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Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace

145 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

jrockway 10y ago
The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their revenue stream too. It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers. The poor can't, so they just die. (I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income, rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  do you have access to some detailed data about state/federal income sources? cursory search says excises are around 3% of total taxation income, while on state level goes up to 14% (but still includes all sources, not just tobacco)
  - linkregister 10y ago
    Indeed, the parent poster appears to be weaving a "just so" story with the moral being that government (somehow a monolith and not a composition of a representative legislature) seeks to get more revenue. This ignores the fact that federal tax receipts have been hovering around 20% of GDP for the last 40 years [1]. However, each state is different; some states' legislatures intentionally tax tobacco products as a deterrent to smoking, with demonstrable public health benefits [2]. Cigarette taxes are negatively correlated with smoking rates. I concede that the federal tobacco tax rate is too low to do anything substantial, for raising revenue or as a deterrent. It should either be raised, or scrapped and left to the states. 1. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an... 2. http://www.cbpp.org/research/higher-tobacco-taxes-can-improve-health-and-raise-revenue http://www.cbpp.org/research/higher-tobacco-taxes-can-improv...
- saurik 10y ago
  I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should not care that they aren't collecting the money to pay for it anymore. As an example: taxing people who use roads to pay for roads encourages people to use roads less, which puts less wear on the road surface and means you need fewer lanes and thereby less road. If this mechanism is used correctly, and I realize it often isn't, the real problem is only when there is no good way to directly tax the damage and so a proxy is used: we don't tax people for miles driven, we tax them by the gallon of gas purchased, and while that works for pollution control (and people thereby think it makes sense that people who use less gas have to pay less gas tax, under an assumption that the goal is to encourage less burning of gas), the taxes are used to fund roads, and electric cars still put as much wear on the road as gasoline cars; this screws up the incentives and makes the government kind of want people to keep burning gas so they keep getting taxes to fund the roads they continue to need. But this is a slightly different problem than what you are describing. In the case of cigarettes, I was under the impression the goal of the tax was to fund public health infrastructure due to the cost to the public of caring for victims of smoking, and so while I realize the government always mixes their accounts and crosses purposes and generally screws this up, if e-cigarettes are generally safe then that should have been a case of working incentives.
  - syshum 10y ago
    >>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool. There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health Programs For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social control Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period. Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types
- HuangShi 10y ago
  I agree that regressive taxes (actual govt. issued taxes or implied taxes like smoking in your argument) are a tough case - especially when the people they most affect are sometimes strong supporters of the tax not being stopped. Lottery games are an example of this - the people who play are overwhelmingly poor. This article argues that lottery spending may even be the single largest tax poor families pay [1]. With regard to what you say about there being no replacement income for governments if people stopped smoking cigarettes - I'd say this is only the case if consumption was banned. If it was slowly phased out the pain wouldn't be noticeable. It's like autonomous vehicles - what really matters is the speed of creative destruction. [1] http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/ http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/
- espadrine 10y ago
  Every period has its black sheep. The government can replace its tobacco tax with a carbon tax.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Why can't people who can't afford cigarettes stop? Is nicotine gum that much more expensive than cigarettes?
  - choko 10y ago
    Because it's an addiction and by design, very difficult to quit. As for the gum, I can tell you that it's a rather poor replacement for cigarettes. It doesn't really eliminate (and barely curbs) the need for a cigarette.
    - jrs95 10y ago
      I was actually quite successful with the gum, but the only thing that really made it difficult for me to quit was the withdrawal symptoms. So I suppose it's effectiveness depends on how someone is addicted to smoking.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      But it's addicting regardless of your income. Is there some expensive magic that makes quitting easy?
      - duaneb 10y ago
        Fly to a place without nicotine.
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    preliminary research suggest 50% of people is dumber than average.
  - Veen 10y ago
    I tried to quit with gum and it's just not a good replacement. It tastes foul, made my mouth and throat feel unpleasant, and does nothing for the "habit" part of the addiction. Vaping worked much better for me.
  - Semaphor 10y ago
    Before switching to ecigs, I tried to quit with gums, nicotine patches, and herbal cigarettes. They did nothing for me (to be fair, the first time I tried ecigs, the crappy 2009 models, they didn't help either).
- Shivetya 10y ago
  The tobacco companies are adept at adapting to the market. I would suspect they all either have e-cig products out or are in the process of doing so. As far as taxes, the US has one of the most progressive tax schemes in the world and income is not a major wealth point for many Americans (though it does beget a ton of jealousy) Not to go too far off track. The real tax on the poor isn't cigarettes, for the poor and stupid its lottery tickets. The real tax on the poor are the vast amount of licensing and related fees that they cannot escape. It is distressing how many lower income jobs have ridiculous fees attached let alone the costs of doing business with every day government interaction. Then throw in all the fees of everyday life and boom, your hurting.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Of course they have e-cig brands; they're the disgusting gas station brands that will be the only viable business in the market in two years. It now costs $1 Million to approve a new flavor at every nicotine concentration: the tobacco companies couldn't have asked for anything better: it's like they're functionally illegal, but they also make more money. There are other measures like the $2 "tobacco" tax on ballot in California now that means you'll pay $3 for a coil worth $1. This was also likely lobbied by the tobacco companies. Finally, realize that theres nothing expensive about making these eliquids. Somehow they pulled an arbitrary way of making it more expensive than any other way of leaving tobacco out of their ass.
- zamalek 10y ago
  > Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes I saw this on Reddit a while back, someone pointed out that "we get it, you vape" was probably introduced by tobacco companies to create a stigma around the practice. I'm a quitting smoker, on vape (RBA) and it bloody works. If only there were such great tools for quitting other addictions.
  - ryuker16 10y ago
    I remember that thread. I think someone mentioned big tobacco realizes the future is vape but wants to kill thier current ecig market competitors via the law. It's a race to the bottom with Chinese ecig vendors unless the law bans them or greatly reduces their ability to sell in the USA.... Assuming It's truly harmless, they don't have to worry about being taxed/sued like crazy or severe advertising restrictions anymore... Ecigs are a no Brainer for any tobacco exec.
  - paulmd 10y ago
    In my experience the stereotype exists for a reason. Let's take Grover Norquist as an example. The man is a dedicated crusader who hasn't stopped pounding the tax-reform drum for 20 years. Know what he thinks will decide the next election? Know what he was tweeting about during the debates? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-2016-vaping_us_56ba5477e4b08ffac123075c http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-2016-vap... https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/785299905464111104 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/785299905464111104 No, seriously: we get it, you vape.
    - zamalek 10y ago
      I have no bearing on the "hardcore" vaping community. It's a tool, I am using it to quit. If vaping was outlawed due to legislation I'm worried I'd have to rely on will alone (which has so far failed me). Irrespective of practice or belief, there are people who take things too far. The words of one nut are not representative of the entire community. "We get it, you vape" is a logical fallacy. Why? It is so trivial to draw a corollary from that incredibly naive statement: you are implicitly voicing support for people acquiring cancer - althought I certainly don't believe that is what you meant to say. This falls under the logical fallacy of "black and white." Things are not so simple, especially so far as the behavior of one vocal minority is concerned. By pure autonomous volition, I vape away from other people (generally in the company of other smokers in the allocated areas) because I know that the vapor generally clings to skin. It makes you clammy in warm weather. It's not sociable. So you're going to throw someone who is trying their level best to use this quitting aid in a respectable manner into the same bag as Norquist? 150 mutations per year in my lungs[1] x 7 years of smoking = 1050 mutations. I hope to God that I stopped soon enough. I'm so fortunate to have such an easy route out - it's not 1200 or 1350 mutations. The inability to downvote responses on HN forces me to contemplate a correct response. This is the extremely rare occasion, maybe the first, that I wish it was possible. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870712
