Hacker News Reader

Comment by draw_down | Hacker News Reader

Pathetic. But not surprising; the moral panic around kids vaping has been building for a while now.

It's not a moral panic, in the sense that people don't like kids smoking. It's a public health issue. Juul is bad for kids' health, it causes similar problems as cigarettes, even though it's relatively safe. [1] You can't sell cigarette replacements in 2018, half the price, in a nice package, deceiving kids who have absolutely no idea what the heck they're doing, and expect to profit legally and morally from this.

[1]: https://news.psu.edu/story/527326/2018/07/03/impact/medical-...

It's not moral panic. Vaping is just as harmful as smoking. Combustion is still the main chemical reaction, and the resultant compounds are just as toxic. They only smell nicer.

There’s no evidence of this. Everything I’ve read indicates that vaping is likely (and dramatically) less harmful. The levels of toxins are orders of magnitude lower or nonexistent in vapor.

Also, there’s no combustion when liquid-based nicotine solution is atomized.

I grant that vaporization occurs at a lower temperature than combustion, but it is still a chemical reaction that relies on a heating element. Proponents of e-cigs have always argued that this makes e-cigs safer, and it does not produce the same compounds that yobacco burning does. What is not clear is whether the compounds produced are safer.

Vaporization (boiling) is not a chemical reaction.

> Combustion is still the main chemical reaction

Please do some research! This is blatantly false. Combustion is not involved in vaping, and boiling is not a chemical reaction!

It's very easy to find peer reviewed medical studies showing vape compounds are considerably healthier than cigarette smoke.

30 sec of googling shows https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph10105146 amongst the relevant docs.

This runs contrary to everything I've read. Vaping is much less harmful than smoking. Vaping does not rely on combustion but rather vaporization. The resulting compounds aren't just as toxic.

Did you just make that up?

While there isn't much research on long term effects of vaping, there are a lot of studies which examine the parts of vapor and almost all, especially when testing under normal conditions, find that they contain much less of the carcinogens that normal cigs do precisely because they aren't combusted.

See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-le...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com