2 to 30 years would be staggeringly huge. Cancer rates, particularly for lung cancers, would drop off a cliff.

But since burnt-tobacco smoking has already been on the decline for a while, those who monitor and care about such things are concerned that vaporizers are not perceived as dangerous enough to keep that trend line going all the way to zero.

The best course, really, would to refrain from prevarication or exaggeration with respect to the vaporizers, and keep up the pressure on burnt-tobacco cigarettes, as the health-destroying menaces that they are.

If you smoke, switch now. Statistically speaking, you will live longer. Use whatever vaporizer flavors it takes to bury your desire to touch flame to paper. It will likely be easier for you to switch flavors later, if any of them turn out to be significantly more damaging than the others.

You're also describing the scare mongering that was employed against cannabis for the past 70 years.

Unfortunately, overstating a risk is eventually perceived to be a lie. People stop trusting you when you're perceived to be a liar.

> Unfortunately, overstating a risk is eventually perceived to be a lie.

Unfortunately? Overstating risk is a lie. We can't be informed consumers without trusted sources of information. If we can't be informed consumers the market will always be inefficient. The market will tend towards more efficiency, so in this case people will discount untrustworthy information sources.

If you want to change behavior, either increase (correct) market information if it will support your goal, or incentivize. Manipulating markets by reducing or confusing information never seems to work out well in the long run.

When I see the claims made, I usually see weasel words attached(I just did that too).

With the result being that a statement can be factually accurate while being completely misleading.

I think you have missed a third party.

Government taxing authorities.

Despite the fact that they condemn the dangers of tobacco smoking, they also want the tax revenue and e-cigs don't provide that.

Big tobacco will still make money from e-cigs because tobacco is needed to get the nicotine for the liquid.

The people who just enjoy sticking it to smokers are upset and the governments that want the tax revenue are upset.

I started using e-cigs without much thought on quitting entirely, however after about 7 months, I had even stopped vaping, haven't felt the need to smoke in over a year.

Granted I did slowly reduce the nicotine content over time.

I did the same. I understand being anti-smoking because cancer, but this whole anti-vaping movement seems way misguided. I mean sure, if over time we figure out that certain flavorings should be avoided, fine, ban their use. However, don't deny people an easy way out of smoking. baby with the bathwater cliche.

Exactly. There can be very many different flavourings and some are probably harmful, just like some food is harmful, particularly if used in excessive amounts. Or listening to music at loud levels is bad for your hearing, and still, earphones are not banned (and we don't even have mandatory fuses in earphones to limit the power emitted to ears).

Traditional tobacco providers actually dominate e-cig market share in the US under different brand names.

The most popular e cig brands blu and vise, are owned by Reynolds tobacco and imperial tobacco. Markten is owned by Altria, aka Philip Morris.

If anything I'd be more skeptical of pro ecig articles given big tobaccos involvement.

http://www.cspnet.com/category-news/tobacco/articles/nielsen...

What you find at Walgreens or convenience stores is not what I would call the "most popular". Having been around a large number of analog cigarette converts at my previous employer absolutely none of them would touch any of those with a ten foot pole, they weren't "cloud chasers" either, they used vape-pen devices sold by a local B&M shop. I don't have a large enough sample set, but I've never actually met anyone in person that vapes that uses a cig-alike sold by the big tobacco companies.

I was measuring most popular by the reported sales and market share. I don't know what other definition could apply. I too keep hearing, mostly on the internet, that nobody uses them, but numbers are numbers.

The FDA ban that they are trying to push through grandfathers in tobacco companies, so if they can generate enough scare and the ban succeeds they will make a TON of money.

> health authorities and activists, who see second-best (e-cigs) as the greatest threat to what they think is best (total abstinence).

The comment you're replying to cites the British Department of Health, who's final quote is

> All of our local NHS Stop Smoking Services now proactively welcome > anyone who wants to use these devices as part of their quit attempt > and increase their chance of success

From the middle "Despite this trend all current evidence finds that e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of smoking.".

