The whole discussion reeks of experts who are used to fighting nicotine addiction that now can't let go when that addiction turns into a benign habit. Many people use nicotine for regulation of emotions and who are these experts to tell them they shouldn't? Not one of those experts expressing concern about nicotine bothered to say what's so bad about it, except the danger of dual use.
What needs to be done about the vapes is to ban disposable units. Whether to ban flavours and advertisement for vapes is not very clear-cut to me. Having a debate about those topics is fine. The vaping itself? Let's ban campfires, candles, and incense before we ban vapes.
> Let's ban campfires, candles, and incense before we ban vapes.
Interesting point. It's wild how vaping is so bad for one's health as if the air quality alerts one may receive in a majority of highly populated cities are safe to ignore. The alternative to not using vaping/nicotine is not immortality either.
Not to mention, such experts rarely offer alternative solutions. I am a firm believer in the self-medication theory. Why are such people using nicotine in the first place? A person just doesn't magically get addicted to nicotine after one single puff of a vape. Addiction requires habitual usage to varying degrees, and like one my favorite psych. youtubers once said, "The problem with addictive substances is that they work and they work well -- at least in the beginning. People do not get addicted to substances that do not work."
So, I have to agree with you again. Clearly there are/were benefits being provided for these individuals. So, all I am saying is that if we truly want to prevent people from using vapes/nicotine, then we should at least strive towards better attempts at finding ways in which nicotine usage is no longer a preferable option.
Right, cities have all the bad stuff and no individual control over it!
Regarding benefits: There are indications that people with schizophrenia use nicotine to self-medicate. The health risks of nicotine when inhaled but not smoked are relatively low. So why make them feel bad by calling them addicted to nicotine?
A doctor in my family pointed out that where he works (in the UK), he is seen innumerous cases of lung inflammation related to excessive vaping on teenagers and young adults.
As I understood, keeping the level of hydration higher than normal for too long, which is common to vaping but not smoking, can be the root of different kinds of infections.
According to him, vaping turned to be a habit so strong for some those people most of them report extreme sadness while in hospital with the main factor being the lack of their vape.
I am not saying you should do this or that, but having someone in family to report on increasing cases of things changed my perception on how I see certain topics.
Interesting, first time I've heard of an actual mechanism how vaping could be harmful. Still probably better than smoking, but the harmless image probably increases the misuse potential.
> Flavours are a major reason why youth begin to vape. We need to ban e-cigarette flavours other than tobacco flavour and we’re urging the federal government to finalize the June 2021 draft regulation as soon as possible.
I'm struggling to understand this position. I think he's saying that people (teens in particular) won't get addicted to vaping if tobacco is the only flavor available, because it's not as pleasant as the other flavors on offer today. But, there is a proven market for a nicotine delivery device that tastes like tobacco: we call them cigarettes, and teenagers have been into them for a hundred years and counting.
If the reply is that it's better for them to get addicted to vaping, because vaping is safer than cigarettes, I agree. But then what is this debate about?
I guess the idea is that there would be some difference between the number of people who would be willing to start vaping tobacco vs. smoking tobacco, and this is our margin of success. To me it seems like it wouldn't be a huge number.
I dunno, I think vaping is gross and kind of funny, but it's helped decrease the number of college students who already have smoker's coughs, so I say we sell bubblegum vape juice to minors and take the win.
Finland has banned flavoured cigarettes and smoking has reduced significantly in the younger population. Although it has also steadily upped the tax too, so I don’t know if the lack of flavours cause or correlation. Anecdotally, I know many thirty-somethings who used to smoke minty cigarettes who don’t smoke any more.
Smoked for 15 years, switched to vaping, switched to low dose nicotine pouches, now switching to Gr1nds (coffee grounds). I just really don't like gum.
I smoked for 20 years. Tried stopping for 5 years.
Then did a course on the nature of nicotine addiction.
Some core facts:
Smoking works by relieving the psychological pain that is created by not smoking. Reread that.
There are no other real benefits. Smokers have a higher baseline stresslevel.
All nicotine addiction works the same as smoking, all nicotine products are created by the tobacco industry. You are still addicted to nicotine if you use patches.
The only real way is to stop using it and to endure the mild withdrawal symptoms.