- koyote 10y ago
  Could that be a reason states are slowly legalising Marijuana?
- notahacker 10y ago
  Tobacco taxes tend to represent a very small part of government revenue, and fairly large parts of government costs and revenue are affected by the adverse effects of tobacco use (healthcare costs, sickness benefit, reduced taxable income from people becoming seriously ill). Even if the two don't balance, the government has plenty of scope to adjust the tax base over time. Many if not most other sources of tax income are far less predictable. The prospect that public infrastructure will "tank" as a result of people choosing to smoke less is simply not a real world problem. Tobacco levies being disproportionately a "tax on the poor" is true, but health problems also are suffered more by the poor and one of the side effects of high tobacco levies in an era where e-cigarettes are a widely-available commercial product is nicotine replacement becoming much more affordable than tobacco
- rawfan 10y ago
  As far as I know the cost to the health system succeeds the tax income by far. At least in Germany.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China. They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China. They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
deleted 10y ago
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thirdsun 10y ago
For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes without any desire to quit. The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. Once you aren't using nicotine any longer all that is left is the social ritual and habit of going out for a smoke, which isn't a very convincing reason after a while. Soon you'll forgot to take your e-cigarette with you one day - you'll use it less and less. Until it simply doesn't matter any longer.
- stinos 10y ago
  While I also highly recommend e-cigarettes, your story is of course the ideal picture of how it should go. But it might not go that easy for everyone: even with the use of it I'm having a hard time to quit the actual cigarretes completely and it's not due to the nicotine (in fact I do not know what exactly still makes me crave for those hand-rolled cigarettes). Also nicotine can be a pleasant drug to use. Which is likely why I know several people who've been vaping for years and have a hard time quitting, or even just don't want to quit. But they did quit smoking so that's a huge win already of course.
  - jrockway 10y ago
    I'm not sure why the goal is quitting. Nicotine itself isn't the problem with cigarettes, it's just a stimulant and has the usual stimulant effects. If you have high blood pressure or trouble sleeping, probably not a great drug to use. But the same can be said of coffee, which is perfectly legal. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine is interesting reading. Of course, e-cigarette liquid is not only nicotine, so who knows what the long term effect of that is. The chromium in the heating coils worries me personally. (Kanthal and stainless steel both contain chromium. Obviously stainless steel is designed to be relatively inert, so maybe it's OK. Titanium is another option, and is implanted in the body regularly. But things are different at high temperatures.)
walid 10y ago
A slow paced serial killer is safer than a fast paced serial killer.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  Also harder to notice.
taneq 10y ago
Do e-cigarettes really have a reputation as a 'menace'? I've never heard anyone express any significant concern about them on an individual level (certainly nowhere near as much as about traditional cigarettes), and yet I've read countless news articles decrying them. It seems odd.
- linkregister 10y ago
  Only in U.S. cities will I see scare-tactic advertisements against e-cigarettes. What's strange to me is that the Truth campaign is sponsoring some of them. The Truth campaign is a result of a liability suit of several states vs the cigarette companies, and it is intended to pay for anti-smoking advertisements and smoking cessation programs. It appears to be a blatant violation of the terms of the judgement.
  - josho 10y ago
    Wow, that's a dirty tactic. Especially when you consider that what's bad about smoking is tobacco and e-cigs don't necessarily have tobacco.
    - NTripleOne 10y ago
      What's bad about smoking is burning tobacco. Important distinction.
      - montecarl 10y ago
        You can be even more general than that. Inhaling burning organic matter is probably worth avoiding. There is some good evidence that wood smoke is also quite bad for you.[1] [1] https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf
    - cr0sh 10y ago
      e-cigs don't even necessarily have nicotine. I like to vape on occasion - mostly at home, indoors, when I am coding or doing something similar on my computer in my office. My vape of choice is a custom menthol blend with caffeine - and zero nicotine.
Spooky23 10y ago
How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients, particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.
- snarfy 10y ago
  I make my own unflavored VG/PG e-juice. I buy the nicotine separately. I don't like the idea of inhaling flavors. I just want the nicotine. But yes, you are correct. A lot of the flavors are not regulated. I recall there was an issue with a carmel like flavor recently.
  - nom 10y ago
    I also omit the flavors to minimize the risks. I also vape only on very low settings and with increased nicotine. I see people using devices beyond 150W and super hot coils to 'make dem sick clouds'. They have essentially created some nice portable catalytic converters. You can even buy coils made from different alloys like Ni-Ti and some devices measure the coil resistance to control the temperature.
  - pault 10y ago
    Where do you buy the nicotine?
    - snarfy 10y ago
      Most vape stores sell unflavored e-juice + nicotine. I buy the high strength stuff (24mg) and dilute it to 6mg.
- tmearnest 10y ago
  I would never claim that they are safe without a lot more scientific evidence, but safer is plainly obvious. Vaporizers do not combust the material. Incomplete combustion of plant matter generates tons of carcinogens. The material in ecigs is vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol, nicotine, and flavors. The first two have been inhaled regularly for decades (asthma inhalers for one). Nicotine has been shown to be mainly harmless. The only thing iffy is the flavorings. They are well-known to be safe to ingest, but there's no real data on their regular inhalation.
DougN7 10y ago
I wonder about the culture around vaping. From my observations, pretty much everyone I see doing it is young and from appearances seem to be counter-culture. Doesn't mean they're bad people, but if they're the only one doing it, it doesn't make it mainstream.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  It also leads to the vape being classed in the same breath as "neckbeard" and "fedora"... which is unfortunate as hell for people just trying to quit cigarettes. The problem is, the person who quietly vapes out of sight and mind doesn't make an impression. The guy with a fedora and a neckbeard who's blowing huges clouds of vapor in a public space makes a lasting and terrible impression. At the end of the day though, if you're a smoker, the choice is pretty straightforward, and you should use a "vape". You should however, be considerate of others, and unfortunately also accept that for a while you're going to be lumped in with the more anti-social element of society.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  Too be fair, smoking is already counter culture in the USA. I'd imagine alot of reasons you don't see more vaping is age. Younger folks don't care as much(and smoke less in general) but some dude smoking malboro at 50 is far less likely to roll up with an ecig at a casual BBQ. Its a hard enough battle getting old people using email... Let alone vaping.
halotrope 10y ago
This is purely anecdotal but I have made the switch almost a year ago, also by "accident" after buying a starter kit to see what this thing was people around me started doing. Without actively trying to quit I just was not interested in regular cigarettes shortly after and managed to lower my nicotine content from 24mg to 6mg and am now planning to go lower with the next batch of liquid that I will order. This was after many failed attempts to quit from around a pack a day with the longest cessation time being around half a year. I don't think that vaping is harmless and I would not be surprised there are adverse long time health risks. But compared to real cigarettes this was a godsend for me. It is much cheaper, it does not have that disgusting smell, and it is much easier from the logistics side compared to having to buy cigarettes every day, feeling like some lowlife addict in the process. What I have now is a hobby, tinkering with my devices, building coils, trying juices (since some time I got rid of any flavours and just vape pure VG/PG). Gone is most of the shortness of breath when working out, disgusting mouthfeel in the morning, cold hands and feet and this permanent feeling of being poisoned. I gave my father a starter-kit for Christmas and he managed to quit cigarettes completely on that very day after heavily smoking for 30 years, trying to quit and suffering from the effects of smoking much more than a relatively young person does. I might have saved his life that day. So yes, maybe vaping is bad, maybe it will kill you when you are not able to quit timely. But the time spend with the addiction is a whole lot more pleasant with vaping than with cigarettes and I cannot imagine it being remotely as deadly as smoke/tar. Banning vaping because of unknown health risks is complete madness in my opinion.
