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Comment by sultezdukes | Hacker News Reader

I want to see the excuse for banning these from being used indoors. It'll probably be along the lines of "children will be influenced or something". Gotta love the nanny state - not!

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Doesn't the 2nd-hand vapor contain nicotine, just as the vapor inhaled by the user does? Maybe less than from a cigarette (or maybe not?), but still some.

Nicotine is an addictive, potentially toxic drug, with some possible beneficial effects, and some definite harmful effects. I'd like to be able to choose for myself whether I'm going to inhale it.

How is "I want to choose which drugs I expose myself to" an expression of the nanny state?

If you want to consume a drug in public, figure out how to do so in such a way that you don't share it with bystanders against their will. We already have patches, gum, snuff, chaw; if you really want to inhale it as a vapor, why can't you do that in private?

Nicotine is harmful in high doses, like > 10g. Cigarettes have something close to 1mg of it. You get intoxicated and die for all the other crap in it way before Nicotine is a problem.

Do you have a citation for that lethal dosage? http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#P... claims the lethal dose is estimated at 30-60mg for adult humans, citing Gosselin 1988. That's 0.3% of the dose you quote.

I wasn't able to find the relevant page in Google books, but I did see a snippet that seemed to say that some of the other chemicals in cigarette smoke may actually have a protective effect against nicotine toxicity.

Gosselin RE (1988). Clinical toxicology of Commercial Products. VI.ed Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins: 311-313.

Sorry, it's a typo. I meant 10mg. Also, I said the dose it starts being harmful, not necessarily lethal.

I remember reading this somewhere about the usage of nicotine patches.

That's just toxicity. Nicotine can cause insomnia and various other side effects. It obviously induces dependence. Someone shouldn't have to be exposed to that involuntarily.

> Someone shouldn't have to be exposed to that involuntarily.

I wish I had the same right to not be exposed to agrotoxics, growth hormones and antibiotics from the meat, xenoestrogen present in all damn plastic and airborne lead from exhausts.

Maybe if the government really cared about well-being they would be regulating those, instead of wasting time with e-cigarrettes, no?

So two wrongs make a right then?

Wasting time on what we all know to be near meaningless makes you a concern troll.

I'm all for regulating what you can inflict on those downwind of you, but if you called the city inspectors because you were worried about second-hand e-cig vapor they'd arrive in a car that produced literally thousands of times more known deadly toxins.

We definitely should start testing common things people use like deodorant, makeup, hairspray, e-cigs, etc. But if we do it in order of suspected toxicity you'll be waiting a while for those results. And if you read the list of things to worry about and get to where second-hand vapor is even visible on the cost/benefit scale, you will have to be living in a bubble.

Airborne lead from exhaust? I take it you're not in North America, where the governments banned tetraethyllead in the 1970s through 1990s, or in the EU, where it was banned in 2000 (most individual countries banned it earlier), or ...? Even Serbia banned it a couple years ago. According to Wikipedia, only in Algeria is it still used in gasoline.

Walking around in a city. With cars. Far more worrying than a bit of nicotine vapour.

More likely along the lines of other people not wanting to breathe your second-hand nicotine / whatever the hell else might be in this vapor, because the jury's still out on their safety.

But even if the exhaled vapor is perfectly safe, they'll still try to ban them.

Mainly because I don't want to get addicted to nicotine just by sitting next to a co-worker who uses e-cigs indoors.

Has there been a study to prove that can happen or are you just assuming?

From the research I've read, that seems unlikely.

This study was unable to detect any environmental contamination from nicotine: http://clearstream.flavourart.it/site/wp-content/uploads/201...

"Among all, the most interesting aspects we observed was that nicotine was not detected in air during the e-smoking session, although liquids used for experiments contained it. On the other hand, 34µg/m^3 of nicotine were found during the smoking session."

I remember another study I'm having trouble finding that was able to detect some nicotine in the exhaled vapor using a different method (capturing exhaled vapor in a glass chamber), but at an extremely low concentration. Nothing I've found leads me to believe secondhand nicotine exposure from e-cigarettes is a significant hazard.

The major component of the secondhand vapor would be glycerin and/or propylene glycol. In extreme cases you might inhale entire milligrams of the stuff. Both substances are safe enough to be in the FDA's 'Generally Recognized as Safe' list and you could drink liters of them without any ill effects.

Here's a study[1] that concludes there is "no significant risk".

[1]-http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/08958378.2012.7...

That one was funded and conducted by the e-cigs industry, of course it is going to come to that conclusion.

> Gotta love the nanny state - not!

I have yet to hear somebody complain about "the nanny state" who doesn't sound like a spoiled brat.

I suppose it's kind of logical.

E-cigs were banned from public indoor use at the same time as smoking in my area. They used the reasoning that, for some of the e-cigs, it was hard to distinguish them from actual cigarettes as they look similar, and would cause confusion.

The vast majority of the public indoor e-cig smokers I've run into seemed to be doing it so they could look like they're smoking and then get indignant that it's not a cigarette

How do you know that's what they were doing?

Perhaps it's not. But it's definitely what most seemed to be doing.

Maybe it just seems that way to you because you do not think they have a reason to become indigent.

No, I think "seem" as a qualifier places it perfectly well into the realm of an opinion, with the implied agreement that it can be debated.

You and the other comment mistake it for an absolute judgment, which would be problematic, but that's not what the OP was writing.

Impugning peoples' motives like that should require some justification, even if it's labelled as "just an opinion".

If you are going to vocalize an opinion, you should expect to have it questioned. Just saying "well that is my opinion" does not put it off limits. Far from it..

It can be questioned as a stated opinion, yes. But not questioned as a stated fact, which is what happened.

As far as I'm concerned, that justification should fail on first amendment grounds, since it would banning them based on the message they (allegedly) communicate.

The agitators will just classify it as something 'obscene'.

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