Did you know that the tobacco industry spreads anecdotes of people who died of some smoking related disease and kept smoking till the very end? Why? Because it implicitly tells you two things: it's either just so good. "To die for" good. Or it must be really hard to quit.
They also spread horror stories about withdrawal. Many smokers think the withdrawal will get even worse when they are actually already at peak withdrawal. Just hang in there a little more. It's not so bad. You can do it.
Then, when you have kicked the habit. Convince yourself that even just 1 cigarette will enslaved you again, so smoking "just one" is not an option.
> The only real way is to stop using it and to endure the mild withdrawal symptoms.
I’m curious - have you ever been addicted to nicotine? If so, how much per day were you consuming?
I have been. I’ve kicked it multiple times and decided consciously to pick it back up because the benefits (focus) outweighed the drawbacks at the time.
When I was consuming nicotine at the level of a “pack a day” smoker, the withdrawal sucked but wasn’t as bad as you might think. The worst lasted a day or so. After three days it wasn’t perceptible if I wasn’t thinking about it.
One thing to consider though is that it’s entirely possible to consume many times the nicotine by vaping that you would by smoking. Severity of withdrawal correlates to the amount you consume.
My approach has been to taper off a bit by consciously deciding to only consume it if I was really craving it - and putting the device in another room afterward to avoid consuming mindlessly. After a week or so of that, my use had dropped to the point that the cravings were only once or twice per day. From there it was trivial to quit - withstanding the early withdrawal symptoms in the evening and going to sleep was enough so that the next morning the worst had passed.
Trying to quit cold turkey while you’re sucking down two Juul pods a day is very, very different than when you’re only using 1-2 per week.
How does the tobacco industry spread those anecdotes exactly? I find it a bit difficult to believe, seems like smokers would be able to spread them on their own just as well, as they provide stories to relate to when you can't quit.
(Apologies if I come off as overly critical, generally I agree with what you wrote)
Why do I get a whiff of these "experts" were paid off by "vaping" interests (which I believe I recall being connected with legacy "big tobacco" through Altria Inc.) to create a limited hangout of "harm reduction", an extremely loaded and manipulative contemporary phrase pattern.
What monster could ever be opposed to harm reduction through the lesser of two evils after all? I mean, is burglary really a public safety concern, or not just poverty reduction? And why do you oppose poverty reduction by spreading hate about burglars of your home? And how often do you beat your wife again?
The headline presents this as a false dichotomy when the answer is "both".
For people who were already smoking then vaping is a useful harm reduction tool. For people who don't smoke (especially children) it's a health concern - albeit a potentially smaller one than smoking one.
It's not a false dichotomy, the article is very clearly about whether the harm reduction benefits (which clearly exist) outweigh the public health risks (which also clearly exist).
And, of course, there's nuance to that question. It's not like our only options are to keep the status quo or ban vapes entirely. One of the ideas presented in the article is to ban flavored vapes, since that's one of the main points of attraction to non-smokers (especially children), and non-flavored (or tobacco-flavored) vapes will still be viable alternative to smokers.
Problem with vapes is they are too inexpensive and you don't have to light a new one every now and then so there are people who are vaping almost without pause all day long.
I know a smoker who ended up increasing his own addiction because of that and went back to cigarettes, smoking more than he used to.
It is also a huge e-waste issue with so many disposable ones. I can't believe they have been allowed in the market for a start. Is that so hard to buy one and refill it?
There are a lot of decisions to make when buying a refillable vape. There are various models, they have compatible, disposable pods (the vape juice receptacle) with coils of various ohms resistance, and then juices which are either salt nic or free base with a range of nicotine concentrations.
One could go to a vape shop and have the clerk explain all of this, or spend a bit of time researching online. It's not especially hard, but it _is_ harder than just strolling to any corner store or gas station and asking for a disposable vape.
The e-waste of disposables is hard to stomach, especially some of the newer disposables that even have LCDs and buttons for playing little games on the vape.
What needs to be done about the vapes is to ban disposable units. Whether to ban flavours and advertisement for vapes is not very clear-cut to me. Having a debate about those topics is fine. The vaping itself? Let's ban campfires, candles, and incense before we ban vapes.