rawfan 10y ago
I quit smoking 7 years ago and helped a dozen people to quit as well. NONE of the people I know who used e-cigarettes were able to quit for good. Here's my recipe: 1. Quitting sounds hard but it isn't. The majority of people who try to quit, actually succeed. 2. Don't use ANYTHING as a substitute (no chewing gum, no patches or e-cigs). Substitutes usually can never replace the original and will just keep you "hooked". 3. Read affirmative stuff (like news stories, studies). Reading about a study that showed most people quit for good, actually helps. As does reading about the consequences for continueing to smoke. That's it. Just quit. It's easy, you'll be off cigarettes in no time. Everyone can do it. Smoking is totally a 90s thing.
- yuubi 10y ago
  And the one person I know who had tried various ways to quit over the years got a vape set, tapered down gradually to no cigarettes over about 6 weeks (I think on day 1 she only had half a pack instead of her usual ≥ 1 pack habit), and hasn't had an actual cigarette in over 2 years. Different people seem to respond better to different approaches.
  - rawfan 10y ago
    I know the initial success is great. The question is, will she be able to stay off cigarettes for good (and ecigs, too). Most ecig-users I know went back to cigarettes without hesitation when they forgot to bring extra liquid to the party and they got drunk. Even after years of abstinence from real cigarettes. Everything anyone here will say is anecdotal of course.
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      I think (as someone who hasn't touched a cigarette in two years, and hasn't touched an ecig since February) that the most important part is that you have to taper down the nicotine content of the ecigs, otherwise you're just replacing one nicotine delivery system with another and not making any progress. The leap between being nicotine and tobacco free and a cigarette is far greater (mentally and physically) than between a nicotine supplement (ecigs) and a cigarette.
moron4hire 10y ago
I think that the two properties--that it is safer than cigarettes and that it's a menace--are not a contradiction. It's certainly not as bad to be around a vaper than a smoker, but that doesn't mean it's not bad to be around a vaper. It's relatively better, absolutely still on the "gross, don't do that around me" end of the spectrum. I try pretty hard to not subject people to my disgusting habits. How is it that people expect inhaling chemicals to be any different? They act like they are surprised that you don't want to be exposed to their disgusting clouds of stink.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  But it isn't nearly as stinky! And I have a feeling that it's much less noxious! And the vapour hasn't even been proven yet to kill everyone around! It's totally amazing and we should all be encouraging everyone to vape! If you can't tell, I'm agreeing with you. I pray something is done about vaping before the horse has bolted like it did with cigarettes. Just because it could be less dangerous doesn't mean it should be encouraged or indeed allowed at all. Every vaping liquid being sold should have to be tested thoroughly for safety IMO, and really I'm amazed that it doesn't have to be. Vaping is too new for long-term studies to have been performed, and also with the zillions of different kinds of vaping juices, each one with a different formulation, how can we know that they are all safe? It's an absolute joke how much secondhand smoke a non-smoker is forced to inhale nowadays with what we know about how dangerous it is, and I live in Australia, with relatively progressive smoking laws. I don't want to be subjected to secondhand smoke in public places, and I don't want to be subjected to secondhand vapor either, regardless of whether or not the inhaler considers it "safe enough". Actually it is illegal here to sell nicotene-containing liquid. I do think that nicotene-containing liquid is being sold however, as I do see people vaping around the place, and just quietly, they don't seem like the kind of people who could get their stuff together enough to make their own ecig juice.
SimpleXYZ 10y ago
>Use of the devices is slumping because they are not as good as cigarettes at giving a hit of nicotine This is total nonsense. You can use e-juice at a level that will give you nicotine poisoning.
- mcguire 10y ago
  IIUC, cigarettes have been chemically modified to increase the rate of the nicotine hit, to get nicotine through the bloodstream to where it does its nicotiney job. That's one of the reasons cigarettes are more addictive: the sudden hit followed by a quick drop off.
- zamalek 10y ago
  I find that I sometimes still crave a cigarette. I suspect that has more to do one or more of the 599 additives (4000 when burnt)[1] in them being addictive. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...
no_wave 10y ago
We actually don't know that they're safer to puff. We simply don't have any evidence that indicates that they're as or more dangerous. Every variety of plastic or food additive that ended up being proved harmful was thought safe for years. People are right to be skeptical of them for the next thirty years or so.
mcguire 10y ago
"Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture, said Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health." This is true. You can see the same thing during the (alcohol) prohibition era: because ethyl alcohol is necessary for other uses, it was mandated to be "denatured" by adding chemicals that made it less appealing to drink. When they found people still drinking it (or managing to separate the alcohol from the denaturants), they increased the toxicity of the chemicals until they were actually poisoning people. In this case, the primary goal is to prevent new smokers. Since many of the e-cigarette flavors are pleasant, they regard it as attractive to children. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that. On the other hand, if you are already smoking, your soul is lost and, to a first approximation, it would be better if you were to die as soon as possible---outside of pharmaceutical companies, there is no serious interest in cessation. Inside those companies, making nicotine gum and patches is big business, and I know people who have been chewing the gum frequently for nearly a decade. There is a certain amount of the same feeling in those who have quit smoking. To paraphrase an old joke, how do you know someone quit smoking? Don't worry, they'll tell you. If you can quit cold-turkey, good; if you can't, you are weak willed and a lesser human. In any case, the bottom line is, like in all Puritan situations, that results matter less than perceptions.
- kstrauser 10y ago
  Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture I think that's hugely simplified. There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use recreationally: - Crack - Meth - Nicotine - Heroin People who use those at all are very likely to use them a whole hell of a lot, and they have terrible health effects. I don't think it's Puritanism to recommend staying away from highly addictive substances. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that. According to HHS (http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substance-abuse/tobacco/trends.html http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substanc...): "Eighth grade students who use e-cigarettes are 10 times more likely than their peers who do not use e-cigarettes to eventually smoke tobacco cigarettes. This trend continues to a slightly lesser degree for older adolescents. Tenth and 12th grade students who use e-cigarettes are eight and six times more likely, respectively, than their peers to smoke tobacco cigarettes. This suggests that youth who use e-cigarettes are likely to become tobacco cigarette smokers as they age."
mfukar 10y ago
Pretty sure I would rank immunodeficiencies [1] as a menace, but I'm not a doctor of any kind.. [1] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php
lightedman 10y ago
As long as people keep playing the sub-ohm game, thus keeping the majority of heat dissipation in the battery (I've seen 5 milli-Ohm coils, imagine where the heat's going when an 18650 has a typical resistance of 100 milli-ohms fresh) then yes, these things will be a menace. Just the other day a sub-ohmer at the mental health facility I was re-wiring had his battery explode on him. POPFIZZLE! It was just sitting on the concrete in the shade, he wasn't even using it and it hadn't been used for at least 10 minutes. Ohm's law really needs to get more exposure in the classroom.
- alexdumitru 10y ago
  You scared me a bit, as I'm using 0.25 ohm. Can you explain what's the problem or provide some resources to read? I was pretty scared of ecigs before, seeing so many exploding.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    Okay, so... Extremely simplified (slightly incorrect) but good rule of thumb for you at the end. What happens when you hotwire a battery (a wire between positive and negative)? Current flows, discharging the battery but also often melting or exploding the battery. Normally current flow is the whole reason for a battery, but why is hotwiring bad as opposed to tossing a LED+resistor in the circuit? In a circuit, heat accumulates where majority of resistance is. So when your element has less resistance than your battery, more of the stress is going there than on your heating element. So it's hard on your power supply. If it's a cool 5v hobbyist power supply, you're probably cool. They're durable. Don't stress too much, you're more likely to break the element. But if it's a battery, you're sinking heat into something that is ultimately full of volatile chemicals and has limited capacity to fight back. You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by transferring the charge to an intermediate element (obviously your ecig rig hasn't popped yet).
