4 ms·

I smoked for 20y, switched to ecigs to kick it. I treat ecigs as a medication, no flavoring. Having tried a few flavors, I find flavorless to be by far the lea

by mml 11y ago

I smoked for 20y, switched to ecigs to kick it. I treat ecigs as a medication, no flavoring. Having tried a few flavors, I find flavorless to be by far the least offensive, to me, as well as the people around me. I find this constant drumbeat of "ecigs will kill everyone" disingenuous at best.

maxerickson 11y ago
Why do you think the people stating that ecigs are still harmful are being misleading?
- mapt 11y ago
  It's as if we switched, in a culture of frequent duels, from dueling with pistols to the death, to dueling with new, fairly safe boxing gloves to the submission. "But they cause concussions", you say. "But the children will be more likely to take up dueling", you say. "We should ban them". "Look, we banned putting stickers on guns long ago so they wouldn't appear to children, but they're putting stickers on boxing gloves now! The horror!" "But look, the problem is this obscene need to fight each other over honor. It's a problem of the patriarchy. We should publish hundreds of studies showing this while glancing furtively at the 'ban boxing' folks" The death toll from smoking rivals the death toll from all the wars in the 20th century. Even after this was made clear, people found themselves unable to quit, smoking until they die. The evidence suggests that e-cigs are somewhere in the vicinity of coffee as a danger to your health. They are incomparably safer, and if just one percent of e-cig users began using them in order to quit smoking, that's worth it. This study is completely uncontrolled, and being promoted as a hit piece. "Environment influences gene expression" is not novel. If they want to impress on me that there is anything of any importance whatsoever, they need to do the same gene expression tests on groups who ate hummus vs who did not eat hummus, groups who took a daily walk vs groups who did not, groups who drink tea vs groups who did not.
  - givinguflac 11y ago
    THANK YOU! After actually reading any available data, I agree this study seems deeply flawed and in no way controlled. Did the Ecig users smoke previously? Does the gene suppression go away after a day? I highly doubt it's permanent. Did they have Ecig users who were using no flavoring? What nicotine level? What vg/pg ratio? Most importantly in my opinion, what type of device was used and at what wattage etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly happy to see testing happening, but we need to do it right and control ALL the variables. Anecdotally, I was sick all the time when I smoked cigs. Switched to Ecig a little over a year ago and I haven't had any illness beyond a normal upset stomach every now and then.
    - mapt 11y ago
      The worst part is we do need regulation and testing of this stuff for public safety, but there's propaganda machines on both sides thrown into such high gear we may never get it. We need it because in a fly-by-night environment of small producers, there's no accountability or detectability if some idiot decides that melamine makes a good inert buffer material. What we need is simple: Bonded, enforced labeling requirements. Safety could be nearly a solved problem with an ingredient list showing me how many milligrams of what precisely is going into the fluid (recipes left up to the producer), a license for distributing this precise formulation with money held as a security deposit, and an FDA mandate to randomly test one unit in every thousand. What we'll probably get instead is that some US corporate power with interests in a fluid company will negotiate some deal that bans all their competitors for being unsafe, and things will be made stable and expensive once more.
  - abalashov 11y ago
    Not that I disagree with your broader point at all -- and I say this as a former cigarette smoker, former e-cig vaper, present-day nicotine gum chewer, etc. (who is incredibly grateful for the existence of the latter two creations, or would have never quit smoking): To be fair, though, e-cigs haven't been around nearly long enough to do any sort of longitudinal study on toxicity. We really have no idea what smoking one for twenty years will do, what kind of cancers it can give one, etc. And to be absolutely fair to your point, that's also true of lots of other chemical novelties and gewgaws.

by mml 11y ago

maxerickson 11y ago

Why do you think the people stating that ecigs are still harmful are being misleading?

mapt 11y ago
It's as if we switched, in a culture of frequent duels, from dueling with pistols to the death, to dueling with new, fairly safe boxing gloves to the submission. "But they cause concussions", you say. "But the children will be more likely to take up dueling", you say. "We should ban them". "Look, we banned putting stickers on guns long ago so they wouldn't appear to children, but they're putting stickers on boxing gloves now! The horror!" "But look, the problem is this obscene need to fight each other over honor. It's a problem of the patriarchy. We should publish hundreds of studies showing this while glancing furtively at the 'ban boxing' folks" The death toll from smoking rivals the death toll from all the wars in the 20th century. Even after this was made clear, people found themselves unable to quit, smoking until they die. The evidence suggests that e-cigs are somewhere in the vicinity of coffee as a danger to your health. They are incomparably safer, and if just one percent of e-cig users began using them in order to quit smoking, that's worth it. This study is completely uncontrolled, and being promoted as a hit piece. "Environment influences gene expression" is not novel. If they want to impress on me that there is anything of any importance whatsoever, they need to do the same gene expression tests on groups who ate hummus vs who did not eat hummus, groups who took a daily walk vs groups who did not, groups who drink tea vs groups who did not.
- givinguflac 11y ago
  THANK YOU! After actually reading any available data, I agree this study seems deeply flawed and in no way controlled. Did the Ecig users smoke previously? Does the gene suppression go away after a day? I highly doubt it's permanent. Did they have Ecig users who were using no flavoring? What nicotine level? What vg/pg ratio? Most importantly in my opinion, what type of device was used and at what wattage etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly happy to see testing happening, but we need to do it right and control ALL the variables. Anecdotally, I was sick all the time when I smoked cigs. Switched to Ecig a little over a year ago and I haven't had any illness beyond a normal upset stomach every now and then.
  - mapt 11y ago
    The worst part is we do need regulation and testing of this stuff for public safety, but there's propaganda machines on both sides thrown into such high gear we may never get it. We need it because in a fly-by-night environment of small producers, there's no accountability or detectability if some idiot decides that melamine makes a good inert buffer material. What we need is simple: Bonded, enforced labeling requirements. Safety could be nearly a solved problem with an ingredient list showing me how many milligrams of what precisely is going into the fluid (recipes left up to the producer), a license for distributing this precise formulation with money held as a security deposit, and an FDA mandate to randomly test one unit in every thousand. What we'll probably get instead is that some US corporate power with interests in a fluid company will negotiate some deal that bans all their competitors for being unsafe, and things will be made stable and expensive once more.
- abalashov 11y ago
  Not that I disagree with your broader point at all -- and I say this as a former cigarette smoker, former e-cig vaper, present-day nicotine gum chewer, etc. (who is incredibly grateful for the existence of the latter two creations, or would have never quit smoking): To be fair, though, e-cigs haven't been around nearly long enough to do any sort of longitudinal study on toxicity. We really have no idea what smoking one for twenty years will do, what kind of cancers it can give one, etc. And to be absolutely fair to your point, that's also true of lots of other chemical novelties and gewgaws.