As for claims that researchers are unethically colluding to “find” risks associated with e-cig use and/or smoking, that nonsmokers deliberately gravitate to the vicinity of smokers so they can harass them over secondhand emissions, etc. etc.:
There is a well-known association between smoking and psychiatric disorders (including panic attacks and schizophrenia), though it’s unclear to me how much this is related to smoking/nicotine use or is due to mentally ill people gravitating to tobacco products. Perhaps paranoia is part of the syndrome.
I don’t know of accusations of collusion, but I have seen criticisms of their methodologies, as well as studies performed by other entities that cam to other conclusions. The motives behind such studies is left to the imagination.
Are you saying that this doesn’t happen? I assure you, it does. Not every non-smoker needs to make a point about it, but I’d say at least 25% of the time, if I am smoking in public (outside, away from non-smokers), someone will approach me, and then complain about the smoke. That’s not paranoia, that’s observation.
By “well known”, you mean in the last few years, some researchers have been looking into it, with no conclusions that even they claim, sure.
The bulk of the article seemed to be talking about using nicotine as a reward to mentally ill patients for complying with treatment, which has nothing to do with any sort of cause/effect relationship pharmacologicaly speaking. It said nothing about paranoia, I am not sure where you are getting that from.
If it is self medicating, to keep panic attacks at bay, why does it bother you? Do you feel the same way about people who take beta-blockers to control their panic attacks?
I legitimately hate the smell and it does seem to cling to clothes and furniture. But it also reminds me of when bluetooth earpieces were first popular and people looked like douche bags using them. No one could explain exactly why seeing someone with a bluetooth earpiece talking to thin air was just so annoying, but it was!
Nope. One of your links (the esteemed “Steve K’s Vaping World”) makes an unsourced claim about FDA seizing shipments (nothing about a “ban”).
The other link is supposed to be to an e-cig forum (another incredibly authoritative-sounding site) but when clicked on yields an error message.
If it is self medicating, to keep panic attacks at bay
[/QUOTE]
In reality, there’s evidence smoking causes panic attacks.
*"If you think smoking calms you down, think again. A study of thousands of smokers shows that they are three times more likely than nonsmokers to have panic attacks and panic disorder.
“We know already a whole lot about the effects of smoking on just physical health, and now we are also starting to see the adverse effects in new research on mental illness,” study co-author Naomi Breslau, PhD, tells WebMD. “This is one example…Breslau says, “It’s not simply that the two things go together, but it’s suggesting that smoking is playing a causal role.” According to Breslau, smoking increases a person’s lifetime risk of a panic attack by three to four times…he and Donald F. Klein, MD, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute published their findings in the December issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.”*
Of course, one can only speculate about their motives for publishing such findings. :dubious::smack::eek:
Are you at a location they would otherwise go towards, like the entrance to a building, or table, or open area when the rest of the place is crowded? Is the area actually smoking-allowed? Are you blowing smoke back into where they were, and they’re approaching you so that they don’t have to should to tell you to cut it out (and if you say ‘no’, are you watching your smoke constantly to be sure, or just blowing and hoping?)? I’ve never seen this happen, even back when I smoked, but I have seen plenty of smokers put a smokescreen in front of doors, decide to declare a non-smoking area smoking because they don’t want to go to the smoking area, and blow smoke without noticing that it’s billowing into a crowd.
Beta blockers have lots of clinical trials showing effectiveness and examining potential side effects, nicotine has addicts claiming that it’s really good and helpful but not much else.
No, Yes, No, and I am downwind. I don’t smoke much at all anymore, mostly vape, usually smoke a cigarette a week or so when I am out with friends (who smoke). Can’t say what you have and have not seen, but it certainly does happen.
There are rude smokers, just as there are rude people of all stripes. Can’t do much about that, sorry.
Beta blockers have been around a fraction of the time that nicotine has been used. True, there have been few clinical studies on the therapeutic effects of nicotine,butthatischanging.
Y’know, entirely apart from the substance of the debate, whenever I see an imputation along the lines that scientists’ or research institutions goals are
I can’t help but lose some faith in the side making it, and wonder what actual evidence there is to that effect, other than generic opposition to public-subsidized research.
O.K., you finally came up with a case involving importation of an e-cig product into the United States.
Nothing there about the FDA ever issuing a blanket “ban” on e-cigarettes (hint: it never happened).
Meanwhile, regulation is here to stay. Better get used to it (as well as more and more evidence showing detrimental health effects of e-cigs on users and bystanders).
So you don’t consider lung cancer, heart disease, or asthma to be serious illnesses?
Considering how long it took for people to figure out how harmful secondhand smoke is, I’m willing to err on the big side of caution when it comes to the safety of second hand vape fumes. The literature on the subject is currently quite inconsistent.