    - SamReidHughes 10y ago
      It's really just that the current is less.
imgabe 10y ago
Of course it's great if you're replacing normal cigarettes with it. But why should we pretend it's healthy to do if you weren't smoking to begin with? Nicotine is still highly addictive and causes heart disease. If you're not currently using nicotine, why start?
- vilhelm_s 10y ago
  Lots of reasons! :) https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
  - wyager 10y ago
    Wow, that's crazy. The most interesting part is that for Tobacco, it's MAOIs, not nicotine, that is the most addictive.
  - imgabe 10y ago
    Interesting! Tempted to try it myself.
- draw_down 10y ago
  It's not about pretending they're healthy, it's about not pretending like they're anywhere near as terrible as smoking tobacco, which is terrible. The argument seems to be "they both involve inhaling and exhaling something that isn't air, so they're both equally bad." Personally I think it's mainly to do with the optics of it. As a society we've spent all kinds of money and effort to stop smoking, and it's now heavily stigmatized. So to see something come around that appears similar to smoking seems to drive a lot of people nuts.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Obviously don't start. But do write the FDA urging them to recognize them as at least less unhealthy than cigarettes. And removing those moronic testing charges associated with flavor and nicotine would help consumers make healthy choices instead of accepting the tobacco companies products and actually get people off of smoking.
- mwfunk 10y ago
vivekd 10y ago
I used e-cigarettes to quit smoking and I can attest that they did work for me. Although my friend and brother tried it as well without any success - so I guess its an individual thing. Although I would recommend e-cigs as a temporary quit smoking aid only and not as a replacement. I noticed I got more lung infections while vaping and my brother noticed the same thing. Also I wouldnt trust some of the flavors out there, they put anything in there. So if its a temporary measure taken as a quit smoking aid, great, as an alternative to cigs - that Im still on the fence about.
the_watcher 10y ago
It's only briefly alluded to in the piece, indirectly at that, but one of the most frustrating things about vice taxes is that they are sold as methods to disincentivize behavior, but as governments use the revenue, as that behavior falls, there's a tendency to try to create an equivalent tax on the new behavior. The worst of these are the periodic proposals for a "mileage tax" on high efficiency vehicles in states like California, which has actually been pitched (unsuccessfully) for the explicit purpose of replacing the revenue lost on gas taxes from the shift towards electric and high mileage cars.
- redblacktree 10y ago
  Gasoline taxes aren't "vice taxes." They're usage taxes that pay for the maintenance of roads and bridges.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    They are absolutely a vice tax. Every time you drive your car, you damage the road, increase traffic congestion, and put toxic chemicals into the air. The purpose of a gas tax is to discourage marginal usage. Since driving is more expensive, it makes that person who was deciding between driving their car or taking a bike to work and makes them just a little bit more likely to use the bike.
    - the_watcher 10y ago
      Yea, the argument that it's a usage tax falls apart when you point out that, even before the movement to fuel efficient vehicles, a gas tax always applied to different people differently, regardless of their usage, as so many cars get different mileage, require more expensive forms of gas, etc. Unless someone somehow tries to make an argument that the variation in tax burden is somehow progressive (which is ridiculous unless they're arguing that wealthy people as a rule drive less efficient cars), then there's really no way to claim that it's actually a use tax.
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    If the gas tax was pitched and passed as a usage tax, rather than as an incentive for purchasing more efficient vehicles, I'd have a different perspective on moving to a mileage tax. However, in California, at least some gas taxes were pitched and passed as vice taxes, and the mileage tax here was explicitly pitched to replace the revenue generated by it (by at least one CA representative). Thankfully, thus far we've resisted. Related: a usage tax for maintenance of roads and bridges has a far simpler option than taxing gas that may be used in boats, tractors, and other non-road uses: toll roads, which tax everyone who uses the roads equivalently. And before anyone argues that such a tax is regressive: a gas tax is far more regressive, as those with older, less efficient vehicles are hit harder than those with the money to buy a Tesla.
autoreleasepool 10y ago
For anyone looking at e-cigarettes, I have recommend the JUUL [0] as it is by the far the safest, best pulling, and sleekest looking e-cigarette I've tried. The only downside is that there isn't a simple way to reduce nicotine content. That aside, it's a wonderful little piece of hardware. [0] https://www.juulvapor.com/ https://www.juulvapor.com/
timwaagh 10y ago
the malboro man does not smoke e cigarettes. they're not cool. they're a medical tool for addicts. being an addict is not cool. as smoking is just silly herd behaviour of putting burning stinking sticks into your mouth and somehow being part of something cool, it's no surprise e cigarrettes don't take off. only a big shift in marketing of these things can change that. if e cigarettes where seen as the Apple of smoking surely they'd sell better.
- totalZero 10y ago
  It's 2016, cigarettes aren't cool anymore. I used to date a girl who used an ecig and would exhale a cloud of vanilla cookie aroma everywhere we went. I thought that was pretty cool to be honest.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    It's 2016, being addicted to something that kills you (regardless of flavor), isn't cool anymore.
    - evgen 10y ago
      Interesting, except for the fact that nicotine is not carcinogenic and doesn't kill you. It is about as dangerous as caffeine, and we can look around us and see how uncool that dangerous substance has become over the past few decades...
api 10y ago
That reputation as a menace was purchased with a huge amount of tobacco industry money.
dghughes 10y ago
I know many people say short term use of e-cigarettes have helped them that's great but I have to wonder about those who have no plans to stop. There seems to be a vocal battle between e-cig users and scientists each having their own claims about diacetyl. It's the famous fake butter compound for microwave popcorn that caused lung cancer in the workers who handled it. My dad has IPF and COPD two lung diseases from years of working a blue collar job breathing in small damaging particles over time. Sawdust, paint drops, metal from grinding, probably welding fumes, etc. any small particles may seem harmless but over time damage lungs. What concerns me about e-cigarettes is maybe the damage doesn't appear until 30 from now. Will we see an increase of lung disease 30 years from now?
- vertex-four 10y ago
  Note that diacetyl has been removed from almost all flavour compounds used in the creation of ejuice, aside from some custard ones, and even then there's variations without diacetyl. In any case, I doubt there's a very significant amount of people who've started ecigs who wouldn't have started cigarettes, and cigarettes are well known to cause lung damage.
jwr 10y ago
Safe or not for smokers, non-smokers should certainly not have to inhale the same substances that smokers do. I find it alarming that e-cigarette marketing managed to convince smokers that what gets exhaled is just "water vapor", and thus they can now smoke anywhere they want.
- x1798DE 10y ago
  I don't understand. In my experience these vaporizers don't have any sort of smoke that lingers around and there is no unpleasant sensation associated with breathing around ecigarette users like there is with tobacco. Even if there is more than water vapor in there, I feel like it's very unlikely that I'd be getting any sort of significant dose from their exhalations, so why should I care if they smoke inside?
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Do you have any proof it is safe, or are we just basing our decisions on feelings? I'm personally not comfortable inhaling your random unknown vaporizer gases. Many chemicals are dangerous at levels you are not able to smell, or indeed have no odor.
  - jwr 10y ago
    Are you being serious? Just google for "e-cigarette smoke harmful" and pick any of the papers that you get. Serious stuff, NHS-sponsored research and the like.
tjohns 10y ago
I find it really interesting that the bulk of the comments here are about folks using them as a smoking cessation aid. In my case, every friend I know who's started using e-cigarettes took them up without having an existing tobacco habit. Some of them add nicotine to the vape juice, some don't. I don't know how common this is, but it's certainly given vaping a negative impression for me. At the very least, it seems like an unnecessary risk given how little public health data there is.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  You sure they're not vaping weed?
transfire 10y ago
No. The media can stop dissing them at the behest of their corporate masters. That's all that's going on.