That's hardly a battle against e-cigarettes.

I think the GP didn't mean "authorities" as in "the government", but more as in "Food Babe-type pundits" - the usual "non-organic stuff gives you cancer" crowd majority tends to read and believe. Hard to avoid, as it's the kind of outrage-inducing content that's so loved by mainstream media.

> The comment you're replying to cites the British Department of Health

That statement is delightful; my experience is with what I see from the Finnish Ministry of Health, and they're nuts. In this case, the Brits are much more sane.

>This unholy alliance

Classic "Bootleggers and Baptists"

the tobacco industry only persist because government wants it too, it serves two benefits. Increased revenue from taxation and cynically because many users will pass away before their medical expenses get too high.

Inhaling any burning substance cannot be good for you and there was really no standard on e-cigs to at least let people use them with some assurance

> I'm not a smoker, but I'm all for every smoker around me converting to e-cigs, and even at the "risk" of having some non-smokers start e-cigs it's really a no contest: if some e-cig flavourings are unhealthy, investigate and regulate those, but please please do not stop the transition which is great for absolutely everybody.

You forgot one group, although my guess is that if it's a significant number (I just have anecdata), we'll hear about it soon enough. With all these parties holding interest, they'll be up to their noses in statistics.

It's the group of smokers that are trying to make a healthy life-decision, trying to quit their addiction[0], to quit smoking, but relapse because obviously electronic cigarettes keep both the nicotine addiction and the habit going.

None of the people I know who tried to switch to e-cigs (for health, or any reasons actually) did not relapse to regular cigarettes. Starts with just one, for the flavour (because it does taste better, really does) and after a few weeks you'll never see the e-cig again. I'll ask around to see if any of them still even use the e-cig at all, maybe at home, but I kind of doubt it.

Source: Am smoker and therefore hang out with other smokers outside a lot of the time. I can think of 4 or 5 people I know for which the above story holds, and truly not anybody that permanently switched to e-cigs, or went from e-cigs to full quit.

Not even for half a year or so--which I would otherwise (without e-cigs) consider having "quit" to the extent that keeping it up after that is much more likely.

So among my peers, people "switching" to e-cigs, can basically expect less than half a year of clean lungs before they relapse. Any health benefits of that short period goes up in smoke.

That's what I don't like about e-cigs, it's like twitter-activism, it wastes people's will on something they think is helping, but really just lulls them into a false sense of effort.

Another piece of anecdata: I know a lot more (than 4 or 5) people that actually managed to quit smoking. Now some of them didn't get addicted "real bad" (some people are just less sensitive to addiction), but some of them did, even relapsed some times, but keep on battling. Especially that last group, if they had switched to e-cigs instead, would be back inhaling burned leaves in no time.

But I don't know how significant these experiences are. Maybe e-cigs will help further the social stigma of smoking, the unusualness of it, therefore in the end creating and cultivating an environment in which smokers can more easily kick their habit. But a method to quit smoking, it is not. Especially I have personally, not seen any heavy smoker / addict get any expected health benefits from them.

So if e-cigs are good, they're only for "the greater good", I would never ever recommend a smoker that wants to "switch" to e-cigs for their health. "Just quit", I will tell them, e-cigs are just a temporary stop-gap to feel like you're "doing something good", while in the mean-time keeping your actual addiction alive and kicking. Even trying quitting for real and failing, seems IMO better than that (at least you'll gain experience in battling your willpower).

[0] which is hard, and I'll just say that if you haven't experienced such addiction (and even many smokers and ex-smokers have not), you probably underestimate how it can grind will to dust

Does also nicotine chewing gum cause relapses? I wouldn't think that's a significant phenomenon. Well, we will hopefully know with some statistical evidence some day (unless e-cig prohibitionists win too heavily).

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