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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-toba...

For those who also had no idea what an "IQOS" was. Looks like it's an e-cig you shove a cigarette into. Seems dumb. If I was a kid, I wouldn't think it seemed preferential over regular e-cigs.

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Oof. I don't know who would really trust research about it being "less harmful" coming from that company after their history. It may very well be, but I wouldn't trust them on the matter.

If you think of it as an e-cigarette, it’s dumb. If you think of it as a fancy filter for regular cigarettes, it’s potentially clever. Especially if, for some reason, you already have the cigarettes, or can acquire them for cheaper than you can acquire e-cig liquid (because e.g. you work at a convenience store.)

It's a vaporizer for leaf material. People have been using this tech for weed for 20+ years.

> If I was a kid, I wouldn't think it seemed preferential over regular e-cigs.

If I was a kid none of these options would be preferential over just not smoking.

I've never smoked, but to my knowledge it doesn't carry any positive effects. That means utility doesn't really make any difference. The tobacco game is a pure marketing play.

Maybe you could even sell a JUUL and an IQOS device to the same people (JUUL for everyday use and the IQOS for trips where you can get new capsules)

Nicotine is a nootropic with a number of documented cognitive benefits. E-cigs appear to be largely harmless so far, excepting black market pods, so I've been happy to see that we've potentially turned a very harmful vice into one that is as dangerous or less than alcohol.

We don't have much research on the subject yet so we really don't know harmful they are. I'd say it's pretty fair to say they are better than cigarettes but a big step to call them largely harmless. Your still running molecules over a red hot coil and inhaling it. At the very least we know that that creates large concentrations of free radicals that can damage cells. I do agree it's probably a lesser evil but we shouldn't forget that it is still harmful.

I think it's notable that the most damning thing anti-tobacco advocates can say about it is that it's addictive, and I think it's notable that the English Public Health agency was confident enough to declare it to be at least 95% less harmful than cigarettes https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5429/rapid-responses I don't believe alcohol is 95% less harmful than cigs.

This claim appears so frequently but without links to data to back the assertion, so unless you have something to back that all up, people would be better served educating themselves on the lung damage and deaths caused by vaping - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...

The CDC has reported that the problem was black market juice. They call it "products from informal sources"

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6902e2.htm?s_cid=mm...

Anecdote: my high school buddy, who was always looking into supplements and health boosters, said this exact thing and started taking pure nicotine. We all had a good laugh when it made him vomit repeatedly while we were all playing video games over skype - seemed like poetic justice for ignoring everyone's parents' advice to avoid nicotine. He eventually just started smoking cigarettes and is still addicted to them today.

Saw extensive use of these type of devices across Tokyo a few months back. Hadn't yet seen them in the market at our local QT/Circle Ks.

And for those who have no idea what it smells like, it’s a mix of fart and wet dog. I don't understand how they can market it.

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