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Comment by andykx | Hacker News Reader

I think the dangerous thing is that people who have never smoked are using vapes more and more. I'm 26 and the vast majority of my friends have never been smokers, but are consistent vapers. I agree that they can help smokers, but I think the primary audience for these products never smoked.

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I share your concern, but they may have become smokers if it weren't for e-cigs. I started at 15 and smoked a pack a day and some of my friends smoked double that. That's 50 cigarettes a day and not even 20. I hope the data turns out to be good news, but I really don't like how people are treating them as risk free or safe when we really don't know.

Maybe, but smoking going down a lot already in the years before vaping really showed up especially iirc among younger cohorts. Antismoking efforts had worked pretty well but then vaping came in and dodged 99% of the social (at least the antismoking stigma I remember vaping being the brunt of soo many jokes and mockery when it first hit) and health stigma with no real science to back up the health claims (in absolute it's not hard to be better for your health than cigarettes after all).

Who knows if they would have become smokers of vaping didn’t exist? Yes, there will be new smokers who start with vaping and never see a cigarette, but given that there were new cigarette smokers before, it still feels like we are moving in the right direction.

>I think the dangerous thing is that people who have never smoked are using vapes more and more

I have yet to see any indication that vaping is dangerous, beyond changes in the brain from addiction. There are typically a handful of non-toxic* ingredients, and nicotine is not known to be harmful.

*For consumption, not inhalation. Still, compared to cigarettes, this seems a bit like hysteria.

If you're comparing vaping to smoking then obviously vaping is many times safer. So, if smokers convert to vaping we don't mind, we're pleased.

But if you're comparing vaping to not vaping, in young people, well vaping is going to be a bit more harmful (because everything has risks) than not vaping.

We don't know what the risks are for young non-smokers who take up vaping. We do know that there is some risk they'll become addicted to nicotine, especially because some companies have focussed on making their product more addictive.

This, combined with pre-frontal cortex development in young people, makes it harder for them to make an informed choice.

In other words, you also haven't come across any actual evidence of harm from vaping?

I really do wish people would stop citing this pre-frontal cortex development stuff as evidence against young adult's ability to make rational decisions. The actual studies do not support the claims people make using them. This is probably the worst example of the pop-sci industry run amok I've ever seen.

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