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Comment by exolymph | Hacker News Reader

If there's market demand for it, nicotine synthesis will probably get cheaper: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/vaping-industry-wants-go-post-...

It's dubious that nicotine itself is bad for you: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

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I doubt nicotine is good for you, though. It's not like it's some micronutrient and the FDA says you should get 10mg of nicotine a day.

Nicotine reduces stress and anxiety, and stabilizes mood. In that context, nicotine may be a useful drug for some people and help them function better.

Nicotine gum may improve short-term memory. Nicotine may account for why smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson's disease.

> It's dubious that nicotine itself is bad for you

I mean, can we agree substances that enslave you - and by extension your pocketbook - are "bad for you" regardless of if they cause you to die at a sooner age?

It is likely that far more people are “enslaved” (your word) by caffeine than nicotine.

I don’t see a significant problem there either and if nicotine turns out to be roughly equally damaging (not much), is it really a problem?

Refined sugar is probably more damaging than either of them.

No. I like coffee and I don't see it as bad for me in moderation. Caffeine is addictive but it would be hard to convince me that it's carte blanche bad for me just because it's addictive.

Bingo. People that quit smoking with ecigs are transferring their addiction to something else. It may be less harmful than smoking or chewing tobacco, which inevitably leads people to compare it to caffeine.

I’ve been addicted to both. Not once has the need for a triple latte pulled me out of a movie theater at the good part, or made me duck under an eave in the freezing cold when it’s raining outside. Nicotine is first thing you think about when you wake up, when you finish a meal, when you get out of a meeting, and it’s the last thing you do before bed.

Addictions are addictions. But nicotine has demanded more of my time, money, and social and physical well-being than caffeine, for sure.

I don’t know any vaper who has to interrupt anything to feed their nicotine addiction. Nicotine alone is much much less addictive than Cigarettes and their finely tuned mix of additives designed for maximum addiction

Yes, I'm sure the ecig companies will stick to their principles and upstanding morals and not "finely tune" their products to maximum addiction. It would make them more profitable, sure, and that's the one measure we optimise for in capitalism, but I'm sure we can trust them to do the right thing.

It isn’t the nicotine that makes smoking that addictive, which is why cessation methods that focus just on nicotine fail. It is the tar and the flavor that are the big factors in both addiction and getting cancer, e-cigs are a simulated experience that recreate some of the feeling of smoking without actually shoving real smoke into your lungs.

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