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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

But it's not a smoking cessation product. It can be used effectively as such, but it's first and foremost a healthier substitute to smoking.

People like to go to both extremes wrt. vaping - "but it creates new addicts" vs. "but it's effective tool for breaking addiction", forgetting about the biggest benefit vaping brings: letting smokers who don't want to quit to keep smoking, without risking lung cancer.

I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers. But I'm fine with converting existing smokers to vaping without any talk about quitting, because smoking e-cigarettes is strictly better than smoking analog ones.

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> letting smokers who don't want to quit to keep smoking, without risking lung cancer.

I started smoking when I was 18 (2004), picked up some of the first vapes in 2009 (they were horrible), and finally stopped smoking in 2012. But I don’t want to stop vaping. I don’t like the modern mainstream ecigs like juul (I mix my own liquid and build my own coils on a dual 18650 battery device), but I’m just glad that vaping exists, because, if all my fruitless attempts at quitting were any indication, otherwise I’d still be smoking a pack a day.

Is it accurate to say you quit smoking when you've really just switched the device that delivers the substance you're addicted to?

100% accurate, he didn't say he wanted to quit being addicted to nicotine. He wanted to quit smoking, which he has done.

In addition, I went from 25mg nicotine in 2012, to less than 2mg now.

You haven't really overcome your main addiction in that case though. I don't think that people colloquially interpret that as "quitting smoking" when that term gets used in this context, even if the meaning is literal.

When you quit smoking, you quit smoking. Vaping is not smoking. What's inaccurate is to insist that someone still smokes when they do not, because you insist on calling something that is not smoking "smoking".

I think people have mixed definitions, but I really think smokers just want to avoid the lung cancer and emphysema. It's not my place to judge them as failures because they don't meet my criteria of not being addicted to nicotine.

Nicotine is great, I would be incapable of functioning in society without it, and if the US Government makes it impossible for me to get a nicotine fix without giving myself cancer I will be tempted to turn to direct action.

If we accept that addiction is an evil in and of itself, social media addiction should warrant significantly more societal attention that nicotine addiction: it's much more prevalent, both in general population and among children in particular.

It’s not the addiction that causes lung cancer, it’s the smoke. So the goal of stopping smoking should have positive health outcomes.

My understanding is that the proverbial jury is still out on whether vaping truly is less harmful to the lungs that smoking[0][1]. That would mean that vaping (instead of smoking) isn't necessarily a positive health outcome.

[0] https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2020/05/risks-vaping

[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi...

[0]: "Studies suggest nicotine vaping may be less harmful than traditional cigarettes when people who regularly smoke switch to them as a complete replacement."

[1]: "Vaping Is Less Harmful Than Smoking, but It’s Still Not Safe"

[1] has some problems. It seems to be conflating the vitamin E acetate issue with vaping in general. ("However, there has also been an outbreak of lung injuries and deaths associated with vaping. As of Jan. 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 60 deaths in patients with e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI).") The section on "Research Suggests Vaping Is Bad for Your Heart and Lungs" focuses on nicotine. Which raises your blood pressure. And not much else, according to other sources.

It’s definitely a positive outcome when it comes to cancer prevention. The evidence is quite clear that vaping is way better than smoking for lung cancer. [0][1]

I think the evidence is out as to what, if any, are the harms of vaping. But it’s not arguable that it’s better for you than smoking.

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120440-switching-from-...

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28778971/

It's not really up for debate whether or not vaping is healthier. It's a night and day difference. Vaping is far less harmful than smoking.

But is that the _point_? I think many people are pretty much okay with being addicted to nicotine if it's not going to kill them.

Healthier substitute to smoking practically means a smoking cessation product. Impossible meat, likewise, is a meat "cessation" product.

If impossible meat makes vegans start eating burgers, you can't just argue "well, it's still better than meat".

> I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers.

But this is the whole point, they do attract non-smokers. They should explicitly detract them instead.

> But this is the whole point, they do attract non-smokers. They should explicitly detract them instead.

This is magical thinking. Do we apply this requirement to healthier alternatives in any other market?

For example: I really like McDonalds fries, but I mostly don't eat them because they're unhealthy. However anecdotally some "heavy users" eat them 3 to 5 times a week.

Imagine if McDonalds introduced "Beyond Fries" tomorrow, equivalent in every salient way, but less unhealthy (say, baked potato-level healthy). Would anyone apply the standard above, calling for it to be _only_ a "fry cessation product" for heavy users, and expecting it to explicitly repel the abstaining-for-health-reasons users like me?

