Edit: I bought him the vape after a friend that's been smoking for a long time made the switch and raved about the benefits. I don't doubt that the best course of action is to quit altogether, but a 50+ year addiction is pretty difficult to quit. It can be done but you really have to want it. I don't think my dad really wanted to quit. I know that seems silly, but given his circumstances I can understand.
I tried to quit several times, I tried the gum, the patches, Chantix and cold turkey. None of them allowed me to successfully quit. Vaping was good enough to temper the nicotine cravings enough that I could otherwise function without regular smoking. I have cut back on nicotine content over the years. Now, I'm using the lowest nicotine content liquid that I find readily available. The next step is to mix it with 0 nicotine liquid until I can make another attempt at quitting.
I agree that non-smokers (especially children) shouldn't do it because it can lead to nicotine addiction but for smokers, it's a miracle product.
I still want a cigarette every once in a while, but I think that’s going to pass in the next month or two. At least enough for me to quit the vape as well.
I’d never recommend one to a nonsmoker. But, for me, it has been an effective way out of a vice. If anyone wants out, it has been working for me. Definitely worth considering.
so, yeah. n=1. not data, just an observation. I think unrestrained smoking will kill me. Perhaps the damage is done, at it will kill me regardless. That said, continuing smoking only expands the risk profile. Vaping likely narrows the risk profile. Even if it does not, vaping is a temporary thing for me. I'll be done soon.
The pattern, as explained to me and IIRC, was as follows:
Started vaping insteadof smoking.
Tried vape with less nicotine. Worked equally well.
Tried with half strength.
Tried with even less. Also worked.
At this point it just felt silly so they just stopped.
(Note that these where young people.)
Of course there's some parallels there for the software world, like the endless A/B testing social-media sites do to maximize the amount of time people spend glued to their product.
The problem I had was that a cigarette has an obvious stop point - it runs out - whereas a vape will go on as long as you have juice and power.
Over the 6 months or so getting used to it I've been vaping it's started to fizzle out. I know, n=1, but I think it's something worth noting in case people see an increase in nicotine intake immediately after switching
A proven strategy.
Is vaping harmless? Unlikely. Based on current understanding is it likely much less harmful than smoking tobacco? Yes.
https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/
>There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time.
And Heart disease is associated with pollution from burning fossil fuels: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/MyHeartandStro...
Some people are so offended by the idea of smoking that even doing something much less harmful, like vaping, is enough to cause them to panic for the future of our children.
Much as your physical health is probably best by quitting, mental health certainly has to be considered as well.
it's hard to convince people some times (also not helping that things are still fuzzy and depending on your friends, you can also hear horror stories like lung cancer due to weird vaping byproducts ..)
Metal content is negligible unless you dry hit. No one likes that so it's pretty much a self-limiting problem.
Flavoring compounds, though... there are liquids out there that contain diacetyl (a "buttery" flavoring). It's relatively common in foods, but is known specifically to cause issues when heated and inhaled.
ETA: I just saw that this is mentioned in the article.
> Any one of those components could be harmful.
Yep. The best harm reduction strategy at the moment seems to be to stick to well-known and establish manufacturers of eliquid.
That name rang a bell; diacetyl is the compound behind "popcorn lung", so called because its use for its buttery taste in microwave popcorn was common but is damaging to the lungs if the fumes were inhaled; e.g. https://nyti.ms/2h7ls4G. Interesting to see that it's being used as a vaping flavorant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans#Dia...
I... I... need get to bed.
I assumed when people were talking about metal content, they were referring to metal vapors from the heating elements or something, but I'll admit that I don't know enough about this, or what a dry hit is vs. normal use, or how we know when metal vapors or whatever are/aren't a concern.
(I feel so old right now, hah!)
The only study I've seen that shows that heavy metals in vapor is an issue used conditions that are unlikely to occur in "real life" because of this. The argument seems to be that one could become accustomed to it through the cravings associated with nicotine withdrawal, but I honestly find that unlikely. In reality, you'd burn your coil up in short order, and if you can afford a new coil you'd have been buying more liquid in the first place.
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2017/study-toxic-me...
"For their study, the researchers selected five leading brands of so-called first generation e-cigarettes, which are referred to as cig-a-likes because they resemble traditional cigarettes. (Newer ones look like small cassette recorders with a mouthpiece. In the newer devices the liquid is added from a dispenser prior to use. In contrast, the liquid in first generation e-cigs is stored in the cartridge together with the coil, which increases the liquid’s exposure to the coil even in the absence of heating.) The five brands are sold across the United States in big-box retail stores, convenience stores and gas stations, as well as online. Three of the five brands constituted 71 percent of total market share in 2015. If a brand came in more than one flavor, the researchers chose one flavor for consistency’s sake."
