Hacker News Reader

Comment by sean_patel | Hacker News Reader

> Smoking is going out of fashion pretty fast in USA too.

Source?

Yes, Smoking traditional tobacco is going out of fashion pretty much around the world. It's been replaced by the increasing popular E-Cigarrettes / "Vaping", which is also Tobacco and poses the same health risks as traditional tobacco.

Especially very prevalent among-st Teenagers and young people. Heavily marketed by Big Tobacco as "Safe".

Sources:

1) CDC: Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students — United States, 2011–2015: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6514a1.htm?s_cid=mm...

1) England: Smoking rate continues to decrease while vaping gains in popularity http://www.vapingpost.com/2016/09/22/england-smoking-rate-co...

2) The good news is that cigarettes are out these days. The bad news is that tobacco is still in. http://www.teenvogue.com/story/vaping-tobacco-popularity

View on HN

>E-Cigarrettes / "Vaping", which is also Tobacco and poses the same health risks as traditional tobacco.

This is wrong, and absolutely harmful information to spread. Cigarette smoking causes cancer through burning tobacco plant matter, a process that releases a variety of toxic chemicals. Vaporization of e-liquid does not burn tobacco plant matter, and thus doesn't have the same issues.

E-liquid is basically nicotine, glycerol and/or proplyene glycol solute, and flavoring. Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk. The solute is much the same stuff as in asthma inhalers. There isn't really good research for the flavoring, but it's generally ingredients that are recognized as safe to put in food.

Overall, vaping is likely at least an order of magnitude safer than smoking. Probably two. That's not anywhere near "the same health risks as traditional tobacco." I'm personally more worried about spending lots of time near busy roads. If a policy causes X more people to vape per person that no longer smokes, X would have to be at least 100 for me to think it's a net negative.

  Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk

There is evidence that Nicotine replacement products do increase the risk of cancer. Every source I've read says that the risk is less than smoking cigarettes, but vaping (for example) is still an increased risk over not using nicotine at all.

Current NHS advice puts vaping at 95% less risk than smoking, which is to say an increased risk (5% of the smoking risk), compared to not vaping.

- https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes

- http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/04/24/can-nicot...

- http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/04April/Pages/NicotineGumCancer....

- http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/prevention-and-...

Yeah, the research on nicotine replacement products isn't very mature. The links you gave are interesting, but more along the lines of "nicotine can do the same sort of things to mouth cells that happens when you have mouth cancer", not "we took a look at X number of people and looked at mouth cancer incident rates".

The NHS advice is interesting, thanks for contributing it. It's a good sign that I'm on the right track - I put it at "one to two orders of magnitude", or to use the same units, 1% to 10% of the cancer risk of cigarettes. The NHS is likely biased towards saying things cause cancer (because incentives - nobody causes a ruckus if something they thought causes cancer is safe, but everyone gets way riled up if something the NHS thinks is safe causes cancer). So my updated belief is now that vaping causes less than 1% of the cancer that smoking does, per user.

It's probably worth avoiding e-juice with diacetyl, though.

> Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk

This is what's really wrong, and absolutely harmful information to spread.

Your source for all these claims you are making about Vaping being "Safe"?

Stealing a source from elsewhere in the thread:

The NHS estimates that vaping is no more than 5% of the danger of smoking.

(https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes)

Heavy smoking is roughly the equivalent of losing somewhere between one and three healthy years of life.

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361023/)

Combine the two estimates at their most conservative, add a tad of fudge factor, and heavy vaping use will at worst cost you two months of healthy living. People regularly make worse tradeoffs than this - obesity, amount and recklessness of driving, playing professional American Football, and many others are likely worse.

Whether or not that counts as "safe" is up to you and your risk tolerance, of course. As a non-smoker, that's safe enough for me to try vaping to see if nicotine a stimulant worth using.

> poses the same health risks as traditional tobacco

I'm sorry, what? It may pose health risks, but I have not seen anything remotely resembling evidence it poses the same health risks as smoking or chewing.

Vaping is safer: https://wallethub.com/blog/is-vaping-bad-for-you/23907/

Conflating tobacco with nicotine is also a bad move.

wallethub.com link? Really? Ever heard of Astroturfing?

The Big Tobacco and Vaping Lobbyists have tons of "blog posts" and "research" news that "debunk" all the bad things about Vaping and Smoking.

Required Viewing: Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

I'm familiar with the idea of astroturfing. I majored in biochemistry. And while I haven't read the research, it seems fairly straight-forward.

Nicotine and some flavors are dissolved into food-safe glycerin. Then that mixture is raised to a temperature where it becomes a gas, but not a temperature high enough for it to burn. Then it is inhaled.

If you compare that to smoking--- a cigarette actually _burns_, and during that oxidation process it'll make thousands upon thousands of variants of chemicals. And because they've been oxidized, they're more reactive.

I'm not saying vaping is safe. But I'm saying that it's obvious that it's safer than cigarettes.

You should also check out this. I am open to the idea that vaping might be _as bad_ as cigarettes, but currently the evidence shows that they're way better, and can be a good tool for quitting. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-le...

> I'm not saying vaping is safe. But I'm saying that it's obvious that it's safer than cigarettes.

Agreed. Saying something is 'safer' than something else, doesn't make the original thing 'Safe'. Vaping causes Cancer, so does Tobacco smoking. All of you are saying "Vaping is Safer because it isn't AS BAD AS smoking Tobacco". Agreed. But another way of saying is "We think Vaping is Safer because it causes Cancer in 20 years, whereas Tobacco smoking is will cause Cancer in 10 years"

That's fair.

Does vaping cause cancer in 20 years?? Or are you just postulating an example?

You sound like the US government, somehow redefining the word tabacco to include things which have nothing to do with tabacco.

burning leaves doesn't produce same amount of harmful stuff as vaping (which still isn't healthy, but com on, lets use some common sense here)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com