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Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

I very much doubt the above is true, but it exactly follows the public relations strategy of the vaping industry. Vaping somehow magically helps you stop smoking but without hooking you on vaping, you just somehow lose the desire to smoke or vape at all. And it happens "WITHOUT EVEN TRYING".

This denies all logic but alas in today's world where everything is for sale, and most mass media is just a succession of well placed plugs, they may actually convince the public this is true.

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>I very much doubt the above is true

Seeing that I know like 4 people that do it (and I haven't got that much of a social circle), I very much don't doubt it's true.

>Vaping somehow magically helps you stop smoking but without hooking you on vaping, you just somehow lose the desire to smoke or vape at all. And it happens "WITHOUT EVEN TRYING".

"Magically"? This is rich.

For one, it has other substances, so it's not the same as smoking apart from nicotine. Tobacco companies used to put all kind of addictive shit to cigarettes ( https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press-releases/2014_06_23_re... ).

And if you're familiar with the subject, you know that nicotine patches and gums, that contain, you guessed it, nicotine (like vaping does), have been a long term medically suggested way to quit smoking.

Second, even if you get used to nicotine (like we get hooked on coffee), with vaping you can control (to the ml) the amount of nicotine in in your ecig liquid, and reduce it gradually over time.

>This denies all logic

No, knee jerk reactions denies all reasoning, and opt for confirmation bias.

For what it's worth, I had the same experience. Vaped for a year - the first few months I switched between vaping and real cigarettes, then vaping only. Went down a few levels until I got to 3mg liquid. Found 0mg unsatisfying, so I took the plunge and threw my vaping gear away - cold turkey. It was bizarrely easy. I've tried and failed numerous times and it was just easy. Over two years later and I haven't looked back. I haven't been the slightest bit tempted to smoke or vape and I know I never will - it's like a switch has been flipped in my head. I'm free!

This isn't everyone's experience but I think it's common enough to not just write off as propaganda. I can't prove I'm not some socketpuppet account but this felt real to me.

I went through the same cycle: smoke > vape > quit. But I suspect I likely would have quit as I got older anyway. I've read that the greatest reason people quit an addiction is age.

There's evidence that nicotine is more addictive in the presence of MAOIs, which are absent in e-cigs.

Let's not forget about these bad boys, either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco-specific_nitrosamines

Wikipedia neglects mentioning it, but those are very much psychoactive.

Hookah smoke has almost no nicotine since it’s filtered through water, but hookah can still be addictive. That’s because tobacco also contains addictive MAOIs in addition to the more well-known nicotine. E-cigs don’t have MAOIs, only nicotine, which makes them easier to quit.

Nonsense. The water in a hookah cools the smoke, but doesn't really do much filtering, and it DOES NOT remove nicotine. Hookah smoke is fairly low in nicotine, but that's because most shisha is "washed" to remove most of it's nicotine -- kind of like how decaf coffee still has a trace of caffeine in it. Try an unwashed shisha some time, they're out there.

Reg. MAOIs & addictiveness, there's another group of substances besides MAOIs involved:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19358678

Also, go look up why the tobacco industry used to add tons of sugar to their products.

You could have a compelling argument if you had any actual fact-based reasoning in there.

For those of us that have actually gone through the process described in the post you responded to, it's just really complicated all around. How do you respond to someone that categorically denies your experience is impossible?

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