145 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their revenue stream too. It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers. The poor can't, so they just die. (I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income, rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)

LoSboccacc 10y ago
do you have access to some detailed data about state/federal income sources? cursory search says excises are around 3% of total taxation income, while on state level goes up to 14% (but still includes all sources, not just tobacco)
- linkregister 10y ago
  Indeed, the parent poster appears to be weaving a "just so" story with the moral being that government (somehow a monolith and not a composition of a representative legislature) seeks to get more revenue. This ignores the fact that federal tax receipts have been hovering around 20% of GDP for the last 40 years [1]. However, each state is different; some states' legislatures intentionally tax tobacco products as a deterrent to smoking, with demonstrable public health benefits [2]. Cigarette taxes are negatively correlated with smoking rates. I concede that the federal tobacco tax rate is too low to do anything substantial, for raising revenue or as a deterrent. It should either be raised, or scrapped and left to the states. 1. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an... 2. http://www.cbpp.org/research/higher-tobacco-taxes-can-improve-health-and-raise-revenue http://www.cbpp.org/research/higher-tobacco-taxes-can-improv...
saurik 10y ago
I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should not care that they aren't collecting the money to pay for it anymore. As an example: taxing people who use roads to pay for roads encourages people to use roads less, which puts less wear on the road surface and means you need fewer lanes and thereby less road. If this mechanism is used correctly, and I realize it often isn't, the real problem is only when there is no good way to directly tax the damage and so a proxy is used: we don't tax people for miles driven, we tax them by the gallon of gas purchased, and while that works for pollution control (and people thereby think it makes sense that people who use less gas have to pay less gas tax, under an assumption that the goal is to encourage less burning of gas), the taxes are used to fund roads, and electric cars still put as much wear on the road as gasoline cars; this screws up the incentives and makes the government kind of want people to keep burning gas so they keep getting taxes to fund the roads they continue to need. But this is a slightly different problem than what you are describing. In the case of cigarettes, I was under the impression the goal of the tax was to fund public health infrastructure due to the cost to the public of caring for victims of smoking, and so while I realize the government always mixes their accounts and crosses purposes and generally screws this up, if e-cigarettes are generally safe then that should have been a case of working incentives.
- syshum 10y ago
  >>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool. There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health Programs For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social control Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period. Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types
HuangShi 10y ago
I agree that regressive taxes (actual govt. issued taxes or implied taxes like smoking in your argument) are a tough case - especially when the people they most affect are sometimes strong supporters of the tax not being stopped. Lottery games are an example of this - the people who play are overwhelmingly poor. This article argues that lottery spending may even be the single largest tax poor families pay [1]. With regard to what you say about there being no replacement income for governments if people stopped smoking cigarettes - I'd say this is only the case if consumption was banned. If it was slowly phased out the pain wouldn't be noticeable. It's like autonomous vehicles - what really matters is the speed of creative destruction. [1] http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/ http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/
espadrine 10y ago
Every period has its black sheep. The government can replace its tobacco tax with a carbon tax.
adrianN 10y ago
Why can't people who can't afford cigarettes stop? Is nicotine gum that much more expensive than cigarettes?
- choko 10y ago
  Because it's an addiction and by design, very difficult to quit. As for the gum, I can tell you that it's a rather poor replacement for cigarettes. It doesn't really eliminate (and barely curbs) the need for a cigarette.
  - jrs95 10y ago
    I was actually quite successful with the gum, but the only thing that really made it difficult for me to quit was the withdrawal symptoms. So I suppose it's effectiveness depends on how someone is addicted to smoking.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    But it's addicting regardless of your income. Is there some expensive magic that makes quitting easy?
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Fly to a place without nicotine.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  preliminary research suggest 50% of people is dumber than average.
- Veen 10y ago
  I tried to quit with gum and it's just not a good replacement. It tastes foul, made my mouth and throat feel unpleasant, and does nothing for the "habit" part of the addiction. Vaping worked much better for me.
- Semaphor 10y ago
  Before switching to ecigs, I tried to quit with gums, nicotine patches, and herbal cigarettes. They did nothing for me (to be fair, the first time I tried ecigs, the crappy 2009 models, they didn't help either).
Shivetya 10y ago
The tobacco companies are adept at adapting to the market. I would suspect they all either have e-cig products out or are in the process of doing so. As far as taxes, the US has one of the most progressive tax schemes in the world and income is not a major wealth point for many Americans (though it does beget a ton of jealousy) Not to go too far off track. The real tax on the poor isn't cigarettes, for the poor and stupid its lottery tickets. The real tax on the poor are the vast amount of licensing and related fees that they cannot escape. It is distressing how many lower income jobs have ridiculous fees attached let alone the costs of doing business with every day government interaction. Then throw in all the fees of everyday life and boom, your hurting.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Of course they have e-cig brands; they're the disgusting gas station brands that will be the only viable business in the market in two years. It now costs $1 Million to approve a new flavor at every nicotine concentration: the tobacco companies couldn't have asked for anything better: it's like they're functionally illegal, but they also make more money. There are other measures like the $2 "tobacco" tax on ballot in California now that means you'll pay $3 for a coil worth $1. This was also likely lobbied by the tobacco companies. Finally, realize that theres nothing expensive about making these eliquids. Somehow they pulled an arbitrary way of making it more expensive than any other way of leaving tobacco out of their ass.
zamalek 10y ago
> Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes I saw this on Reddit a while back, someone pointed out that "we get it, you vape" was probably introduced by tobacco companies to create a stigma around the practice. I'm a quitting smoker, on vape (RBA) and it bloody works. If only there were such great tools for quitting other addictions.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  I remember that thread. I think someone mentioned big tobacco realizes the future is vape but wants to kill thier current ecig market competitors via the law. It's a race to the bottom with Chinese ecig vendors unless the law bans them or greatly reduces their ability to sell in the USA.... Assuming It's truly harmless, they don't have to worry about being taxed/sued like crazy or severe advertising restrictions anymore... Ecigs are a no Brainer for any tobacco exec.
- paulmd 10y ago
  In my experience the stereotype exists for a reason. Let's take Grover Norquist as an example. The man is a dedicated crusader who hasn't stopped pounding the tax-reform drum for 20 years. Know what he thinks will decide the next election? Know what he was tweeting about during the debates? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-2016-vaping_us_56ba5477e4b08ffac123075c http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-2016-vap... https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/785299905464111104 https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/785299905464111104 No, seriously: we get it, you vape.
  - zamalek 10y ago
    I have no bearing on the "hardcore" vaping community. It's a tool, I am using it to quit. If vaping was outlawed due to legislation I'm worried I'd have to rely on will alone (which has so far failed me). Irrespective of practice or belief, there are people who take things too far. The words of one nut are not representative of the entire community. "We get it, you vape" is a logical fallacy. Why? It is so trivial to draw a corollary from that incredibly naive statement: you are implicitly voicing support for people acquiring cancer - althought I certainly don't believe that is what you meant to say. This falls under the logical fallacy of "black and white." Things are not so simple, especially so far as the behavior of one vocal minority is concerned. By pure autonomous volition, I vape away from other people (generally in the company of other smokers in the allocated areas) because I know that the vapor generally clings to skin. It makes you clammy in warm weather. It's not sociable. So you're going to throw someone who is trying their level best to use this quitting aid in a respectable manner into the same bag as Norquist? 150 mutations per year in my lungs[1] x 7 years of smoking = 1050 mutations. I hope to God that I stopped soon enough. I'm so fortunate to have such an easy route out - it's not 1200 or 1350 mutations. The inability to downvote responses on HN forces me to contemplate a correct response. This is the extremely rare occasion, maybe the first, that I wish it was possible. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870712
koyote 10y ago
Could that be a reason states are slowly legalising Marijuana?
notahacker 10y ago
Tobacco taxes tend to represent a very small part of government revenue, and fairly large parts of government costs and revenue are affected by the adverse effects of tobacco use (healthcare costs, sickness benefit, reduced taxable income from people becoming seriously ill). Even if the two don't balance, the government has plenty of scope to adjust the tax base over time. Many if not most other sources of tax income are far less predictable. The prospect that public infrastructure will "tank" as a result of people choosing to smoke less is simply not a real world problem. Tobacco levies being disproportionately a "tax on the poor" is true, but health problems also are suffered more by the poor and one of the side effects of high tobacco levies in an era where e-cigarettes are a widely-available commercial product is nicotine replacement becoming much more affordable than tobacco
rawfan 10y ago
As far as I know the cost to the health system succeeds the tax income by far. At least in Germany.
ryuker16 10y ago
I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China. They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.
ryuker16 10y ago
I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China. They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

