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Great comment. I‘m a bit afraid that alarmists and the likes will manage to restrict the sale and use of electronic cigarettes and nicotine-liquids for adults,

Great comment. I‘m a bit afraid that alarmists and the likes will manage to restrict the sale and use of electronic cigarettes and nicotine-liquids for adults, as they already managed to do in a number of countries. Products like the Juul are orders of magnitude less harmful than real smoking and I think adults should absolutely have the choice to use them. And yeah, many of them apparently like flavors such as Mango and Bubblegum instead of using liquids that claim to taste like tobacco.

Balgair 7y ago
> Products like the Juul are orders of magnitude less harmful than real smoking Source?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Mostly the absence of the carcinogens from combustion. I don’t think there’s clear evidence that the contents of ecigs are safer (too new), but we know how terrible tobacco combustion is. We also know that nicotine itself isn’t particularly harmful.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    > We also know that nicotine itself isn’t particularly harmful. Source?
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
      Elsewhere in this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20536162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20536162
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nicotine-all-bad/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nicotine-all-b...
      - Balgair 7y ago
        > So far the answers aren't clear. That article contains no information that clearly states that nicotine is harmless, just that using vapes and nicotinic gums are less harmful than the use of cigarettes. To be clear, it does not say that nicotine is harmful, nor does it say that it is harmless.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        > We also know that nicotine itself isn’t particularly harmful. I.e. not harmless, but not especially harmful. Like caffeine. Remember, humans have a 100% mortality rate.
        Balgair 7y ago
        Despite the fact that you cannot get out of life alive, the evidence seems to be unclear on if nicotine is harmful or not and what, if any, effects it may have on the quality of a life that will end or the effects on the time of death.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Yes, but that is true for a lot of substances, like again, caffeine. All we know is that we have yet to find evidence that nicotine is especially harmful, and that’s just how it works in the biological sciences. If everything required proof of no harm, we would simply die of starvation.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      US Surgeon General's report is pretty good. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/tobacco/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/... In the context of tobacco the nicotine is addictive; possibly carcinogenic; but there's a load of other stuff in tobacco which is far worse. I think it would be foolish to allow 16 year olds to have access to nicotine products unless they're already smokers.
- dave7 7y ago
  There are many, here is one I hope you find reputable - The Royal Collage of Physicians. https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/promote-e-cigarettes-widely-substitute-smoking-says-new-rcp-report https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/promote-e-cigarettes-widely... A quote: "Although it is not possible to estimate the long-term health risks associated with e-cigarettes precisely, the available data suggest that they are unlikely to exceed 5% of those associated with smoked tobacco products, and may well be substantially lower than this figure"
  - Balgair 7y ago
    >... it is not possible to estimate the long-term health risks associated with e-cigarettes precisely... > the possibility of some harm from long-term e-cigarette use cannot be dismissed due to inhalation of the ingredients other than nicotine > Smokers should be reassured that these products can help them quit all tobacco use forever. > This new report builds on that work and concludes that, for all the potential risks involved, harm reduction has huge potential to prevent death and disability from tobacco use, and to hasten our progress to a tobacco-free society. The report is pretty clear in that vaping is likely to be better than cigarettes on the health of the UK. Not that vaping is harm free, to be clear.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
The great lesson from the Facebook et al. debacle we are going through is that a technology that starts out benign and sometimes very useful (think Facebook in the first few years) can morph over time under economic and ideological pressures into something highly harmful to society at large (Facebook today). Second, the expertise developed due to a product existing can also be dangerous. Every technique created by the online-ad industry is now being used to derail democracy across the world. Let's analyze Juul using the second point. Juul is an experiment modern technology is being leveraged to determine how quickly an addictive substance can be used to alter brain chemistry. The techniques learned from e-cigarettes (using data from tens of thousands of users) will in a few years be used for other hard drugs. Juul is turning a blind eye to kids using its products, but the drug mafias will actively pursue kids and get them hooked onto highly dangerous drugs using new high tech drug delivery devices. Yes, these devices already exist, but they are not being widely used and studied by scientists in methodical fashion, and published in journals. Now the first point. Pretty soon, competitors will decide that the easy way to beat Juul is to make their own e-cigarette more addictive. From there, its going to be a rat race to the bottom where every company in the space will devolve to R&D labs trying to create the most addictive e-cigarette possible. Do you really want to live in this future?

