Whereas this study of young people’s use of e-cigarettes says “surveys across the UK show a consistent pattern: most e-cigarette experimentation does not turn into regular use, and levels of regular use in young people who have never smoked remain very low.”
The two papers don’t contradict one another, as they’re measuring different things. The claim that only a minority of the e-cigarette experimenters become regular users does not reassure me that it’s not at all a problem, nor do usage levels that are currently low for a product that was introduced fairly recently and for which we have another study that indicates the usage is increasing.
For me, vaping was an effective “stop smoking” aid. I started with the highest nicotine dose available, and then stepped down each month. After about 6 months, I noticed that I’d left the house without my e-cig device. Decided not to go back for it, and realized at that moment I was done. No more tobacco. No more vaping. Thirty seven years as a two pack+/day man, and now I haven’t smoked or vaped in about 3 years.
Fair point.
- Bolding by me.
*This is the issue. Using E-cigs to help those already addicted is good as is eliminating the smoke.
It is outweighed by getting additional new teens addicted to Nicotine. The regulations should be heavy on this part of the business.
If someone can posit a way to make vaping attractive to smokers, without making it attractive to those who would never have smoked, then it might be worthwhile trying to ease the regulation of vaping.
I’ve yet to see that be the case.
Data point: In February, the NHS came to the same conclusion:
https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/long-term-vaping-far-safer-than-smoking-says-landmark-study/
The NHS offers e-cigarettes on a prescription basis.
It’s not big tobacco that is getting epope addicted. It is tobacco itself, or rather the nicotene in the tobacco.
If there were no tobacco companies at all, people would still be addicted. People were addicted to meth, heroin, cocaine, and anything else without the help of any company, why do we feel that the only reason that people use tobacco products is because the companies made them do so?
I’m certainly a nicotine addict, and when I smoked cigarettes, I kinda hated myself for it. I knew it was killing me, I knew it was not a socially acceptable activity anymore. Tobacco companies didn’t get me addicted, my parents did, by chain smoking in the house 24/7. I had tried quitting several times, once going a year without a cigarette, but it didn’t matter, I was always thinking about cigarettes. When I woke up, I’d want a smoke. When I took a dump, I’d want a smoke. While I drove to work, I’d want a smoke. While I was at work, I’d want a smoke. After I ate lunch, I’d want a smoke… I’m sure you can see where this goes.
Now that I vape, I have far more control over my nicotine intake, and find it far more pleasurable. I even smoke the occasional cigarette every couple of weeks, and get a good deal of enjoyment out of that (not something I could do when I was “quitting” smoking). I can go up a flight of steps without wheezing, so that’s a nice improvement.
I’m all for having laws that keep both cigarettes and vapes out of the hands of kids, but there are going to be those who get ahold of them anyway. I started smoking on my own at 14, and the lengths I would go through to get a cigarette were pretty extensive, so I can think of no way to absolutely prevent kids from getting ahold of it, if it is what they really want.
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We still have a paucity of evidence that vaping is a long-term successful intervention for quitting with significantly more effectiveness than “conventional” methods for quitting.
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As the OP indicates, there’s a lot of angst from users about how regulators should keep hands off vaping because Lives Are At Stake. Regulation should take into account known and potential hazards of vaping, both for vapers and those who breathe their secondhand nicotine and additives.
*"…don’t be fooled into thinking that e-cigs are without risks or that you should now be able to vape to your heart’s content. Or that they’re plain healthy.
First of all, nicotine is a drug and a powerfully habit-forming one at that, and a 2013 studysuggests that even inhaling the drug via either conventional cigarettes or e-cigs may contribute to heart disease.
Also there is evidence that e-cigs deliver some toxic stuff of their own such as formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), nitrosamines (linked to cancer) and lead (a neurotoxin). Though the toxicant levels of e-cigs may be “9–450 times lower than in cigarette smoke,” as this study suggests, levels of formaldehyde andmetalshave been found to be comparable to or higher than those found in conventional cigarettes.Silicate particles, which are a cause of lung disease, have also been found in e-cigarette vapors."
The statement that vaping isn’t as bad as smoking does seem to be true, but shouldn’t preclude prudent regulation to protect consumers of the product and the rest of us.
