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Comment by joekrill | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me to read the comments on articles related to e-cigarettes. Everyone is quick to point out any potential flaws -- or even point out that this is still _better_ than regular cigarettes. I suspect it's like taking a time machine back 50 years and experiencing the same thing that happened with cigarettes.

The fact remains, folks using e-cigarettes are still inhaling dangerous chemicals. You'd have to be crazy to suggest this is probably not dangerous. Just because it's delivered slightly differently doesn't really make it ok.

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"folks using e-cigarettes are still inhaling dangerous chemicals."

They might be, or might not. It never fails to amaze me that a pill is hyper regulated, food is somewhat regulated, and at least where I live vape juice is completely unregulated for a couple more years. Whats in there, THC, benzene, used engine oil, who knows.

Obviously its trivial to make a substance that when vaporized is harmless; consider pure distilled filtered water. Its a hair trickier to supply nicotine with the vapor. But when they go all ochem crazy with flavors and smells, who knows whats in there and how long the users will live.

The FDA is moving extremely slowly on regulating vape juice. In a couple years it'll at least be licensed and documented. Until recently it was complete wild west.

I've never seen the FDA move on anything so slowly. There must be a lot of political money involved.

>I've never seen the FDA move on anything so slowly. There must be a lot of political money involved.

Quite the opposite, it’s lack of money. The FDA moves fast in fields and products where they already have budget and staff allocated to doing it. They’re slow about moving to regulate new things because, unless there is a concomitant increase in budget, they have to move people off of work on one thing and on towards another. This, of course, has all sorts of inter-departmental politics involved as branch managers measure the sizes of the peens by how much budget and staff they have under them.

Incidentally, a lot of the money about FDA’s regs in this area are actually coming from the cigar industry which fears, more than anything, being subjected to the same regulatory nightmare that the cigarettes manufacturers are mired in.

> Whats in there, THC, benzene, used engine oil, who knows.

The manufacturers know. Acting as if it is a complete mystery is disingenuous.

But the manufacturer doesn't have to disclose that information if there's no regulation compelling them to, or they can downright lie if nobody's there watching them. Or just put random shit in there that hasn't been tested for safety.

http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20150218/e-cigar...

>The results of one FDA review of 18 different e-cigarette cartridges found toxic and carcinogenic chemicals in some but not others. All but one of the cartridges labeled “no nicotine” did, in fact, contain nicotine. The authors suggest that “quality control processes used to manufacture these products are inconsistent or non-existent.”

> Flavorings: Goniewicz says hundreds of flavors exist, including cherry, cheesecake, cinnamon, and tobacco. Many of those flavoring chemicals, he says, are also used to flavor food.

>“These are the big unknowns,” he says. “When we eat them, they are safe, but we don’t know what’s going on when we inhale them.”

> Or just put random shit in there that hasn't been tested for safety.

a) Do you honestly think companies would do this?

b) The same silly "risk" applies to most any manufacturer - having a "regulation" in no way guarantees your cereal manufacturer isn't putting poison in your cereal, because why wouldn't he, right? (To use similar logic).

> The results of one FDA review of 18 different e-cigarette cartridges found toxic and carcinogenic chemicals in some but not others.

And the source manufacturer (country) of these? Zero details, as usual. Shall we stop selling infant formula in the US because infant formula contains melamine which can and does kill people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

If these agencies weren't deliberately so opaque, I'd perhaps be less distrustful.

Perfectly fair final point on inhalation of flavors, and good luck finding anyone in the industry that is opposed to further testing. Everyone very much wants a safe product.

Here's the FDA summary report - https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm173146.h... - and the actual report - https://www.fda.gov/downloads/drugs/scienceresearch/ucm17325... it's not "deliberately opaque"

And um, yes, the supplement industry is essentially unregulated and is notorious for doing exactly that - putting random shit in there that hasn't been tested for safety and isn't listed on the label. That's up to and including controlled prescription medications.

https://www.livescience.com/40357-herbal-products-unlisted-i...

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/dangerous-dietary-...

Nor did I ever say, or even imply, we should stop selling e-cigs or any other product for that matter.

The supplement industry is very different, in many different ways, a gigantic one being source of ingredients.

The point is, we have uncertainty being printed as confirmed danger, in a billion dollar industry (with a very well documented history of deceit) selling a product known to kill, at risk of being completely disrupted. Pardon me if I'm a little skeptical of misleading claims.

I smoked from the age of 16 until the age of 26 when I made the decision to switch to e-cigs. Within the year after I started using e-cigs I had tapered the nicotine content of the juice down to 0. I abandoned e-cigs entirely and have been tobacco/nicotine free since last April aside from one or two cigars. I truly believe that I would not have been able to quit smoking as easily and painlessly without e-cigs and therefor I am a huge believer in their use as a smoking cessation tool...I wish more people understood just how easy it was for me to quit with their use.

E-Cigarrete smokers are becoming like a club of fanatics. I'm a smoker, and the gusto with which people encourage me to switch to e-cigs I find disturbing.

Hah, feels like it's been that way for a while now. Definitely strange to me, and I'm going on two years of only my vape after being about a pack a day. Imagine people treated patches or nincorette like they do e-cigs.

I used to smoke, now vape, and what I like most about it is that I both get my nicotine and I can also be very physically active. Physical activity is something that I could never do when I smoked.

Edit: And I do accept that vaping is probably not safe, and I'm cool with that. Not everyone has their vices but I have mine.

Agreed on all counts, my lungs definitely feel significantly better.

it's certainly a 'tribe' for reasons that escape me. i don't find personal identity in my nicotine delivery method but many appear to.

Maybe because smokers "secretly" carry within them for decades that they are knowingly killing themselves and feel helpless to stop?

Okay, but they're still very different things one is inhaling. E-cigarettes could easily be far, far safer than cigarettes while still being dangerous.

But no one is saying they aren't unhealthy. Only that they are (probably/possibly) less harmful. On the other hand the title of this article says they are the same (not that the article matters, I've seen too many papers with broken methodology, I'll have to check the referenced paper).

Lots of things are bad for you; that doesn't make them all equivalent.

> The fact remains, folks using e-cigarettes are still inhaling dangerous chemicals.

A very different mix of chemicals. Even if current mixes are terrible, it should be possible to find options that are a lot better.

>The fact remains, folks using e-cigarettes are still inhaling dangerous chemicals

except it's not a "fact". The fact that it is not "a fact" is precisely why you see studies coming out time and time again which attempt to figure out exactly which byproducts of the VG, PG, and Nicotine are created and how they affect the body.

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