I like to say that vaping is slightly less terrible than combustible cigarettes because it is very clear that you. should. not vape. unless. you. smoke. cigarettes.
I got started in the military. Flat out, smokers got more breaks and some considerations that others didn't, and so yeah. Light 'em up! And I was in during the late 80's when smoking was basically everywhere.
Smoked for many years, and was on strong cigarettes. Very hard to quit, and I tried a few times.
The impact was noticable later in life, I was easily winded and had some minor league emphysema beginning. Not good.
I had by chance mostly tried a vape. And it sort of worked, but did not deliver the levels I needed. Nicotine salt does. I did one vape on that formulation, and that was it. No more smokes.
Some years later, my recovery has been dramatic! Some basic damage is not going to heal, but most everything else has and I feel great! Can do what I should be doing too. And the benefits continue to accrue.
Coughed up bits of tar for a long time. On another whim, I did inversion, and gakked out a ton of the stuff. Recommended, if you've got clogged up lungs. Just make sure you've got a spotter and someone to assist you in the process. I needed that due to the exertion.
Moving on...
Vapes are seriously good harm reduction, assuming someone is using gear that isn't damaging somehow. There is a lot of crap out there. Sadly, rather than regulate it all and maximize the benefit, the pressure to get rid of vaping altogether is winning out here in the US.
Too bad JUUL was run so badly. Their core mission is a good one, and tons of people are going to benefit very significantly.
Nicotine itself isn't that big of a deal. It's a stimulant and is addictive like similar compounds are. What really maxxes out it's addictive nature is the inhalation delivery method. Taking it orally, for example, isn't quite the same thing, unless the method is intended to pass through the skin, like chew does.
Nicotine is not cancerous.
The real danger in smoking is tar & particulates damaging the lungs, and cancer caused by the tons of byproducts of the combustion chemistry. The nicotine comes along for the ride and again, by itself isn't such a big deal.
Great to hear that you're off combustible cigarettes :) You can easily ween down the nicotine from 5% to 3% to 1.5% over a time period too.
Today, I use a nicotine salt formulation on par with the best of JUUL, minus the accellerants.
On those:
The good part is those actually do matter when it comes to smokers switching off combustion. Psychologically, the impact is there and similar enough to not trigger anxieties that inhibit quitting. Fair enough.
The bad part is those make a JUUL absolutely fucking great to a non smoker and particularly younger smoker. Young people will grab one and drain the pod in an hour copping a major league buzz on par with what they can get with combustion cigarettes!
In my view, this should have been partitioned in some way, harder to get and easier to keep out of young hands.
Once someone is vaping, the accellerants are unnecessary given reputable gear and a salt formulation.
I am struggling to remember my source for that info. If it comes to me, I will drop it here.
All I found was the common additive, which is Benzoic Acid. Honestly, that is the heavy hitter, so close enough for this discussion. At one point, I know I saw a more complete list and should have saved it...
The acid increases bioavailability. And it is significant, as in test some people and they will notice. Can't miss it. For all but the nic-whales, adding it makes a big difference. For JUUL, this all means a little bit of vapor can pack a big punch.
The other important thing is the ratio of propoline glycol and glycerin and temp control. Too hot and toxic compounds get made and other bits may be inhaled. Metals. Too cool, and the experience sucks, gear clogs, total mess.
The glycerin has a sweet smell and taste, but it is thick and that property inhibits absorption as well as how well it atomized. (Poorly, in general without using heavy components with moving parts. Makes a good cloud too.
Propoline glycol atomizes very well, but has a harsh feel and taste, but also has better absorption. I do not recall the cloud performance with the fidelity I want, but I think you can take it from here.
Basically, JUUL packaged up a good ratio, used the nicotine salt form, and added the acid and a sprinkle of other things and hit a home run!
Other vendors followed, but few have flavors that make sense. Early on, others were harsh, or very seriously overdoing it. Flavors can be a major league irritant too.
Today, one can get good juice and reasonable gear that has the temperature right and have few worries. The US is making a major league mistake here because this path we are on will favor the hucksters selling shit to people. Not good.
https://www.healthline.com/health/juul-pod-ingredients#:~:te....
Edit: On things like super long flights, I take a little juice and just rub it on the inside of my arm and let it soak in like a patch.