thirdsun 10y ago

For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes without any desire to quit. The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. Once you aren't using nicotine any longer all that is left is the social ritual and habit of going out for a smoke, which isn't a very convincing reason after a while. Soon you'll forgot to take your e-cigarette with you one day - you'll use it less and less. Until it simply doesn't matter any longer.

stinos 10y ago
While I also highly recommend e-cigarettes, your story is of course the ideal picture of how it should go. But it might not go that easy for everyone: even with the use of it I'm having a hard time to quit the actual cigarretes completely and it's not due to the nicotine (in fact I do not know what exactly still makes me crave for those hand-rolled cigarettes). Also nicotine can be a pleasant drug to use. Which is likely why I know several people who've been vaping for years and have a hard time quitting, or even just don't want to quit. But they did quit smoking so that's a huge win already of course.
- jrockway 10y ago
  I'm not sure why the goal is quitting. Nicotine itself isn't the problem with cigarettes, it's just a stimulant and has the usual stimulant effects. If you have high blood pressure or trouble sleeping, probably not a great drug to use. But the same can be said of coffee, which is perfectly legal. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine is interesting reading. Of course, e-cigarette liquid is not only nicotine, so who knows what the long term effect of that is. The chromium in the heating coils worries me personally. (Kanthal and stainless steel both contain chromium. Obviously stainless steel is designed to be relatively inert, so maybe it's OK. Titanium is another option, and is implanted in the body regularly. But things are different at high temperatures.)

walid 10y ago

A slow paced serial killer is safer than a fast paced serial killer.

NTripleOne 10y ago
Also harder to notice.

taneq 10y ago

Do e-cigarettes really have a reputation as a 'menace'? I've never heard anyone express any significant concern about them on an individual level (certainly nowhere near as much as about traditional cigarettes), and yet I've read countless news articles decrying them. It seems odd.

linkregister 10y ago
Only in U.S. cities will I see scare-tactic advertisements against e-cigarettes. What's strange to me is that the Truth campaign is sponsoring some of them. The Truth campaign is a result of a liability suit of several states vs the cigarette companies, and it is intended to pay for anti-smoking advertisements and smoking cessation programs. It appears to be a blatant violation of the terms of the judgement.
- josho 10y ago
  Wow, that's a dirty tactic. Especially when you consider that what's bad about smoking is tobacco and e-cigs don't necessarily have tobacco.
  - NTripleOne 10y ago
    What's bad about smoking is burning tobacco. Important distinction.
    - montecarl 10y ago
      You can be even more general than that. Inhaling burning organic matter is probably worth avoiding. There is some good evidence that wood smoke is also quite bad for you.[1] [1] https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    e-cigs don't even necessarily have nicotine. I like to vape on occasion - mostly at home, indoors, when I am coding or doing something similar on my computer in my office. My vape of choice is a custom menthol blend with caffeine - and zero nicotine.

Spooky23 10y ago

How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients, particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.

snarfy 10y ago
I make my own unflavored VG/PG e-juice. I buy the nicotine separately. I don't like the idea of inhaling flavors. I just want the nicotine. But yes, you are correct. A lot of the flavors are not regulated. I recall there was an issue with a carmel like flavor recently.
- nom 10y ago
  I also omit the flavors to minimize the risks. I also vape only on very low settings and with increased nicotine. I see people using devices beyond 150W and super hot coils to 'make dem sick clouds'. They have essentially created some nice portable catalytic converters. You can even buy coils made from different alloys like Ni-Ti and some devices measure the coil resistance to control the temperature.
- pault 10y ago
  Where do you buy the nicotine?
  - snarfy 10y ago
    Most vape stores sell unflavored e-juice + nicotine. I buy the high strength stuff (24mg) and dilute it to 6mg.
tmearnest 10y ago
I would never claim that they are safe without a lot more scientific evidence, but safer is plainly obvious. Vaporizers do not combust the material. Incomplete combustion of plant matter generates tons of carcinogens. The material in ecigs is vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol, nicotine, and flavors. The first two have been inhaled regularly for decades (asthma inhalers for one). Nicotine has been shown to be mainly harmless. The only thing iffy is the flavorings. They are well-known to be safe to ingest, but there's no real data on their regular inhalation.

DougN7 10y ago

I wonder about the culture around vaping. From my observations, pretty much everyone I see doing it is young and from appearances seem to be counter-culture. Doesn't mean they're bad people, but if they're the only one doing it, it doesn't make it mainstream.

M_Grey 10y ago
It also leads to the vape being classed in the same breath as "neckbeard" and "fedora"... which is unfortunate as hell for people just trying to quit cigarettes. The problem is, the person who quietly vapes out of sight and mind doesn't make an impression. The guy with a fedora and a neckbeard who's blowing huges clouds of vapor in a public space makes a lasting and terrible impression. At the end of the day though, if you're a smoker, the choice is pretty straightforward, and you should use a "vape". You should however, be considerate of others, and unfortunately also accept that for a while you're going to be lumped in with the more anti-social element of society.
ryuker16 10y ago
Too be fair, smoking is already counter culture in the USA. I'd imagine alot of reasons you don't see more vaping is age. Younger folks don't care as much(and smoke less in general) but some dude smoking malboro at 50 is far less likely to roll up with an ecig at a casual BBQ. Its a hard enough battle getting old people using email... Let alone vaping.

halotrope 10y ago

This is purely anecdotal but I have made the switch almost a year ago, also by "accident" after buying a starter kit to see what this thing was people around me started doing. Without actively trying to quit I just was not interested in regular cigarettes shortly after and managed to lower my nicotine content from 24mg to 6mg and am now planning to go lower with the next batch of liquid that I will order. This was after many failed attempts to quit from around a pack a day with the longest cessation time being around half a year. I don't think that vaping is harmless and I would not be surprised there are adverse long time health risks. But compared to real cigarettes this was a godsend for me. It is much cheaper, it does not have that disgusting smell, and it is much easier from the logistics side compared to having to buy cigarettes every day, feeling like some lowlife addict in the process. What I have now is a hobby, tinkering with my devices, building coils, trying juices (since some time I got rid of any flavours and just vape pure VG/PG). Gone is most of the shortness of breath when working out, disgusting mouthfeel in the morning, cold hands and feet and this permanent feeling of being poisoned. I gave my father a starter-kit for Christmas and he managed to quit cigarettes completely on that very day after heavily smoking for 30 years, trying to quit and suffering from the effects of smoking much more than a relatively young person does. I might have saved his life that day. So yes, maybe vaping is bad, maybe it will kill you when you are not able to quit timely. But the time spend with the addiction is a whole lot more pleasant with vaping than with cigarettes and I cannot imagine it being remotely as deadly as smoke/tar. Banning vaping because of unknown health risks is complete madness in my opinion.

rawfan 10y ago

I quit smoking 7 years ago and helped a dozen people to quit as well. NONE of the people I know who used e-cigarettes were able to quit for good. Here's my recipe: 1. Quitting sounds hard but it isn't. The majority of people who try to quit, actually succeed. 2. Don't use ANYTHING as a substitute (no chewing gum, no patches or e-cigs). Substitutes usually can never replace the original and will just keep you "hooked". 3. Read affirmative stuff (like news stories, studies). Reading about a study that showed most people quit for good, actually helps. As does reading about the consequences for continueing to smoke. That's it. Just quit. It's easy, you'll be off cigarettes in no time. Everyone can do it. Smoking is totally a 90s thing.

yuubi 10y ago
And the one person I know who had tried various ways to quit over the years got a vape set, tapered down gradually to no cigarettes over about 6 weeks (I think on day 1 she only had half a pack instead of her usual ≥ 1 pack habit), and hasn't had an actual cigarette in over 2 years. Different people seem to respond better to different approaches.
- rawfan 10y ago
  I know the initial success is great. The question is, will she be able to stay off cigarettes for good (and ecigs, too). Most ecig-users I know went back to cigarettes without hesitation when they forgot to bring extra liquid to the party and they got drunk. Even after years of abstinence from real cigarettes. Everything anyone here will say is anecdotal of course.
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    I think (as someone who hasn't touched a cigarette in two years, and hasn't touched an ecig since February) that the most important part is that you have to taper down the nicotine content of the ecigs, otherwise you're just replacing one nicotine delivery system with another and not making any progress. The leap between being nicotine and tobacco free and a cigarette is far greater (mentally and physically) than between a nicotine supplement (ecigs) and a cigarette.

moron4hire 10y ago

I think that the two properties--that it is safer than cigarettes and that it's a menace--are not a contradiction. It's certainly not as bad to be around a vaper than a smoker, but that doesn't mean it's not bad to be around a vaper. It's relatively better, absolutely still on the "gross, don't do that around me" end of the spectrum. I try pretty hard to not subject people to my disgusting habits. How is it that people expect inhaling chemicals to be any different? They act like they are surprised that you don't want to be exposed to their disgusting clouds of stink.

brokenmachine 10y ago
But it isn't nearly as stinky! And I have a feeling that it's much less noxious! And the vapour hasn't even been proven yet to kill everyone around! It's totally amazing and we should all be encouraging everyone to vape! If you can't tell, I'm agreeing with you. I pray something is done about vaping before the horse has bolted like it did with cigarettes. Just because it could be less dangerous doesn't mean it should be encouraged or indeed allowed at all. Every vaping liquid being sold should have to be tested thoroughly for safety IMO, and really I'm amazed that it doesn't have to be. Vaping is too new for long-term studies to have been performed, and also with the zillions of different kinds of vaping juices, each one with a different formulation, how can we know that they are all safe? It's an absolute joke how much secondhand smoke a non-smoker is forced to inhale nowadays with what we know about how dangerous it is, and I live in Australia, with relatively progressive smoking laws. I don't want to be subjected to secondhand smoke in public places, and I don't want to be subjected to secondhand vapor either, regardless of whether or not the inhaler considers it "safe enough". Actually it is illegal here to sell nicotene-containing liquid. I do think that nicotene-containing liquid is being sold however, as I do see people vaping around the place, and just quietly, they don't seem like the kind of people who could get their stuff together enough to make their own ecig juice.

SimpleXYZ 10y ago

>Use of the devices is slumping because they are not as good as cigarettes at giving a hit of nicotine This is total nonsense. You can use e-juice at a level that will give you nicotine poisoning.

mcguire 10y ago
IIUC, cigarettes have been chemically modified to increase the rate of the nicotine hit, to get nicotine through the bloodstream to where it does its nicotiney job. That's one of the reasons cigarettes are more addictive: the sudden hit followed by a quick drop off.
zamalek 10y ago
I find that I sometimes still crave a cigarette. I suspect that has more to do one or more of the 599 additives (4000 when burnt)[1] in them being addictive. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...

no_wave 10y ago

We actually don't know that they're safer to puff. We simply don't have any evidence that indicates that they're as or more dangerous. Every variety of plastic or food additive that ended up being proved harmful was thought safe for years. People are right to be skeptical of them for the next thirty years or so.

mcguire 10y ago

"Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture, said Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health." This is true. You can see the same thing during the (alcohol) prohibition era: because ethyl alcohol is necessary for other uses, it was mandated to be "denatured" by adding chemicals that made it less appealing to drink. When they found people still drinking it (or managing to separate the alcohol from the denaturants), they increased the toxicity of the chemicals until they were actually poisoning people. In this case, the primary goal is to prevent new smokers. Since many of the e-cigarette flavors are pleasant, they regard it as attractive to children. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that. On the other hand, if you are already smoking, your soul is lost and, to a first approximation, it would be better if you were to die as soon as possible---outside of pharmaceutical companies, there is no serious interest in cessation. Inside those companies, making nicotine gum and patches is big business, and I know people who have been chewing the gum frequently for nearly a decade. There is a certain amount of the same feeling in those who have quit smoking. To paraphrase an old joke, how do you know someone quit smoking? Don't worry, they'll tell you. If you can quit cold-turkey, good; if you can't, you are weak willed and a lesser human. In any case, the bottom line is, like in all Puritan situations, that results matter less than perceptions.

kstrauser 10y ago
Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture I think that's hugely simplified. There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use recreationally: - Crack - Meth - Nicotine - Heroin People who use those at all are very likely to use them a whole hell of a lot, and they have terrible health effects. I don't think it's Puritanism to recommend staying away from highly addictive substances. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that. According to HHS (http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substance-abuse/tobacco/trends.html http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substanc...): "Eighth grade students who use e-cigarettes are 10 times more likely than their peers who do not use e-cigarettes to eventually smoke tobacco cigarettes. This trend continues to a slightly lesser degree for older adolescents. Tenth and 12th grade students who use e-cigarettes are eight and six times more likely, respectively, than their peers to smoke tobacco cigarettes. This suggests that youth who use e-cigarettes are likely to become tobacco cigarette smokers as they age."

mfukar 10y ago

Pretty sure I would rank immunodeficiencies [1] as a menace, but I'm not a doctor of any kind.. [1] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php

lightedman 10y ago

As long as people keep playing the sub-ohm game, thus keeping the majority of heat dissipation in the battery (I've seen 5 milli-Ohm coils, imagine where the heat's going when an 18650 has a typical resistance of 100 milli-ohms fresh) then yes, these things will be a menace. Just the other day a sub-ohmer at the mental health facility I was re-wiring had his battery explode on him. POPFIZZLE! It was just sitting on the concrete in the shade, he wasn't even using it and it hadn't been used for at least 10 minutes. Ohm's law really needs to get more exposure in the classroom.

alexdumitru 10y ago
You scared me a bit, as I'm using 0.25 ohm. Can you explain what's the problem or provide some resources to read? I was pretty scared of ecigs before, seeing so many exploding.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Okay, so... Extremely simplified (slightly incorrect) but good rule of thumb for you at the end. What happens when you hotwire a battery (a wire between positive and negative)? Current flows, discharging the battery but also often melting or exploding the battery. Normally current flow is the whole reason for a battery, but why is hotwiring bad as opposed to tossing a LED+resistor in the circuit? In a circuit, heat accumulates where majority of resistance is. So when your element has less resistance than your battery, more of the stress is going there than on your heating element. So it's hard on your power supply. If it's a cool 5v hobbyist power supply, you're probably cool. They're durable. Don't stress too much, you're more likely to break the element. But if it's a battery, you're sinking heat into something that is ultimately full of volatile chemicals and has limited capacity to fight back. You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by transferring the charge to an intermediate element (obviously your ecig rig hasn't popped yet).
  - SamReidHughes 10y ago
    It's really just that the current is less.

