I am the same way, I will risk getting hit by cars sometimes just to avoid smoke I hate it so much. Even outdoors after a brief exposure it gets lodged in your hair, clothes, and eyes. With the legalization of marijuana in so many places, the problem has become even worse.
Vaping is absolutely not safe, but smoking cigarettes is likely much more damaging to your health.
In contrast, we've been using vapes for about 20 years - and they've only been widespread for maybe 10.
From Wikipedia:
The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists.
Serious drowning incidents from drinking water are extremely rare and usually involve underlying medical conditions or very specific circumstances. Conversely, the health risks associated with vaping, including lung injury, addiction, and potential cardiovascular effects, are well-documented and have been observed in a significant portion of users, especially among young people and adolescents.
Vaping has been linked to a significant rise in nicotine addiction among teenagers and young adults, often drawn to flavored vape products. This trend threatens to reverse decades of progress in tobacco control and nicotine addiction. Water consumption does not carry a similar public health risk; it does not lead to widespread addiction or serve as a gateway to the consumption of more harmful substances.
While water is essential and generally safe, there are still regulations in place to ensure its safety (e.g., water quality standards). The call to regulate or ban vapes stems from a similar public health perspective — protect consumers, especially young ones, from products that have been shown to pose significant health risks.
Lastly, equating the act of vaping with drinking water is a false equivalence. The two activities serve different purposes and have vastly different implications for health. While water is necessary for life and generally promotes health, vaping introduces unnecessary risks, particularly to young and vulnerable populations.
Vaping is not as safe as inhaling nothing but air. But we do know scientifically that it is substantially safer than smoking [1], despite the (big tobacco-funded) scare campaigns that claim otherwise.
In other words, nothing > vaping > smoking. If you don't use nicotine today, don't start. But if you want to get off cigarettes, vaping is a great choice and provably safer.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-mar...
[1] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/vaping-substantially-less-harmful...
The CDC recommends not using THC vapes at all because of EVALI, but make no such recommendation about standard nicotine vapes (unless you've never smoked) [0].
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...
nothing > oral/mucousa nicotine > inhaled nicotine > oral/mucousa tobacco > inhaled tobacco
If that's a reference to a spate of "popcorn lung" cases of THC vapers, where it's suspected that the juice was laced with vitamin E, you might as well say that Tylenol is deadly because someone once spiked it with cyanide†. Don't put junk in the juice, regulate the ingredients. I'm saying this as a non-vaper and non-smoker, if it makes any difference.
†I know, I know, acetaminophen _is_ deadly is you overdose on it. That's not what I'm talking about here.
Note that many of the toxic chemicals referred to in this paper are normal components of nicotine vape juice, including but not limited to the flavorings, so the comparison to spiking Tylenol with cyanide is not particularly apt.
Don’t worry, we’re tackling that in Australia! Due to a moral panic, vapes are all set to become harder to purchase than actual tobacco!
:facepalm:
Somewhere in that mess there was a path to making them a good way to really squash that last few percent of people that smoke, at least by moving them onto something a little better even if they never quit, but it’s been missed.
Even then, I’d understand and support making them as hard to get as tobacco, regulated very similarly so when Bob Smoker goes to the servo (gas station) or smoke mart, he can choose the less harmful and less harmful to others path with little effort. Not now though (well later this year), he has to pay for a doctor’s appointment and get an approved therapeutic device prescribed if he wants to vape. Or he can buy cigarettes at the corner.
And the schoolyard mom grapevine apparently has it that vaping is worse than smoking. The clusterfuck is complete, and a great health opportunity was missed.
(For the record I neither vape nor smoke, but I did use the former to quit the latter a little over 10 years ago)
(Edit - oh that thing in New Zealand? The new government scrapped it, I think for reasons of tax revenue. One of the most naked money > lives decisions I’ve seen in recent years)