Slowly, given how things look, Mrs and I need to taper down faster and just get away from this all. And frankly, that pisses me off because the cognitive bump I get from nicotine is hard to give up.
Stupid people, who don't care about people, who do care more about money more should not be running things. The problem is chronic in the US and something I do not look forward to.
Hard times ahead for many. Unnecessary hard times.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JWTRA5I?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_...
I quit smoking years ago and have always felt some residual effects. After a few months of breathing exercises with a muscle oxygen trainer, I've noticed a night and day difference. I spent a few weeks coughing stuff up, my blood pressure has improved, as has my cardio performance on measured performance equipment like the Peloton.
Again, this is just my personal experience, but it might be worth a look if you're working towards a long term recovery.
Very interesting how such a simple thing can add right up over time. Thanks again.
With no combustion, tobacco causes mouth cancer all the time. It is simply cancerous (though nicotine isn't). I'm sure tar etc. makes it worse, but something else is bad in tobacco.
Then have someone whack on my back while I cough out crap.
It was basic, and a bit of a whim. Came up during discussion, and the gear to do it was right there, so... we did it. Some crap came out, and I felt better.
Maybe doing that is bad. I don't know and can't edit now that I think more about it. But, it worked great for me.
I bet it is similar in the basic idea of getting the gunk out. How it gets out is likely best left up to experts.
What I noted was that feeling when one takes a deep breath did not extend down as far as it normally would. And repeated ones would dislodge some gunk, and often I would gak that up.
When I inverted, I had someone lightly pummel my back, open heel of the hand, just thump, thump, thadathump! Just a rapid rhythm while I took my lungs to their extremes, full inhale, full exhale, then cough and gak it out. And I used a cycle.
Get rested, feeling good, then invert, work the process and when something shakes loose, there is a lot of coughing, and one can't really do that upside down without getting a major league headache, so I had my spotter rotate me head up and I would work the gunk, until it came out, or I reached a steady state where it's just not happening. Rest, repeat.
Took about an hour.
And the aftermath was a few days of sudden gakking stuff up too. It's like everything got shook loose, and often hunks of tar and other mucus would come up and out. Other times it would just be a fit of coughing and then nothing.
What I did notice near immediately after doing all this was a deep breath triggered that feeling much lower. There were areas doing air exchange without so much crap in the way.
Combustible cigarettes near immediately inflame lung tissue, blood pressure goes up and a whole lot of other things happen. Over time, our response to all that becomes more aggrevated and our ability to recover is reduced due to wear and tear with no effective rest. Like say someone gets too much smoke during some fire or other.
It's bad, but when they are away from all that, they are getting normal air and the body processes can do what they do and they heal. Some damage is done of course, and the healing is less than perfect, but the outcome is often good, unless someone crosses some line or other, like near death type crossing.
After I quit, I noticed improvements in a week. And sometimes little regressions, like after intense exercise. Coughing up chunks of this and that got me to thinking the body is probably responding in those areas and maybe that strain on it all inhibits the healing that would otherwise happen.
In the end, all I know is an hour spent working the problem got a bunch of crap out of my lungs that really didn't need to be there. Perhaps the body would absorb it, or it ends up coming out over time, or I think the more likely scenario is it's just there and the body deals with it.
Nothing hurt, and there was no blood. It honestly felt like clearing out like what might happen after a particularly bad flu or pneumonia.
It has been years now, and I still feel improvement every summer. Some of that is just our normal healing and re-invigoration that happens when one gets outdoors for an extended time. And that's most of it. But, each year the peak lasts longer. I get through more of a less active winter before feeling like I really need some sun, good air, and exercise.
Speaking of which... There is a lot of rain where I live and our outings are delayed. Mrs and I both feel it big time! Hoping for more of a summer to happen soon, or we might just have to take a bigger trip and go somewhere we can get after all this anyway.
We just love our spot. Have been going since we were married.
"should not be" covers a ton of activities medical people would prefer we don't do.
What you are doing here is attempting to put additional weight behind your moral assessment of vaping by implying it's more dangerous than it actually is.
I suggest your opinion would carry far more weight when bolstered with the many potent, rational arguments against vaping, all of which I personally agree with. Those are all true, do not require manipulation in the form of misrepresentation; namely, overstating risk either.