I’m all for regulations to make the vapes as safe as they can be while delivering their intended product, which does obviously limit their safety to that of inhaling nicotine. I’m sure it does contribute to heart disease to some extent, it raises my blood pressure and makes my heart beat faster, I’m sure that’s not all that good for me long term. But it does it to a much lower extent than a cigarette did. If nothing else, if I smoke a cigarette, I’m invested in that thing, I’m going to smoke it all the way down, even if my nicotine craving is fixed with the first hit. With my vape, I hit it a couple times, and put it away for a few hours before I feel another craving coming on. I vape less than I used to smoke.
Now, they want to remove the lead and silicate from my vape juice, awesome. Even if it raises the price a bit, it’s still cheaper than smoking. Limiting the other chemicals coming out would be nice too, depending on how possible that is. If some are just an inevitable by-product of the vape process, then it should be limited, but if it’s less than or comparable to a cigarette, then that seems good enough.
The same rules that keep tobacco out of the hands of kids can work as well or vapes, which is to say, it discourages them, but there’s nothing that can be done to completely prevent it. If some kid wants to start using a nicotine product, it is better that they vape than smoke, and some number of kids will take up nicotine, it’s a drug that is quite enticing on its own.
If they banned or restricted vapes to where it was harder or more expensive to vape than to smoke, I’d probably go back to cigarettes. If they manged to completely ban cigarettes, well, it’s not like it’s all that hard to get ahold of illegal drugs right now, tobacco would just become another black market item.
My physician is delighted that I vape instead of smoke, and my blood pressure is fine.
I wonder if the studies about vapor content use a fresh device each time. Lead and some of the other contaminants might come from the solder joint and lessen with use.
I would be all for vaping if it were solely a device to help people quit smoking. But it’s not. It’s a tool to get more people, youth in particular, addicted to nicotine. Even if nicotine was 100% safe, allowing companies to profit of getting people addicted is bad for society and should be regulated if not outright banned. You wouldn’t say “methadone saves lives - regulators should take that into account”.
There are 2 common legal substances which can cause addiction (the clinical definition of addiction, not just a literary device), nicotine and alcohol. Alcohol, by its nature as a product of fermentation, cannot be significantly restricted. Tobacco, however, can. The distilled version of nicotine used in vaping, even more so. Yes, people can make vape juice if they have the equipment to do so. People can also cook meth, and government is used to control meth and crack.
To expand on this, we as a society must find ways of making up for our animal weaknesses. Our physical bodies have the flaw of being able to be addicted. Addicting causes us to act in irrational ways, which can and are used to exploit the addicted. Legally, you can sell an addict as many cigarettes and alcohol as he wants, until he dies. You can get kids addicted, and continue your revenue stream by parasiting off him as he becomes an adult. This is somehow acceptable. I do not think it ought to be acceptable.
In fact, we (as the human race) appear to be winning on nicotine. The number of smokers is dropping Cigarette Smoking Among Adults and Trends in Smoking Cessation --- United States, 2008, no doubt in part due to the regulations around locations where people can smoke, advertising around smoking, how smoking is presented in the media, the packaging of smoking, etc. Vaping appears to have reversed all this progress, and particularly if they circumvent the above regulations. The easy explanation is tobacco companies, who now need to make up revenue in other ways since their market is shrinking.
After the regulations on vaping, the trend seems to be reversing. This is good, and should continue Teen vaping rate falls sharply, reversing e-cigarette trend - CBS News.
Actually, I would say that. I’d be content if methadone were available in every corner drugstore. IMHO, the most destructive element in this debate isn’t the drugs themselves; it’s the measures taken to outlaw those drugs.
Outlawing or heavily restricting drugs such as morphine, amphetamines, and opioids doesn’t lead to decreased usage. It just drives those addicted to it into the black market where they will be forced to find unsafe alternatives such as heroine and methamphetamine, and away from doctors who, by and large, care about their patients and will do what they can to limit their dosages to amounts which at least won’t kill the patient.
Prohibition never works. It didn’t work with alcohol, it didn’t work with cocaine, it’s not working with meth. All it does is create a black market where dangerous criminal empires are empowered, violence becomes the norm, the price is higher, and the product far deadlier than it would be if left legal.
