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Comment by mPReDiToR | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a bad thing.

Financially it's ruinous to buy disposables when you can pick up a simple cigar sized vape with rechargeable battery and replaceable coil/pod for the same price, then refill it over and over again.

The amount of lithium ending up on the road and in bins is silly. The tax on vaping is putting the price of everything up, so now is the time to buy an Xross Pro or something that lasts all day.

For adults (who don't need to conceal their habit) it makes a lot of sense to buy coils/pods in quantity and keep a spare in the car/handbag.

Also ... Can we stop vilifying this life-saving habit? Smoking kills, we all know it. Vaping is MUCH safer and yes, just as addictive. Nicotine isn't the killer ingredient in smoking, so encourage people to vape, don't demonize them for it.

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> Also ... Can we stop vilifying this life-saving habit?

As a former smoker I’ve recently started vaping because I love nicotine and I think the risk / reward is worth it.

Vaping has been around at this point for over a decade, yet the evidence of harm is minimal. Some inflammatory responses, oxidative stress and potentially pre cancerous changes in gene expression. But that’s pretty much it (for UK legal products at least).

I wouldn’t call it healthy but consider it more like alcohol or sugar rather than traditional tobacco.

One thing that makes my blood boil, and I've seen it in many countries I've lived in, is that people who vape tend to see it as being fine to vape e.g. on trains. Here in Germany people are vaping in the trains nonstop, and while it's not as bad as people dropping cigarette butts on the street (usually literally directly next to a bin!), it still makes it difficult to respect the group, given how shockingly common it is.

Honest question, asking for informed responses: How harmful is second-hand vape?

Littered cigarette butts don't biodegrade.

Second-hand smoke causes cancer and the smell lingers on material.

Does other people vaping near you in an enclosed space have a meaningful physiological effect or otherwise? Or is it just association with second-hand smoke that people decry?

Even if it's 100% safe, which it isn't as are every other particulates you inhale, I don't like it, I don't want it. I don't walk around farting in elevators and burping in my fellow train commuters' faces even through it's perfectly safe, it's just basic common sense and politeness.

The vapor droplets contain the nicotine and other dissolved particulates so yes. And there are numerous studies showing heavy metal dissolution into them. I avoid them like the plague.

Anecdotally, it seems to depend on the liquid. Some are very thick and give me an impression like I can’t breathe. Others aren’t so bad, but have an extremely vile smell.

I’d say I’m not particularly prejudiced against vaping in general, I actually do vape from time to time.

> Does other people vaping near you in an enclosed space have a meaningful physiological effect or otherwise?

Yeah it makes his "blood boil"

Honestly for most people their dislike of people smoking/vaping in shared areas is first about the smell, and only second about the health risk.

> while it's not as bad as people dropping cigarette butts on the street (usually literally directly next to a bin!)

People are spitting on the streets here in the UK and it's disgusting.

But I've noticed it on transport here in the UK. They take a puff "cheeky-vape" then exhale it under in to their coat or in to some bag.

Could there be a device that would filter the exhaled air?

Make it a part of the e-cigarette, so that one can exhale back into the same thing or into a different port on it.

There is a filter type device for use indoors but it is standalone.

Vaping is safer, but calling it a "life-saving habit" is a stretch.

Your logic is the same as "picking up a rattlesnake is OK because it's not as deadly as a taipan".

Nicotine consumption causes the vascular system to constrict and a person's heart to start beating faster to push the blood through. Similar environment to a fetus in a over pressurized antibiotic sack, too much fluid. Doctors monitor for this and may remove fluid to depressurize so the heart and other major organs don't fail. Just like alcohol, nicotine does not have any health benefits.

People often over simplify complex systems. It is not just one, smoke, but multiple factors that cause health issues. Chewing tobacco proves toxicity is not just from carcinogens and tar build up in the lungs. Vaping may decrease the probability of dramatic health issues it does not drop it to 0.

It's actually not the nicotine that gives you cancer in chewing tobacco. And given all this harm with cigarettes isn't it sensible that we legalize a less harmful method that people have used quite successfully to wean off cigarettes when other efforts have failed them? Social smokers/vapers are always going to exist, the buzz goes together too well with booze, but there are people who do use this stuff to actually see substantially better health outcomes.

Calling vaping safer without there being any good evidence for that is quite a stretch. However I despise this pure resource waste. Can we just stop that instead while we investigate the effects of inhaling burning copper and plastic?

There's plenty of evidence, like most, you've just not bothered to search for it before forming your opinion.

If you're genuinely interested, I recommend starting with this report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-an-e...

This is honestly getting tiring. Not only is the billeting tone pointless, neither are those reports conclusive or evidence on their own. I formed my opinion over the years of the diseases that are being caused by a lot of people using these devices. Now these could be by overuse, other issues, bad mixtures, shoddy made devices, idk the list can continue. Maybe vaping is overpowered if controlled correctly. Could be. Just don't state it as a fact, when, in fact, it is not known.

It's pretty wild to call out someone's source as inconclusive but not link your own.

Not surprising though.

Out of curiosity, can you list the diseases you mentioned?

We would need sufficient evidence to conclude it's as dangerous as smoking, which I'm not sure we have.

Also, we would need sufficient evidence to conclude that they all have the user inhale burning copper or plastic, which I'm not sure we have.

No, because that takes time, but that is my entire point. Claiming it is not as dangerous without actually knowing that is just, weird :/

It makes intuitive sense: all other things being equal, inhaling combustion products is worse than not inhaling combustion products. Thus, nicotine with combustion products is worse than nicotine without combustion products. We would need sufficient evidence to veer away from this data.

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