Misrepresenting things is how we get bad law and bad norms. People do not respect bad law and tend to reject bad norms. Look at the whole theft argument used for media works. What actually happens is people infringe, and had we actually discussed all that word means, we would likely have better law today and people with a far better understanding of the issue. But theft sells, and is a sexy, if untrue argument very similar to the one you are making about vaping right now.
This means you may actually do more harm than good, despite obviously well meaning and in your view, considerate intent!
And no judgement here. I am not going to tell you what to do or say. Nor should I.
That is all, just wanted to put a different take here and ask you to think about all that some.
If you quantify the risk associated with one activity as 100, and you quantify the risk of another activity as 5, and you then describe the first activity as bad, and the second as less bad, while that might be perfectly true, you've lost a lot of information in the assessment.
Actually, this is inaccurate[0] and I think it's rather incredible that it was accepted uncritically. It seems that you particularly dislike vaping, but aren't very familiar with the science. Personally I would not be telling people what they "should. not. be" doing without even a basic understanding of the subject.
It's outright benine. No need to frame it in a negative way (« much less terrible »).
> I like to say that vaping is slightly less terrible than combustible cigarettes because it is very clear that you. should. not vape. unless. you. smoke. cigarettes.
Sure. And vaping shouldn't be made to look dubious or suspicious to smokers who would otherwise wildly profit from switching off cigarettes. Drawing an equivalency relationship between smoking and vaping is really bad from a public health perspective.
People can debate if vaping or nicotine is good or bad or moot from a health point of view but a simple salient fact is:
A small percentage of people who never smoked cigarettes before start to vape and then switch to combustible cigarettes. That is bad.
Also this comment is correct that a poorly regulated and operated vaping industry fuelled a youth nicotine crisis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31836842
What are we doing to address the nation's ongoing caffeine crisis?
You seem to have a particular fixation on nicotine and haven't taken an opportunity to look at any of the counter-evidence a dozen different people in this thread have tried to show you. The primary enemy here is inhalation of combusted materials, followed by inhalation of just about anything, followed by nicotine.
Cigarette smoking is a crisis. People applying nicotine patches will almost certainly never be a crisis. Trying to conflate the two, as you're doing, doesn't make sense. Trying to conflate tobacco smoking and nicotine vaping is slightly less senseless, but still irresponsible.
There absolutely is a massive risk of people who've never smoked starting with vaping and then moving to cigarettes, but you're only falling back to that as a motte to your "nicotine is a harmful molecule" bailey and aren't making it the center of your argument.
That alone appears to render your entire comment moot, but I'll add that all of my comments today have been incredibly consistent: smoking cigarettes is really really really bad and vaping nicotine is really bad (because its addictive, there are longterm implications of inhaling nicotine, ...) - to put it another way, if you smoke combustible cigarettes then you should switch to vaping ASAP. But if you do not smoke combustible cigarettes do not start vaping because nicotine is highly addictive!
PS: equating nicotine to caffeine is incredibly stupid and offensive towards the millions of people that battle nicotine addiction every day.
You're allowed to acknowledge the odd double standard the world seems to have where because the most popular delivery methods for nicotine are extremely harmful that we treat nicotine itself as more harmful than it really is and say that we would still be better off simply banning nicotine. If it was an established cultural norm that gum just had nicotine in it and you had to buy "denic" gum like decaf there would never have been a massive push for people to quit.
Also, I think you're overestimating how many young people vape. I promise you it's not that cool.
Yes, nicotine can be addictive. Caffeine can also be addictive. Yes, nicotine can cause certain health problems - as can caffeine. I'm surprised you worked at a company that sold nicotine products and yet have such a moral panic mentality around a fairly mundane, mild cholinergic stimulant out there.
Smoking is terrible for one's health, but smoking cannabis is possibly not much healthier than smoking tobacco; people just smoke tobacco far more frequently per day than cannabis, typically. At least one study shows cannabis smoke is actually more likely to cause lung cancer than tobacco smoke when taking that into consideration. Odds are burning and inhaling the leaves of many other kinds of plants will have similar risks. This is not a defense of tobacco smoke on my part but rather an attack against any kind of combustion-based smoking period.
So we've both seen different things and both are anecdotal. I don't think it should be banned BTW.
Cigarettes here are not cool anymore to young (great), vaping unfortunately is.