I can't see how it's even possible to achieve both goals at once. A healthier alternative to _anything_ is going to draw some former abstainers-for-health-reasons into the market. And smoking has a _lot_ of abstainers-for-health-reasons.

By all means let's call vaping a smoking cessation product, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that we can have our cake and eat it too here.

Edit: sense

> This is magical thinking.

Attitudes around smoking in general are grounded deeply in magical thinking. People have been raised on anti-smoking rhetoric so deep, with such little cultural push back toward sanity, that it's tough for most people to think let alone discuss the subject with any objectivity.

I suppose in a very literal sense, if you replace addiction A with addiction B, you could say that B is an A cessation product.

But by that logic, smoking could be called a weight loss product.

Other people have a more complex definition, which precludes cigarettes from being considered a health product, despite their appetite-suppressing properties.

> smoking could be called a weight loss product

And it was! The difference is that smoking isn't really healthier than obesity, so it's not a very good way to lose weight overall.

If you can drop 100+ lbs by smoking half a pack a day, I guarantee you'll be a lot healthier overall. Not saying you actually _would_ lose all that weight, but it's not like it's a binary between "smoking" and "not smoking". Frequency and amount matters, but the it's pretty much impossible to approach the subject in our society with any sort of objectivity or science.

Sure, and amount of extra weight matters too. But there are probably better ways to lose it regardless..

> Impossible meat, likewise, is a meat "cessation" product.

No it’s not. Meat isn’t addictive. People don’t “quit” meat and develop a habit of impossible burgers. People don’t wake up every morning feeling shitty about enjoying meat.

I fully support vegan and vegetarian lifestyles. To compare tobacco to meat is foolish.

Its easy to forget that heart-disease kills as many smokers as Cancer. Vaping is still ingesting mystery compounds & heavy metals directly into the blood stream for the body's immune system to freak out on. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2018/study-lead-and...

This is why all fast food needs to be heavily regulated by FDA and only available via prescription to limit abuse.

Is there a history of fast food as a leading cause of death?

Yes, it is a smoking cessation product. It helps you cease smoking. Vaping is not smoking.

Ok, so it's a smoking cessation product if you take the definition strictly - but it doesn't do anything to get you off your nicotine addiction, which people usually mean by "smoking cessation product"...

A vape can be much cheaper than cigarettes and you get the benefit of not inhaling smoke and smelling like smoke. You can also begin reducing the amount of nicotine in your vape juice without reducing the amount of time you spend vaping. Most brands offer numerous levels of nicotine from something that's a little stronger than regular cigarette down to none.

> Ok, so it's a smoking cessation product if you take the definition strictly...

I do.

> but it doesn't do anything to get you off your nicotine addiction, which people usually mean by "smoking cessation product"...

OK but what does this have to do with expressing ourselves accurately?

You've created your own definition and now expect us to accept it, which I don't.

Nicotine is the thing people obsess over, but there are far more harmful substances than nicotine in tobacco cigarettes (for example, radioactive elements Polonium-210 and lead-210), and there are MAOIs that make the nicotine in tobacco smoke far more addictive.

All the smokers I know want to quit smoking, not nicotine.. Smoking is 99% of the problem with cigarettes, and nicotine is 1%.

> I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers. But I'm fine with converting existing smokers to vaping

How can a society allow marketing vaping as a healthier way to smoke without allowing marketing that makes non-smokers think vaping is a healthy way to smoke?

(Especially considering that the marketers are eager to market to non-smokers.)

Related: Why is there talk about banning Juul from selling its products in the U.S. entirely, but no such conversation about banning any of the big tobacco companies from selling theirs?

It's all about power.

There are so many things it would be useful to quantify and compare:

Does anybody know the difference between the percentage of non-nicotine users who begin smoking cigarettes and the percentage who begin vaping? It sounds like the percentage for vaping is higher, but how much higher? Is it as much higher as the risk of dangerous health complications smoking has over vaping?

Never mind the question of why nicotine addiction is so dangerous it must be prevented on a federal level, but alcohol addictions aren't? How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?

> Related: Why is there talk about banning Juul from selling its products in the U.S. entirely

Important distinction: I didn't say anything about banning sales, just marketing, which we've already done for both smoking and alcohol.

> How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?

According to the CDC, "cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States...causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States" while "excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, "

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...

Edit: as for vaping specifically, the risks are not yet fully known, but some health authorities argue "a growing body of evidence shows that smoking e-cigarettes, or vaping, may be even more dangerous than smoking cigarettes".

https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/emotional-health/...