For those who care to learn more about what’s going on with ecigs, here is a recent paper I had bookmarked and just got around to reading. It uses the old Bootleggers and Baptists meme to show how big tobacco, big pharma, and public health groups all work toward the same goal but for different reasons … in other words, things aren’t always what they appear.
I’ll link first to a rebuttal, then to a reply to the rebuttal, then to the actual paper.
For anyone who actually reads those, there is one brand new additional monkey wrench to throw into the works – the soon to come FDA regulations for ecigs are required to by law to work under their authority to regulate tobacco and tobacco derived products, however, a new lab has opened up providing synthetic nicotine that is not derived from tobacco. There are already several eliquid manufacturers using it.
How dare you impugn the good name of Steve K’s Vaping World‽ 'Tis an institution as noble and as seasoned as National Geographic, the University of Cambridge, or the BBC. I am fairly certain it has been endorsed by some of the greatest scientific minds of our time, such as Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye, Science Guy. If Nikola Tesla were still alive, I am sure he would bestow it nothing less than his full faith as well, and he surely roils in his grave at your expressed lack of such.
I, personally, would trust my life to Steve K’s Vaping World, and I do not convey such trust lightly. I say that as someone who was born at the Mayo Clinic, and would not entrust my greatest asset, my very own mortality, to any lesser institution from that moment on.
Say what you will about our political circus, the posters here, or key players in this industry. But for you to sit here and besmirch the reputation of Steve K’s Vaping World; this I cannot abide.
And at least one of them is already panicking about the possibility that FDA regulation will affect them as well:
“…the FDA wrote that it does indeed have regulatory power over e-liquid that is not derived from tobacco. This attempts to clarify the FDA’s regulations, but all it does is reiterate that the FDA is waging a war on both orally inhaled nicotine and nicotine-free e-liquid — not tobacco.”
We must all rise up in protest against the gummint’s attempts (real or imagined) to stamp out the selling of harmful addictive drugs and imperil the small businessman.
I know if you Google for “is nicotine bad for you” you’ll get a lot of hits claiming it’s relatively harmless, but that’s not “the actual science.” I’ll link to a review below quoting studies regarding the harms of nicotine.
I don’t hate the vape. My sister switched to vaping and it’s probably better than cigarettes. But I don’t want to be around anyone while they’re vaping indoors.
I’m not super-impressed with that study. It’s almost entirely qualitative; each claim about carcinogenic effects or toxicity or whatever is useless without a comparison to other substances that are considered benign.
Several of the results are from mice/rat studies, which are just an indication that more research is needed.
There’s also a bunch of irrelevant stuff in there, like the bit on green tobacco sickness, which has no bearing on how the final product should be regulated. Its use as a pesticide is likewise a non sequitur, as is the LD50 value or the effects of topical application. The inclusion of these things makes me doubt their neutrality.
In fact the entire basis of the report is just a search of the Medline/PubMed databases. They claim that they didn’t exclude beneficial effects, but their choice of keywords belies that claim–they guarantee that they’ll mostly see papers showing harmful results. It’s not much better than the average forum Google-vomit.
I would be much more impressed with a single result demonstrating a negative effect in humans that is significant in absolute terms.
From a review of cardiovascular effects of nicotine:
“NICOTINE AND CARDIOVASCULAR RISK — Nicotine may…contribute to acute coronary events. There are a number of ways in which nicotine can affect the cardiovascular system to increase the risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction…The hemodynamic effects of cigarette smoking are mediated by nicotine which also increases heart rate up to 10 to 20 beats/min after an individual cigarette and on average seven beats per minute throughout the day…As a result of the increased myocardial work, myocardial oxygen demands and coronary artery blood flow increase. However, myocardial ischemia may ensue in patients with coronary disease, particularly in the presence of underlying coronary vascular disease…
Cigarette smoking produces endothelial damage and impairs flow-mediated, endothelium-dependent arterial vasodilation, both in coronary and peripheral arteries [50], an effect that is partly reversible after smoking cessation [51]. In contrast, endothelium-independent vasodilation is preserved [52]. (See “Coronary artery endothelial dysfunction: Clinical aspects”.) Oxidizing chemicals and nicotine appear to be responsible for endothelial dysfunction…
Nicotine, most likely mediated via catecholamine release, contributes to the development of insulin resistance. This was illustrated in one study of 40 non-obese middle-aged men, which found that the long-term use of nicotine-containing chewing gum was associated with the presence of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia [82]. There was a correlation between the extent of nicotine use and the degree of insulin resistance.”
While deleterious effects of nicotine are well known, studies have overwhelmingly focuse on smoking. We lack research on long-term health problems in e-cig users, because they haven’t been around long enough. So users are acting as guinea pigs (in the long-term use of inhaled nicotine and other chemicals in “vape” fluid) until that information comes in. E-cig users are kidding themselves if they think they aren’t setting themselves up for significantly increased disease risks by remaining nicotine addicts even if it isn’t as bad as smoking.
:smack::eek: