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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

I have seen lately advertisement for electronic cigarettes. Are those better, worse for one's health. I don't smoke but was just wondering. They are hailed as a non cancer causing cigarette. Is that true? What about just a nicotine patch. Would smokers just prefer that so they can save money but still get the nicotine boost.

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Nicotine itself is safe (that is, it a neurotoxin, but so is caffeine; the dosis makes the poison for humans). The carcinogenic substances you inhale from smoking are mostly a by-product of the combustion process. Electronic cigarettes work similar to vaporizers and should be safe (pending research).

Also see gwerns articles on nicotine:

http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#nicotine

Nicotine is not "safe". It's less harmful than some of the other constituents of tobacco smoke, but it's still cancer promoting in itself:

http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/full/v12/i46/7428.htm http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/91/14/1194.long http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/2/279.long

As a smoker currently trying to quit, this is particularly relevant to me at the moment. The problem with nicotine patches is that they only deal with the actual "physical" addiction, not the "psychological" addiction to the experience of smoking. I've been using nicotine patches for a while now, yet I still find myself holding things between my fingers, or chewing pens.

This is the huge advantage of an electronic cigarettte, it deals with both aspects; it does so a lot better than those nicotine "inhalers" that they have because of the look & feel of them and the appearance of the vapour they produce.

The downside to all nicotine replacement therapies is that nicotine is a pretty bad irritant; you can't wear a patch in the same place two days in a row and the gum can cause really sore throats and even mess with your digestive system. This is also an issue that most people overlook with the e-cigarettes, the nicotine in an e-cigarette concentrated enough to cause irritation of the throat and lungs, much like smoking. Obviously e-cigarettes are not dangerous in the way that cigarettes are, but if people think they're safe and decide to use them in the longer term there may be unexpected issues ahead.

Have you tried (gawd, I sound like an advertisement) Chantix? That med worked great for me, relatively speaking -- kept me off for 8 months (took the med for 2.5 months). A significant part of the program is developing alternative habits in response to stress and other such things that would usually cause you to light up. Admittedly, that part of it failed for me, but that was a combination of my own fault and the circumstance of a breakup, which gave me a pretty high stress level.

I will look into it, seems promising.

Thanks!

I'm not a smoker but as coincidence would have it today I was talking to some smokers outside work and a woman joined the group and "lit up" her e-cigarette. They're illegal here but she got it through the mail somehow. She said her pack a day habit dropped a lot not due to trying just due to the difference between the e-cigarette and regular cigarettes.

It was such a contrast between the little white sticks of smoke spewing paper and a glass and metal e-cigarette. The one the woman had was quite long because it had an extended battery pack, the vial of liquid peach flavoured liquid was visible, the mouthpiece was a formed metal end it reminded me of some sort of musical instrument.

Standing next to someone with an e-cigarette is very different than a regular cigarette you may smell the vapour if you're close enough but it's gone within a second. Regular cigarettes are like some sort of Charles Dickens creation in old London it may as well be coal smoke and ash chimney it lingers so long and is so strong in comparison.

I think the reason e-cigarettes are banned in my province is due to the nicotine containing liquid which I guess is far more dangerous than caffeine even in common bulk powdered form since a liquid on skin is more easily absorbed. I've read about nicotine levels per vial of 6mg to 18mg and the lethal dose for humans is 1.0mg/kg body weight so maybe it's possible a person could accidentally poison themselves if a vial broke and the liquid fell on their skin.

My guess is that the bans on e-cigarettes are due to their effectiveness in helping smokers quit, combined with their tax-free status. The governments of the world pull in billions on tobacco tax revenues.

Yeah, I have two friends who were both long term cigarette smokers quit after using e-cigs for a short period of time.

My understanding is that without the free-based nicotine in most (all?) commercial tobaccos, the addictive nature of smoking is significantly reduced.

Interestingly, one of those friends is now able to smoke socially at will. Flipped some addiction trigger or something. I would love to see a study on this.

I've heard people say the opposite i.e. that e-cigarettes make it too easy for people to take up smoking especially the flavoured tobacco which was also banned here. Although such speculation is just paranoid ranting without proof.

They are likely much healthier than cigarettes because it doesn't have all the nasty components in the smoke. Patches aren't going to give the satisfaction of manipulating a "cigarette" and the feel of inhaling the drug.

I hated being a smoker but enjoyed the smoking part....

Much like any drug, it is very difficult to know a priori without doing the experiment. It would be unethical to administer cigarettes or e-cigarettes in a randomized, controlled fashion, but we will probably observe over the coming decades the epidemiologic impact (much as we did for the consequences of cigarettes in the 20th Century).

Suggestive studies could be performed in whatever animal models have been most instructive for studying the effects of smoking.

> but we will probably observe over the coming decades the epidemiologic impact (much as we did for the consequences of cigarettes in the 20th Century).

Assuming that countries where such tests can be easily performed don't regulate them into the grave anyway. Uk and the EU are notably gearing up to kill them off.

The medium for e-cigarettes is propylene glycol with nicotine. (There is also a vegetable alternative for people who have sensitivity to PG.) Allegedly inhaling PG doesn't have significant effects on the body.

I recently started smoking ("vaping") e-cigarettes, and while I haven't seen any immediate improvements to my health, a) I smell a helluvalot better, and b) I'm not putting carbonized paper and plant fibers (along with all the other flavorings and chemicals used in the tobacco production process) into my lungs.

And yes, they cost a lot less. Here in CA a pack costs about $5 and I know in NY it's over $9. An e-cigarette cartridge (equivalent to a pack) costs about $2.

A pack for $5! I guess while you in the States started the war against smokers, you are left behind. C.f. plain packaging and $18 packs in Australia :-)

Ouch. I visited Hungary and the Czech Republic around 2005 and a pack was about $2. In the US it was $4.

e-cigarettes replace the habits. I used to smoke in the car. It was a stupid habit. Things like patches wouldn't help with that because I couldn't avoid being in the car.

It's not so much healthy, but dramatically less unhealthy. I think it's referred to as harm reduction, if you want to google that for more info.

It's like using stevia or splenda instead of sugar in your coffee or tea. In that case, you're still going to crave sugar. In the e-cigarette case though, you'll crave e-cigarettes perhaps instead of real cigarettes. I tried a real cigarette again after two months of using an e-cigarette and it tasted awful, burned my mouth.

I wondered about this myself. I smoked throughout the 90s, but have been mostly nicotine free since. Recently I spent a few weeks experimenting with e-cigs to see if I could get the nicotine high that I remember enjoying without my body feeling like crap. No dice. Puffing on nice-tasting, pleasant smelling nicotine vapor still made my body feel like crap at times, just like it did when I smoked analog cigarettes. I didn't feel it in my lungs so much, but I did feel like my blood pressure was elevated and my heart was a bit fluttery, and once it gave me a rather bad headache. A few times it felt really nice, like I remembered, but mostly I felt like I was just chasing that feeling, and not really receiving the satisfaction I wanted.

I canceled the experiment and gave my gear to a friend who still smoked analog cigarettes. He's quite happy having switched. He tells me his sense of smell has returned and his smokers cough is lessened. I noticed he no longer smells like an ashtray.

Nicotine is bad for the heart and possibly the brain. You're better off avoiding it. However, electronic cigarettes are better than smoking. The cancer and lung damage come from inhaling particles. (In fact, it's not just tobacco; inhaling any particulate matter on a long-term basis is really bad. Tobacco's a common culprit because it's so ubiquitous; there aren't people smoking 30 pot or salvia cigarettes per day.)

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