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Comment by tsmarsh | Hacker News Reader

Is this more serious than the sugar epidemic?

Or exposure to traffic pollution?

Or reduced freedom to roam?

It would seem that there are many social threats to my children, and vaping is maybe in the top 10? Should it be higher?

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Public health doesn't talk about your individual child. It talks about a population of 100,000 children.

If none of them smoke, and they all take up vaping, some of them will be harmed by vaping (because nothing is risk free). Do they get any benefit from vaping? Does that benefit outweigh the risk? How much regulation does a society impose?

There's been a bit too much talk of vaping as totally harm free. Partly that's because we were comparing it to smoking, which is very much worse than vaping. But if non-smokers are taking up vaping we need to have the different discussion about risks and benefits.

> Do they get any benefit from vaping?

Yes, almost certainly. Nicotine is effectively a nootropic, having "significant positive effects on aspects of fine motor abilities, alerting and orienting attention, and episodic and working memory". Nicotine has a (afaik) unique mix of stimulating and anxiolytic effects and there's reasonable evidence that it has antipsychotic effects helpful in reducing symptoms of schizophrenia. There's even evidence that nicotine has general neuroprotective properties helpful against brain trauma or neurodegenerative disease. There are many studies highlighting potentially beneficial effects of nicotine, you can find a handful linked here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&f...

That isn't to say that vaping has no dangers or potential downsides, but I think, likely in large part due to how dangerous tobacco smoking is, there's been a dearth of communication to the public of the variety of potential positives of nicotine. For many non-smokers who use nicotine the significant benefits may well outweigh the downsides.

I've by and large been on nicotine since I was 13. I'm 50 now. I quit smoking when my children were born. I switched to dipping, which my wife finds disgusting as a medical professional. I then went to vaping, which she doesn't like any more, but tolerates.

It's a proven fact that nicotine re-wires the brain receptors over time. I smoked for over 25 years. I'm sure my brain receptors were re-wired in that time. When I quit, I went zero nicotine for two years. I was an *hole during that time. I always craved it. I would walk from my car into the supermarket and smelled smoke and wanted it. I would be out with my wife on a date, smell it and want it. I wanted it after a heavy meal and other times. When vaping went mainstream, I got onboard. I use a pen vape that's 1.9 ml of nicotine. I still dip Skoal if I'm doing yard work, more for the oral sensation than anything, but a dip is the rough equivalent of three cigarette's worth of nicotine. I'd like to get off of everything, but the nicotine does have benefits. It largely prevents jet lag, gets me going in the morning before I down my 16oz. French press high-caffeine concoction. It helps me think and get through tough technical problems. For those never addicted to nicotine, please be understanding of those in your life that are long-term users. Scientists now understand that the re-wiring of the brain is somewhat permanent. It's sad that kids are getting on this treadmill. If I'm honest, I wish I never did, but I also enjoy it tremendously after a meal and when coding.

This long-form article/confession from a self-professed (adult) vaping addict might give you some idea as to just how bad it can be:

https://medium.com/s/love-hate/confessions-of-a-juul-junkie-...

Wow. An important reminder that the space between “harmless” and “can kill you” has room for plenty of ills.

It is rising faster than any of those which is concerning. In terms of danger, it's hard to say since we don't know what the long term effects of vaping are going to be, and how many of these teens are going to consume other tobacco products in the future.

Airborne pollution and sugar are both orders of magnitude worse than vaping could ever be. The authorities certainly seem to pick and choose which battles they fight.

One is easy to pin on a small private company, the other would involve targeting other politicians, larger deep pocketed companies, and raising taxes.

One is easy to pin on a particular category of non-essential products (The world won't stop if non-smokers don't pick up vaping), the other (air pollution) is a communal externality of nearly every single productive activity that our society engages in (Because those activities involve either electricity or transportation, or both.)

Are you saying sugary foods and drinks are essential products?

While the excessive amount of sugar in some food and drinks is bad, at least they don’t give you withdrawal when you stop taking them.