However note that's comparing smoking not nicotine.

Inhaling smoke is very bad for you. Lots of people die this way in fires. Like, you cut the victims open and there is soot in their lungs. So, no surprise smoking cigarettes is also a bad idea even if it's less bad than being in a literal burning building.

Nicotine is poisonous, but so is booze. There may be other things about vaping which are bad for you, but it seems pretty clear that the main problem is the nicotine, which is why people are doing it anyway, so, fine.

Booze has another important difference though: The ones drinking aren't always the ones dying. That can be because they're impaired while operating machinery (e.g. someone has "a few beers" then drives home, next morning they don't remember anything about how they got home, but there's a blood red stain on the bumper and someone else is found dead in a ditch) or they might just become violent and cause deliberate harm to others.

That last article says, "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suspects that exposure to THC, as well as a mix of THC, nicotine and vitamin E, an additive in many vape carriages, is causing serious lung injury."

Would you agree that exposure to THC, in itself, causes serious lung injury?

(Yes, I know, vitamin E acetate (an oil) in cannabis vaping products was likely the cause of a number of cases of lung injury.)

Also, "An FDA analysis of e-cigarettes from two leading brands found that the samples contained carcinogens and other hazardous chemicals, including diethylene glycol, which is found in antifreeze." Diethylene glycol is also used as "a humectant for tobacco, cork, printing ink, and glue. It is also a component in brake fluid, lubricants, wallpaper strippers, artificial fog and haze solutions, and heating/cooking fuel" as well as an industrial solvent. This statement is largely meaningless unless you know how much is in there: "The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations allows no more than 0.2% of diethylene glycol in polyethylene glycol when the latter is used as a food additive. The Australian government does not allow DEG as a food additive; it is only allowed at less than 0.25% w/w of DEG as an impurity of polyethylene glycol (PEG) even in toothpaste." (Wikipedia)

> According to the CDC, "cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States...causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States" while "excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year,

The question was about nicotine; it is not generally the _nicotine_ in cigarettes that kills you. That's what keeps you smoking them (to a large extent) but it's not what kills you.

> How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?

If you divorce nicotine from its problematic delivery systems, nicotine itself is a pretty good drug (albeit very addictive). It's potentially protective against diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, it's associated with weight loss, and it improves short term memory and attention.

It's also great in combination with caffeine, and it speeds up caffeine metabolism.

This is one of the main reasons why I vape.

I first got interested in the nootropic properties of nicotine long before I took up the pen when I came across Gwern's article on it. In particular, the possibility of reinforcing habits using it was the biggest thing that made me look into it. However, he uses gum instead.

https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

Wouldn't be so sure about that. Nicotine alone has problematic effects on the heart and vascular system, especially since the addictiveness leads to constant admission. Vaping isn't all that great delivery system either.

Replace nicotine with amphetamine and your statement still holds true.

Exactly. Whatever positive effects nicotine has are completely overshadowed and undermined by its addictiveness.

That's really not true at all. Addictiveness in and of itself is not some hugely detrimental trait. Not to mention that nicotine delivered in vapor form is less addictive in the first place.

>Related: Why is there talk about banning Juul from selling its products in the U.S. entirely, but no such conversation about banning any of the big tobacco companies from selling theirs?

Juul is a product of one of those big tobacco companies.

Hot take. Ban marketing/advertising?

These are conversations that belong in a physicians office. Advertising is a scam on both sides and destroys instead of creates value for humanity. Historians will look back upon advertising the way many look back upon slavery.

Is it not already? Genuine question. In all of the coutries I'm familiar with, both smoking and vaping are illegal to advertise. Even alcohol in some cases, although more commonly it's allowed but strictly regulated (must be purely factual, no glorification, mandatory health disclaimer...)

Banned, in theory? Enforced? Nah.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-lawsui...

> How can a society allow

What's the lastname of this Society guy?

It's kind of hypocritical to wrap your personal wishes and desired in the veil of common good, care for others, etc.

> What's the lastname of this Society guy?

Legislature would be its lastname, I suppose. As in [nation] legislature, [state] legislature, etc.

Yeah but that kind of defeats the consent manufacturing illusion to say the actual entity instead of the vague "society" to brainjack people with presumed social pressures.

Presumed social pressures? There's plenty of very real social pressure against marketing vaping to non-smokers.

Alarmingly there are also many people, especially young people, who believe that vaping is safe, and if educating them is "consent manufacturing" then let's manufacture some consent on this issue.

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