When was the last time you heard of someone dying because they drank a bad batch of bathtub hooch? Or shot to death trying to buy beer or cigarettes? Or shooting up a rival bar to try to corner the alcohol market?
Not to mention the effect drug prohibition has in destroying families by thrown in prison for years for victim-less crimes; after which their felony record provides severe handicaps in finding employment and housing for the rest of their lives. The war on drugs has been an abject failure, with a trillion dollars spent and millions incarcerated; but usage is higher than ever.
The only way to lessen the impact of drug usage is to legalize, tax, and regulate them like any other product, holding them to high safety standards and making the manufacturers accountable. Going after the end-users isn’t a war on drugs - it’s a war on people.
Getting people addicted is absolutely not victimless. If you “can’t live without coffee” you’re being a drama queen, but if you “can’t live without methadone”, or any other opiate, you’re being literal. And say what you want about illegal drugs, they have a far lower footprint than alcohol and cigarettes, and a far lower death toll. I’ll give you all illegal drugs. Overdose deaths around 64,000 per annum, double it to account for crime deaths, and this also includes overdosing on prescription drugs, which there is a major scandal about. Drug Overdose Death Rates | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Cigarettes alone. 480,000 deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm
Alcohol, I tolerate only due to logistical reasons - bathtub hooch is a thing. But not nicotine.
The libertarians tend to be all about how taxation is theft. How about getting someone physically addicted to something? Just because a person is nominally deciding to buy cigarettes (mental state - addict), it’s ok? If I could get someone addicted to “clean cocaine”, as long as there are no health issues that’s ok? That’s terrible! Cigarettes is today where opium used to be. Opium was eradicated as a casual drug, and nicotine can be too. Not in this generation, perhaps, but certainly in the generation of our grandchildren, IF we are vigilant.
Victim-less was in reference to drug users; they don’t meet the definition of “crime,” in which there someone else other than the “criminal” must have their property damaged or stolen. Their only victim is *themselves. But they get thrown in prison anyway.
I completely agree that tobacco is by far the most dangerous drug that can be taken, in terms of long-term fatalities. I still don’t think it should be illegal; for the same reason you give for not making alcohol illegal. It’s simply not practical.
If we lived in that same world where opium had to be transported from the other side of the world via boats costing enormous time and expense… maybe. But if you outlawed tobacco, some would quit; many others would simply begin growing it hydroponically, or ordering it from The Silk Road, or getting it from their street dealer who got it from a distributor who smuggled it over the border.
It would be more expensive, it would be more dangerous. It would involve possible legal consequences as disastrous to their lives as the health problems they’ll probably suffer later in life. But people will still do it. And those who grow it will still profit from it, arguably much more than they did while it was legal.
I agree, it’s horrible to profit from addicting people to a substance, whether it’s harmless or potentially harmful. I don’t agree with making such substances illegal. Ultimately, you are only punishing the users of the substance, and rewarding those who manufacture it by making it far more lucrative.
Since you mentioned libertarianism; I don’t disagree with taxing and regulating the substances. I’m all for it; inspect, provide as many safety measures as possible, punish those intentionally cutting corners. If regulation had stepped in at any point during the last century, cigarettes wouldn’t have ended up with thousands of carcinogenic chemicals making them more deadly simply to increase their addictive nature.
This doesn’t mean you *outlaw them though; then those regulations can never happen, and any entrepreneurial scumbag can make it in his basement with no oversight and throw in anything he wants without ever telling the customer and probably never get held accountable if people immediately die using it. It’s why people OD on cocaine cut with drano.
Praise Jesus!
I disagree with the proposed reasoning that because something might be LESS harmful than something else it resembles, that it should avoid scrutiny and regulation for how it IS dangerous.
Establishing a legal principle like that would lead to all sorts of absurdly bad law.
Arkansas enacted a law that I cannot order vaping fluid on the web; I must actually call to order on the telephone. 
I have no problem with treating e-cigs the same as tobacco for those who are underage.
Because we want Blizzard to continue to make quality games.
Because it’s the lesser evil to have regulated companies do it than to have underground criminal organizations do it? The drugs won the drug war.