Almost no one uses this piece of junk cig-a-likes. Try and find a person using one on the street, compared to people using proper high powered mods, which their "market share" statistic most certainly does not include.
"This study was funded by the Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health."
Shocking.
I have yet to read a negative study that does not contain obvious blatant lies.
Who do you expect to investigate tobacco products, if not the institute of tobacco control at America's #1 medical college?
edit: also, if your "high power mod" still uses a nichrome heating element, you will have the same problems. Chemistry is chemistry.
71% of the market of product sold in big-box retail stores, convenience stores and gas stations, as well as online. That market is perhaps 10% (that's being generous) of the overall ecig market, because those tiny things suck.
I'm less worried about metal leeching in higher end mods, the juice doesn't sit for months on end with significant surface area touching metal as the juice is typically vaped in << 24 hours, and the physical designs are quite different.
That said, there is still an element of unknown risk, both with the metals used, as well as the wicking materials, but it seems reasonable to expect high end products where they have better margins and more concern with reputation to put much more emphasis on safety and quality.
EDIT:
I think I will have to eat some crow, after doing some googling it seems there are in fact thorough real studies being performed on real world equipment:
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp2175/
I mostly just skimmed this article, figuring out whether these detected levels are beyond what is considered "safe" or how they compare to both regular cigarettes and background environmental exposure I suppose would be nice to know, but based on this article I am going to change my stance to believe that yes, in fact I am exposing myself to heavy metals even when using a high end mod. I think I'm going to do some more research later as I would expect this report would have gotten a fair amount of publicity in the enthusiast community, will be interesting to see how honest their reaction is to this.
We're talking about exposures to ten micrograms in various e-liquids, versus 7,000 micrograms for smokers. On a daily basis, in both cases.
Even more curious, traditional smoking has not been shown to be a risk factor for bronchiolitis.[2] Should those flavors be avoided? Yeah, but I honestly wouldn't get hysterical over it. We're talking about fractions of micrograms in the end product. You certainly are exposed to far more diacetyl in second-hand smoke than a vaper is exposed to in a day, on average, in liquids that contain this flavoring.
FYI: I quit smoking completely using e-cigarettes, and quit using e-cigarettes last year. I wrapped my own coils and built my own atomizers at one point, so I'm probably biased, but the numbers speak for themselves.
To say nothing of my opinion on the hysteria over nicotine, which has never been shown to have strong reinforcing properties in any study. Nicotine, by itself, has simply never been shown to be more addictive than caffeine.[3]
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tox.20153/abstrac...
[2] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10408444.2014.882...
But as other people here said - diacetyl / popcorn lung has been known on the popular vaping scene for almost a decade now. Not to speak in absolute terms but I think it would be hard to find a retailer these days that carries any liquid with diacetyl in it.
Maybe there aren't enough regulations around vaping ingredients? If so, the solution is to regulate it (much like food). In the meantime, it's up to the buyer to find reliable suppliers who use good ingredients. This isn't impossible.
Non-snarky question: why is that a concern? Nicotine -- in the absence of burning tobacco -- isn't bad for you.
I'm entirely supportive of people who want to study this stuff, but the impulse that any new product should be illegal until it's been proven safe to fairly arbitrary standards seems unreasonable to me. And I think there's a bit of a baptist-bootlegger coalition between the medical researchers and tobacco companies.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164...
> AAMODT: So the changes that happen between
> 18 and 25 are a continuation of the process that starts
> around puberty, and 18 year olds are about halfway through
> that process. Their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully
> developed. That's the part of the brain that helps you to
> inhibit impulses and to plan and organize your behavior to
> reach a goal.
If nothing else, there's a monetary cost, a possible convenience cost, etc., and people should choose maturely whether that's something they want to take on.
(And there are some plausible health risks still with vaping, as others have noted.)
To the best of my knowledge, the only place where they still use caffeine from coffee is Japan.
I don't think we know this. routine use of Nicotine alone is one of the world's most effective and safest appetite suppressants, with robust evidence of sustained weightless. It's quite possible a small decrease in the obesity rate means its net effect is positive.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/funding/supplemental-information-n...
How about: Nicotine users more likely to use nicotine.