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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

There's two vaping crises.

One is THC vaping solutions that are killing people.

The second is that we're currently living through a meteoric rise in nicotine addiction among teenagers. For a very long time, teenage nicotine use was going down, due to declines in smoking rates. Smoking rates still continue to decline, but nicotine vaping rates have gone up and to the right. 1 in 4 high school students are now vaping nicotine. That number is growing by ~20% year over year.

This is a public health crisis.

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> This is a public health crisis.

No, no it's not. It's a manufactured hysteria which is now used by the government to squeeze tobacco companies by the nuts. It's the new 'ear sexing' that dem kids are doing. Its parents too busy to monitor their kids and schools stretched too thin to monitor their bathrooms and hallways. No amount of regulation will fix that. Remember when Marijuana was illegal? Yeah, the kids were totally not smoking it. Thank God for the war on drugs to cut down on teens getting high.

> which is now used by the government to squeeze tobacco companies by the nuts.

As it should. These companies provide absolutely zero benefit to society, and rely on addicts to keep their business going, and they try to get more addicts in the process. Human greed is truly destructive.

mmm.. it depends. Fucking over these companies is a good way to go. But fucking them over just the right amount so that they continue doing business to pay money is not ok. It creates a perverse incentive in which the government actually wants people to buy cigarettes so it can continue the money flow. You'd think that cigarette taxes go into public health but that's not the case. The problem here is that with vaping, people are smoking less, thus buying less cigarettes and paying less to the government via tobacco taxes. Because vape pods/ejuice/ecig hardware is not taxed like cigarettes.

The way I see it, tobacco products should be fully banned. If there are companies that truly want to help the addicts, they can work in a controlled manner, overseen by the government, something like a rehab program. There should be deadlines set by when the rehab programs would end when there are no more smokers left. Easier said than done of course, but I see no effort in that direction.

Is caffeine addiction a serious public health crisis?

Nictoine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine.

https://news.sky.com/story/nicotine-no-worse-than-cup-of-cof...

Quitting caffeine is as easy as a few days, maybe a week of feeling like shit. Take an aspirin or two, and move on with your life.

Quitting nicotine is a fucking struggle.

It doesn't kill you, but it has negative impacts on your life, when you aren't using. Addicts become really shitty to be around, when they haven't had their hit for a few hours.

What exactly is the public benefit to getting children addicted to a substance that is incredibly difficult to kick?

> Addicts become really shitty to be around, when they haven't had their hit for a few hours.

Oh noes the horror!!! Major public health crisis! An invasion of grumpy assholes. Basically like half of America in the morning...

I'm also not forced to consume caffeine merely by standing next to you.

What is the actual quantity of nicotine in second hand vapor?

Most likely not very high.

Got any studies to back that up?

Seems to be high enough to feel the effect. Never experienced this by just standing next to someone sipping coffee.

Is this confirmed by any studies?

Quitting either can be easy as just not doing it one day, or a fucking struggle. It depends on the person and the use.

Personally I've had an easier time putting down the vape than the coffee cup.

I'd be concerned about high schoolers addicted to caffeine.

If it's not killing people, how is it a health crisis? Would it be a public health crisis if we had a meteoric rise in teens swimming, given that the risk of death or illness from swimming is far higher than it is from vaping?

> If it's not killing people, how is it a health crisis?

I'm not sure we can safely say we know the long-term impact of vaping nicotine yet.

There are also indications that the uptick in vaping has stalled the decline in cigarette smoking.

https://www.concordmonitor.com/Youth-smoking-decline-stalls-...

> I'm not sure we can safely say we know the long-term impact of vaping nicotine yet.

So we can't say if it's a health crisis.. yet. Right? We also don't know of the long-term impact of melatonin but we're not considering people consuming it when they have insomnia to be a health crisis, right?

We've got evidence it's negatively affecting the known health crisis of cigarette smoking.

I'm inclined to treat non-addictive melatonin and extremely-addictive nicotine differently in how we approach potential health risks.

The key word here is addiction.

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