The benefits of vaping over smoking even ignoring health concerns are simply massive. It doesn't smell nearly as offensive, it's vastly more palatable, you don't need to litter or look for an ever-dissapearing batch of ashtrays, there's vastly less social stigma, and if you're so inclined you can get much heavier nicotine hit.
So an entire day of heavy vaping probably takes about 9 minutes off your life, a little less time than eating a piece of bacon, a hot dog, or driving for half an hour.
Sources for these? I've never heard this one before...
There is some evidence fatty meats or red meats aren't good for you.
There is more evidence that fatty red meats are bad for you.
And there is a lot of evidence that heavily processed(specifically cured) red meats such as hot dogs and bacon are bad for you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon
Or you can just google cured meats mortality, bacon mortality, etc...
Btw all addictive substances are bad for you by definition.
Maybe not current “normal cancersticks”; FDA is targeting those, too: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-anno...
We can and should be working to increase the fidelity of communication as well as make policy less of a blunt instrument. Education can work wonders as can honest, real, considerate conversations. All of these things benefit all of us.
Things are different today when compared to our young experiences. Younger people have far more information than anyone making these policy decisions does.
People did make that poor leap. Yes.
Will they do it again? I doubt many of them will, and the ones who might are likely to be using pot and will combust and inhale.
Society has far different norms and can handle nuance far better today. We need to recognize these changes and treat people better.
They can and will respond. They have tech and the body of common knowledge continues beyond what it was two decades ago.
This kind of "we know better for you" communication packs a lackluster punch and may do more harm than good.
There is some regulatory nuance I believe that makes them harder to buy than regular vaping products but I forget what it is — a simple fact though is that the social aspect of smoking breaks, smoking at bars, the habit of smoking is a huge draw and it's hard to replicate that with gum.
The best product to solve the nicotine crisis is a smart device that gradually lowers the nicotine invisibly to the user over a 3-6-12 month period. This isn't a super hard problem, the FDA and the market is just too non technical to execute.
People who want to taper off nicotine using vapes can do this manually, and many do. I find this proposed solution overengineered.
Of course it could be enforced. "Smart" vapes could be regulated as medical devices, available only by prescription and used under the supervision of doctors. I think that would greatly reduce their appeal as a smoking replacement with a low barrier to entry though; other nicotine delivery systems to aid in quitting smoking were available decades before vaping.
Is it, though? The psychology of knowing vs not knowing that your nicotine concentration is being ramped down over time could be significant. For instance, I can easily imagine being far more willing to vape more on a hard day of work because "my nicotine is being ramped down anyway, so it's not as bad".
We already had that in Swedish snus and Obama chose to tax it to death to help the domestic tobacco industry out. Not only is snus not dangerous, but you can quit by just leaving the sachet in your mouth for longer and longer periods. That's how I quit, and I haven't had a cigarette in 11 years or a snus in 8.
The problem with medicalized nicotine gums, etc. is their absurdly high pricing.
It also has the same flavouring problem as vapes (anecdotal paraphrasing from a friend: "I could never smoke but I use Snus because I think it tastes nice").
Whereas Juul was getting kids to TAKE up vaping, and add new smokers to the market.
So overall, pills/lozenges was doing good for society, and Juul was not.
https://tobacco21.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/teen-vaping... (couldn't find a graph newer than 2018)
I speak as someone who doesn't vape, doesn't like vaping, and will never vape. What I want is for people who want to quit smoking to be able to, and the way you enable that for the most people is to give them a far less dangerous alternative that involves the fewest lifestyle changes.
The antismoking industry long ago became a self-sustaining, self-protecting bureaucracy who cares less about health and more about civil suits and fundraising on new legislation.
The abuse of that or the "cigarretization" is the problem.
One thing is to get real organic tabbaco and smoke in small quantities not inhalling only getting nicotine thru gum line.
About the benefits in cognition [1][4] alzheimers and parkinson [2], helping with covid [3] and even testosterone [5]
Cigarretes + additives are *very* bad you can see the difference here [6].
Is tobbaco bad? yes. Is nicotine bad maybe.
Is cigarrete bad? Yes very
Is Cigar bad? Yes but not as cigarrete.
TlDr -> Go for pure nicotine or cigars if you need neuroprotection.