Balgair 7y ago

> Products like the Juul are orders of magnitude less harmful than real smoking Source?

Scoundreller 7y ago
Mostly the absence of the carcinogens from combustion. I don’t think there’s clear evidence that the contents of ecigs are safer (too new), but we know how terrible tobacco combustion is. We also know that nicotine itself isn’t particularly harmful.
- Balgair 7y ago
  > We also know that nicotine itself isn’t particularly harmful. Source?
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    Elsewhere in this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20536162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20536162
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nicotine-all-bad/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nicotine-all-b...
    - Balgair 7y ago
      > So far the answers aren't clear. That article contains no information that clearly states that nicotine is harmless, just that using vapes and nicotinic gums are less harmful than the use of cigarettes. To be clear, it does not say that nicotine is harmful, nor does it say that it is harmless.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        > We also know that nicotine itself isn’t particularly harmful. I.e. not harmless, but not especially harmful. Like caffeine. Remember, humans have a 100% mortality rate.
        Balgair 7y ago
        Despite the fact that you cannot get out of life alive, the evidence seems to be unclear on if nicotine is harmful or not and what, if any, effects it may have on the quality of a life that will end or the effects on the time of death.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Yes, but that is true for a lot of substances, like again, caffeine. All we know is that we have yet to find evidence that nicotine is especially harmful, and that’s just how it works in the biological sciences. If everything required proof of no harm, we would simply die of starvation.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    US Surgeon General's report is pretty good. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/tobacco/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/... In the context of tobacco the nicotine is addictive; possibly carcinogenic; but there's a load of other stuff in tobacco which is far worse. I think it would be foolish to allow 16 year olds to have access to nicotine products unless they're already smokers.
dave7 7y ago
There are many, here is one I hope you find reputable - The Royal Collage of Physicians. https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/promote-e-cigarettes-widely-substitute-smoking-says-new-rcp-report https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/promote-e-cigarettes-widely... A quote: "Although it is not possible to estimate the long-term health risks associated with e-cigarettes precisely, the available data suggest that they are unlikely to exceed 5% of those associated with smoked tobacco products, and may well be substantially lower than this figure"
- Balgair 7y ago
  >... it is not possible to estimate the long-term health risks associated with e-cigarettes precisely... > the possibility of some harm from long-term e-cigarette use cannot be dismissed due to inhalation of the ingredients other than nicotine > Smokers should be reassured that these products can help them quit all tobacco use forever. > This new report builds on that work and concludes that, for all the potential risks involved, harm reduction has huge potential to prevent death and disability from tobacco use, and to hasten our progress to a tobacco-free society. The report is pretty clear in that vaping is likely to be better than cigarettes on the health of the UK. Not that vaping is harm free, to be clear.

abdullahkhalids 7y ago

The great lesson from the Facebook et al. debacle we are going through is that a technology that starts out benign and sometimes very useful (think Facebook in the first few years) can morph over time under economic and ideological pressures into something highly harmful to society at large (Facebook today). Second, the expertise developed due to a product existing can also be dangerous. Every technique created by the online-ad industry is now being used to derail democracy across the world. Let's analyze Juul using the second point. Juul is an experiment modern technology is being leveraged to determine how quickly an addictive substance can be used to alter brain chemistry. The techniques learned from e-cigarettes (using data from tens of thousands of users) will in a few years be used for other hard drugs. Juul is turning a blind eye to kids using its products, but the drug mafias will actively pursue kids and get them hooked onto highly dangerous drugs using new high tech drug delivery devices. Yes, these devices already exist, but they are not being widely used and studied by scientists in methodical fashion, and published in journals. Now the first point. Pretty soon, competitors will decide that the easy way to beat Juul is to make their own e-cigarette more addictive. From there, its going to be a rat race to the bottom where every company in the space will devolve to R&D labs trying to create the most addictive e-cigarette possible. Do you really want to live in this future?