'could ever be' on which measurement?

I don't think that we as a socieity don't have enough energy or mindpower to think about airborn pollution, sugar, smoking and vaping.

Independetly of the risk for the consumer, i'm quite happy that vaping is also banned indoors. Imagine strawberry everywhere brrr

I disagree. In most of the US the air pollution is less likely to harm you than vaping would. Sugar is a different story but it's one where you can have a healthy relationship to it, whereas you can't with vaping.

>. In most of the US the air pollution is less likely to harm you than vaping would

We don't know what the affects of vaping are, so how can you say that?

We don't know the effects, but we can be pretty confident on the floor. Meaning we know the minimum amount of harm nicotine in vaping is definitely causing, but we aren't sure how much extra harm could be caused by the flavorings, the heating process, problems with safety and quality control with the vaping juice and other issues.

> I disagree. In most of the US the air pollution is less likely to harm you than vaping would.

Area wise? Sure.

In regards to population centers?

Air pollution has a known, life long, negative impact. https://nypost.com/2015/05/26/new-yorks-pollution-and-povert...

"you can have a healthy relationship to it, whereas you can't with vaping."

Could you elaborate? Why can't one have as healthy a relationship with vaping as with sugar? Are we talking about occasional moderate use, or is it something else?

Given that nicotine addiction is a thing, I don’t think “occasional moderate use” is possible.

Is sugar addiction not a thing? I consider myself addicted to sugar, and have cravings when I try to stop, but maybe I'm getting the terminology wrong? English is my second language.

I think it's an issue of really [deliberately] inconsistent messaging. The general public thinks e-cigs are harmless compared to tobacco and what little common counter argument (maybe the coils are degrading and leeching into the vapor?) exists is not particularly compelling to the average person. Thus we have a perfect storm where manufacturers have a literal chemically induced captive audience and we're starting to see how they're making use of that feature to make money. Most of us don't see it but if you go to the right communities, everyone and their sister is vaping furiously. It has a rather distopian feel to it...

From what I've heard, vaping can be dangerous because if it condensates into the lungs all chemicals used to get the fragrance can't be expelled anymore, so it's not that different from traditional cigs.

Luckily I quit smoking over 20 years ago and never ever considered trying ecigs. But still like the smell of burning tobacco, which is why since the day I quit I didn't have a single puff, not even to light one for a friend; after all those years I still like it.

Do you think that there are so many similiar topics that you have to choose?

I would personally put vaping in the top 10.

The point is they like to make a big splash about problems that aren't really huge and are cheap to fix for the government with minimal pushback. The actual huge problems are ignored, mostly due to money.

I wonder if the big tobacco companies are behind this.

They have much to lose because e-cigs are not used for tobacco, in my experience.

So they (tobacco corps) will lose future tobacco addicts to e-cigs and vaping liquid producers.

peace.

The nicotine in e-cigs are produced using tobacco and I'm pretty sure big tobacco doesn't care if kids are smoking actual cigarettes or e-cigs, only that they are smoking.

> I'm pretty sure big tobacco doesn't care if kids are smoking actual cigarettes or e-cigs, only that they are smoking.

I disagree.

Tobacco is an industry with high regulatory barriers to entry and decades of very effective marketing behind it. "Big Tobacco" makes money at the wholesale and retail levels pretty much unopposed.

Vaping is effectively unregulated, and there really aren't any truly big players in e-liquid market. Everyone who vapes seems to have their favorites, but even a small vape shop will have a dozen or more brands on the shelves.

Vaping isn't going to kill tobacco use, because as you said, the nicotine ultimately comes from tobacco - but its rise is cutting significantly into the revenue of "Big Tobacco".

Marlboro's parent company Altria is in the process of buying a 35% stake in Juul.

Add to that:

-US schools not offering nutritional meals

-Waking up kids so early in the morning it hurts their sleep

-Not having soda and candy machines on school property

-Proper sex education

-Vaccinations and other healthcare for children

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