[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1579636/
[2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1859921/
[3] - https://openres.ersjournals.com/content/7/2/00713-2020
[4] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9006184/
Sorry, I don't want my parent comment to be construed as being pro nicotine. If you don't smoke combustible cigarettes don't vape or touch nicotine. I feel a moral burden to be really clear about these topics as someone that briefly worked in this industry.
Minor nootropic effect aside, nicotine is absolutely terrible for the human body. Most people don't realize this because public health campaigns highlighting issues with tobacco products include statements about negative health outcomes caused by nicotine, but neglect to separate these issues from those that are linked to tobacco specifically.
Nicotine consumption is linked to:
-accelerated tumor growth: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm0701_833
-vascular calcification: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eci.13077
-arteriosclerosis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4805015/
-mutagenesis/various cancers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
-reduced alveolar function and bronchoconstriction, miscellaneous pulmonary injury: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3097432/; https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.005...
-peridontal disease: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/omi.12228
mouse model
>-vascular calcification: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eci.13077
review which includes mostly studies on cigarettes
>-arteriosclerosis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4805015/
cigarettes
>-mutagenesis/various cancers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
giant systematic review, going through though it seems most of these are mice studies or studies on smokers (cigarette smokers)
>-reduced alveolar function and bronchoconstriction, miscellaneous pulmonary injury: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3097432/; https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.005...
first one is cigarettes, second one is a rat model but they actually did design the aerosolized nicotine pretty well
>-peridontal disease: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/omi.12228
cigarettes
to really get a concise view, we would want to look at studies of people who only use nicotine gum, or studies of people who use vapes. just be careful blindly posting papers you found from googling "nicotine bad paper" and dig more than 2 seconds into a paper, you can spread a lot of misinformation that way. we all know smoking and cigarettes are bad for you, but are the outside effects primarily from nicotine or from everything surrounding the delivery mechanism of it?
With full knowledge that nicotine is is a poison; widely used in pesticides; that if you swallow one cigarette it'll make you sick, two and they will make you sick and kill all of your internal parasites, and swallowing three might kill you; and that nicotine addiction is harder to break than heroin addiction: is there any actual evidence that smoking nicotine (alone) is physically harmful?
Oh, really? What exactly is very bad about nicotine gum?
“Very bad” is too strong. Nicotine is a drug that does not have therapeutic value. It does not cause cancer. It is addictive. It has mild nootropic effects, as well as other effects like appetite suppression. Here’s a good, easy to read rundown:
https://elemental.medium.com/your-brain-on-nicotine-668c0b6a...
We should be careful to differentiate smoking/vaping from nicotine use.
That is false.
> Nicotine in tobacco brings illness and death to millions of people. Yet nicotine in its pure form has the potential to be a valuable pharmaceutical agent. Nicotine fairly specifically binds to the cholinergic nicotinic gating site on cationic ion channels in receptors throughout the body. This action stimulates the release of a variety of neurotransmitters including especially catecholamines and serotonin. When chronically taken, nicotine may result in: (1) positive reinforcement, (2) negative reinforcement, (3) reduction of body weight, (4) enhancement of performance, and protection against; (5) Parkinson's disease (6) Tourette's disease (7) Alzheimers disease, (8) ulcerative colitis and (9) sleep apnea. The reliability of these effects varies greatly but justifies the search for more therapeutic applications for this interesting compound.[1]
Plus, you even said it yourself: "It has mild nootropic effects, as well as other effects like appetite suppression". Sounds like it could pretty much be therapeutic for cognition and weight loss.
I do know people with certain psychological disorders (I believe Schizophrenics) crave nicotine, and Psychiatrists don't have a clue why, like most of there art.
Nicotine appears to calm them down?
I had a friend who smoked 4-5 packs of cigarettes a day. If he was vaping, I bet he would still be around today?
(To those that cannot stop smoking cigarettes. I got down to 3 packs a year. Instead of just stopping, I use a tiny amount of tobacco daily, or when ever the urge hits hard. In my case 2x weekly. I buy a rolling papers, and roll tiny cigarettes. In one cigarette I can roll five tiny cigarettes. I would buy loose tobacco, but the taxes are worse than filtered cigarettes.
My point is use your vice in moderation. Most of you can. This black/white attitude towards drugs in America is troubling.)