imgabe 10y ago

Of course it's great if you're replacing normal cigarettes with it. But why should we pretend it's healthy to do if you weren't smoking to begin with? Nicotine is still highly addictive and causes heart disease. If you're not currently using nicotine, why start?

vilhelm_s 10y ago
Lots of reasons! :) https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
- wyager 10y ago
  Wow, that's crazy. The most interesting part is that for Tobacco, it's MAOIs, not nicotine, that is the most addictive.
- imgabe 10y ago
  Interesting! Tempted to try it myself.
draw_down 10y ago
It's not about pretending they're healthy, it's about not pretending like they're anywhere near as terrible as smoking tobacco, which is terrible. The argument seems to be "they both involve inhaling and exhaling something that isn't air, so they're both equally bad." Personally I think it's mainly to do with the optics of it. As a society we've spent all kinds of money and effort to stop smoking, and it's now heavily stigmatized. So to see something come around that appears similar to smoking seems to drive a lot of people nuts.
duaneb 10y ago
Obviously don't start. But do write the FDA urging them to recognize them as at least less unhealthy than cigarettes. And removing those moronic testing charges associated with flavor and nicotine would help consumers make healthy choices instead of accepting the tobacco companies products and actually get people off of smoking.
mwfunk 10y ago

vivekd 10y ago

I used e-cigarettes to quit smoking and I can attest that they did work for me. Although my friend and brother tried it as well without any success - so I guess its an individual thing. Although I would recommend e-cigs as a temporary quit smoking aid only and not as a replacement. I noticed I got more lung infections while vaping and my brother noticed the same thing. Also I wouldnt trust some of the flavors out there, they put anything in there. So if its a temporary measure taken as a quit smoking aid, great, as an alternative to cigs - that Im still on the fence about.

the_watcher 10y ago

It's only briefly alluded to in the piece, indirectly at that, but one of the most frustrating things about vice taxes is that they are sold as methods to disincentivize behavior, but as governments use the revenue, as that behavior falls, there's a tendency to try to create an equivalent tax on the new behavior. The worst of these are the periodic proposals for a "mileage tax" on high efficiency vehicles in states like California, which has actually been pitched (unsuccessfully) for the explicit purpose of replacing the revenue lost on gas taxes from the shift towards electric and high mileage cars.

redblacktree 10y ago
Gasoline taxes aren't "vice taxes." They're usage taxes that pay for the maintenance of roads and bridges.
- stale2002 10y ago
  They are absolutely a vice tax. Every time you drive your car, you damage the road, increase traffic congestion, and put toxic chemicals into the air. The purpose of a gas tax is to discourage marginal usage. Since driving is more expensive, it makes that person who was deciding between driving their car or taking a bike to work and makes them just a little bit more likely to use the bike.
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    Yea, the argument that it's a usage tax falls apart when you point out that, even before the movement to fuel efficient vehicles, a gas tax always applied to different people differently, regardless of their usage, as so many cars get different mileage, require more expensive forms of gas, etc. Unless someone somehow tries to make an argument that the variation in tax burden is somehow progressive (which is ridiculous unless they're arguing that wealthy people as a rule drive less efficient cars), then there's really no way to claim that it's actually a use tax.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  If the gas tax was pitched and passed as a usage tax, rather than as an incentive for purchasing more efficient vehicles, I'd have a different perspective on moving to a mileage tax. However, in California, at least some gas taxes were pitched and passed as vice taxes, and the mileage tax here was explicitly pitched to replace the revenue generated by it (by at least one CA representative). Thankfully, thus far we've resisted. Related: a usage tax for maintenance of roads and bridges has a far simpler option than taxing gas that may be used in boats, tractors, and other non-road uses: toll roads, which tax everyone who uses the roads equivalently. And before anyone argues that such a tax is regressive: a gas tax is far more regressive, as those with older, less efficient vehicles are hit harder than those with the money to buy a Tesla.

autoreleasepool 10y ago

For anyone looking at e-cigarettes, I have recommend the JUUL [0] as it is by the far the safest, best pulling, and sleekest looking e-cigarette I've tried. The only downside is that there isn't a simple way to reduce nicotine content. That aside, it's a wonderful little piece of hardware. [0] https://www.juulvapor.com/ https://www.juulvapor.com/

timwaagh 10y ago

the malboro man does not smoke e cigarettes. they're not cool. they're a medical tool for addicts. being an addict is not cool. as smoking is just silly herd behaviour of putting burning stinking sticks into your mouth and somehow being part of something cool, it's no surprise e cigarrettes don't take off. only a big shift in marketing of these things can change that. if e cigarettes where seen as the Apple of smoking surely they'd sell better.

totalZero 10y ago
It's 2016, cigarettes aren't cool anymore. I used to date a girl who used an ecig and would exhale a cloud of vanilla cookie aroma everywhere we went. I thought that was pretty cool to be honest.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  It's 2016, being addicted to something that kills you (regardless of flavor), isn't cool anymore.
  - evgen 10y ago
    Interesting, except for the fact that nicotine is not carcinogenic and doesn't kill you. It is about as dangerous as caffeine, and we can look around us and see how uncool that dangerous substance has become over the past few decades...

api 10y ago

That reputation as a menace was purchased with a huge amount of tobacco industry money.

dghughes 10y ago

I know many people say short term use of e-cigarettes have helped them that's great but I have to wonder about those who have no plans to stop. There seems to be a vocal battle between e-cig users and scientists each having their own claims about diacetyl. It's the famous fake butter compound for microwave popcorn that caused lung cancer in the workers who handled it. My dad has IPF and COPD two lung diseases from years of working a blue collar job breathing in small damaging particles over time. Sawdust, paint drops, metal from grinding, probably welding fumes, etc. any small particles may seem harmless but over time damage lungs. What concerns me about e-cigarettes is maybe the damage doesn't appear until 30 from now. Will we see an increase of lung disease 30 years from now?

vertex-four 10y ago
Note that diacetyl has been removed from almost all flavour compounds used in the creation of ejuice, aside from some custard ones, and even then there's variations without diacetyl. In any case, I doubt there's a very significant amount of people who've started ecigs who wouldn't have started cigarettes, and cigarettes are well known to cause lung damage.

jwr 10y ago

Safe or not for smokers, non-smokers should certainly not have to inhale the same substances that smokers do. I find it alarming that e-cigarette marketing managed to convince smokers that what gets exhaled is just "water vapor", and thus they can now smoke anywhere they want.

x1798DE 10y ago
I don't understand. In my experience these vaporizers don't have any sort of smoke that lingers around and there is no unpleasant sensation associated with breathing around ecigarette users like there is with tobacco. Even if there is more than water vapor in there, I feel like it's very unlikely that I'd be getting any sort of significant dose from their exhalations, so why should I care if they smoke inside?
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Do you have any proof it is safe, or are we just basing our decisions on feelings? I'm personally not comfortable inhaling your random unknown vaporizer gases. Many chemicals are dangerous at levels you are not able to smell, or indeed have no odor.
- jwr 10y ago
  Are you being serious? Just google for "e-cigarette smoke harmful" and pick any of the papers that you get. Serious stuff, NHS-sponsored research and the like.

tjohns 10y ago

I find it really interesting that the bulk of the comments here are about folks using them as a smoking cessation aid. In my case, every friend I know who's started using e-cigarettes took them up without having an existing tobacco habit. Some of them add nicotine to the vape juice, some don't. I don't know how common this is, but it's certainly given vaping a negative impression for me. At the very least, it seems like an unnecessary risk given how little public health data there is.

ryuker16 10y ago
You sure they're not vaping weed?

transfire 10y ago

No. The media can stop dissing them at the behest of their corporate masters. That's all that's going on.