Hacker News Reader

Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

Did a cigarette write this article?

Cigarettes are ridiculously more addictive. I know this from experience, but also from a study that found that MAOIs (in cigarettes, but not found in vapes) "dramatically increase the motivation to self-administer nicotine in rats."[1]

I had a wickedly difficult time quitting cigarettes, many failed attempts over the course of years. Vaping made quitting tobacco comically easy, and quitting vaping was also comically easy compared to cold turkey. To quit my all-day vaping habit I just...got rid of the vapes and stopped doing it. I thought about it a few times a day for the first few days, and that was it.

People saying to avoid vapes as a cessation tool are committing actual harm, imo. It's like the difference in difficulty between just jumping off a roof versus using a ladder to descend. Yes, ladders are risky, but not as risky as jumping off a roof.

[1] https://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/38/8593

View on HN

Part of the problem is that vapes easily let you ingest a lot more nicotine than cigarettes. Researchers in the Netherlands found that some teens are vaping so much they effectively have the nicotine intake of a three pack a day tobacco addiction. This is due to a combination of (illegal) vapes being available in all sorts of fruity and hip child-friendly flavours, illegal vapes simply containing more nicotine, and vapes coming in reservoirs good for 9000 or so 'puffs'.

If you stuck with plain vapes bought through a legal channel, that risk factor would have been absent.

Is nicotine a problem, though? I'm not a cigarette or vaping guy. I do like a nicotine pouch, and I love an evening pipe. My understanding is that nicotine is not much of a problem, but the smoke / vape contaminants are where the real hazard lies.

For many demographics nicotine by itself poses a clear health risk. Basically that's pregnant women and anyone under 25 whose brains are still developing, according to the CDC. The WHO further states that nicotine use also increases cardiovascular risk, and that's for everyone. This last one was new to me too until a while ago (although fortunately I never take nicotine in any form).

That is what is left if you ignore the big one, which is its addictiveness. By itself that is probably not directly harmful, but the ways of consuming nicotine mostly are. Nicotine pouches carry some health risks, but are obviously not nearly as bad as snus and other crap like that containing tobacco.

I feel like the addictiveness isn't the big one? Playing with fidget spinners can be addictive, but there's no push to put warning labels on them.

As for the nicotine: yes, it's not great for your cardiovascular system. One Juul pod per day probably twice as bad as drinking three Starbucks grande drip coffees. However, the harm reduction of vaping is profound. Smoked tobacco is just devastatingly worse: smoke has carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, and these are on top of the radioactive polonium and lead isotopes.

It's crazy seeing a lot of fearmongering (not saying that's what you're doing, but it is certainly a prevailing narrative) about vaping when, per the data, it's the strongest smoking cessation tool available outside prescription drugs and a massive harm reduction even if it's just a permanent substitute.

I don't know if most pipe smokers inhale.

I have to confirm the article. After switching from cigarettes to vaping and vaping for several years, I decided to go back to cigarettes precisely to get rid of the monstrous vaping addiction.

While never a heavy smoker I absolutely loved vaping: it was the first thing my hand reached for in the morning and the last it let go falling asleep. I went into panics when I couldn't remember where I had left my vape.

I've now managed to further reduce my smoking to only very few cigarettes per day. This might well still be more harmful than vaping all day long, but at least I got rid of my sixth finger (as a friend used to call it) and I can forget about smoking or vaping for many hours a day.

I lived near 20 years in a country where cigarettes are cheap and not stigmatised. Coming back home, I've found I'm one of the few smokers left.

All my friends have moved to vapes, and they vape harder than I smoke, and I was on 20 a day before moving to roll ups.

I need to quit, but don't see vaping as viable.

I'm not sure the damage from vaping is even close to that of smoking, especially if you smoke a lot. Nevertheless, at some point I decided I was way too attached to it- though I only had a small vape with low nicotine and rather neutral taste as opposed to those things that produce entire cumulonimbi of cherry-flavoured vapour. At least with cigarettes I am acutely aware of the harm, constantly try to keep it in check, and to smoke I need at least to reach an open place.

Btw, one thing that helped me a lot are nicotine patches. I've used them for years and helped me reduce smoking down to ~3 cigs/ day, and even stop it for some period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Butts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_O%27Teen

It is like I have been standing my whole life, and I just sat down.

I don't think I can find a better quote to describe this feeling.

I’m with you 100%. We’ll see if the last step goes ok next month after the MAOI is all cleared.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com