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Sorry, yes, safer alternative to smoking cigarettes Fair enough, I'm sure it's not healthy to chronically inhale anything other than air > If you're asking ab

Sorry, yes, safer alternative to smoking cigarettes Fair enough, I'm sure it's not healthy to chronically inhale anything other than air > If you're asking about drugs with similar effects to nicotine that are less addictive, I'm not aware of any. You could always purchase vaping liquid that doesn't contain any nicotine though. I was asking that but a broader question for me is, are there any safe replacements for cigarettes out there that match the qualities that cigarettes have without the harmful side effects (the idea being if you could create something that was just as fulfilling, addictive, etc. but without the negative side effects you could dramatically decrease the health toll of cigarette smoking). You could argue vapes are that product but it seems like the jury is still out on how much better they actually are than cigarettes and the trouble with attracting new users into the market

Reelin 7y ago
> it seems like the jury is still out on how much better they actually are than cigarettes No. IT IS NOT. You have been mislead. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there is currently a lot of FUD and propaganda surrounding vaping. Perhaps due to the term "e-cigarette"? Other than artificial flavors, the major constituents in the liquid are what I listed above - propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and nicotine. Only nicotine has significant documented health effects (at least that I am aware of), and even that's almost entirely down to it being addictive. Bear in mind that I'm comparing this to smoking weed or drinking alcohol - both extremely common pastimes throughout the world, and both clearly more harmful than vaping. Anyone trying to scare you off of vaping while not worrying about those other two activities is out of touch with reality. Of course, abstaining from all of those would be the best advice as far as your long term health is concerned.
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  Do you have any solid RCTs or meta analysis you could point me to about how much better they are than cigarettes? Agreed, there's a lot of FUD, but a lot of it is coming from sources that give me a lot of hesitation to doubt (lots of public health leaders, tobacco control groups, WHO people) I understand alcohol or weed is more harmful than vaping, I'm personally just interested in cigarettes as that seems to be the replacement part, I'm not sure someone would quit drinking or smoking weed and replace with vaping Edit: I know you pointed me to a solid report in an earlier comment, any additional ones? There are huge numbers of reports on tobacco in general and it's easy to find 1 or 2 reports reflecting one opinion or another
  - mattbessey 7y ago
    See https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes which cites > Public Health England's 2015 independent evidence review found that, based on the available evidence, vaping is around 95% less harmful than smoking. The Royal College of Physicians came to a similar conclusion in its 2016 report 'Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction'.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > Agreed, there's a lot of FUD, but a lot of it is coming from sources that give me a lot of hesitation to doubt (lots of public health leaders, tobacco control groups, WHO people) None of these sources are saying that vaping is comparable to smoking in terms of harms caused. They're saying that some harm is caused, and that we don't know what harms are caused, and so the precautionary principle means we should make sure that non-smokers do not take up vaping, and that smokers should use other nicotine replacement methods.
    - pavelludiq 7y ago
      > we should make sure that non-smokers do not take up vaping How about we let adults do as they please instead. The most anybody should ever do about vaping is warn people that maybe it's not the safest thing in the world. Instead in the EU we have a ridiculous law that makes it illegal to sell nicotine liquid in container bigger than 10ml, which means that if I don't want to spend twice what I used on cigarettes, I have to buy non-nicotine 100ml bottles of liquid and then buy separate 10ml bottles of nicotine concentrate and mix them myself, doing the math myself to get the proportion I used to be able to just order and generating a small pile of empty small plastic bottles every month because people who can't sleep at night unless somebody does something about everything!!!OHGODSTHECHILBREN!!! keep coming up with stupid ideas like that. Please we should not be making sure of anything! We don't need to be sure that every body is absolutely safe all the time, put a warning label and let us do as we wish with our health.
      - julianlam 7y ago
- Kiro 7y ago
  You sound extremely biased.
- matwood 7y ago
  > Bear in mind that I'm comparing this to smoking weed or drinking alcohol - both extremely common pastimes throughout the world, and both clearly more harmful than vaping. What about the dosage though? The people I know who drink alcohol and have a beer or 2 on the weekend. The people I see who vape, do it constantly. Are there people who vape once or twice a week?
troydavis 7y ago
Here’s some detailed analyses from neutral third parties about just how much less hazardous vaping is than smoking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18717697#18718028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18717697#18718028 (For THC, strongly consider eliminating lung damage entirely by consuming edibles instead of either vaping or smoking.)
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  Thanks for this! Agreed on THC, but I'm purely looking at cigarettes/tobacco right now A few Swedes have also highly recommended looking into Snus as an alternative and I need to do some more research there
  - fragmede 7y ago
    Snuff or chewing tobacco, as it is more commonly known in the states, still causes cancer.

Reelin 7y ago

> it seems like the jury is still out on how much better they actually are than cigarettes No. IT IS NOT. You have been mislead. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there is currently a lot of FUD and propaganda surrounding vaping. Perhaps due to the term "e-cigarette"? Other than artificial flavors, the major constituents in the liquid are what I listed above - propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and nicotine. Only nicotine has significant documented health effects (at least that I am aware of), and even that's almost entirely down to it being addictive. Bear in mind that I'm comparing this to smoking weed or drinking alcohol - both extremely common pastimes throughout the world, and both clearly more harmful than vaping. Anyone trying to scare you off of vaping while not worrying about those other two activities is out of touch with reality. Of course, abstaining from all of those would be the best advice as far as your long term health is concerned.

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
Do you have any solid RCTs or meta analysis you could point me to about how much better they are than cigarettes? Agreed, there's a lot of FUD, but a lot of it is coming from sources that give me a lot of hesitation to doubt (lots of public health leaders, tobacco control groups, WHO people) I understand alcohol or weed is more harmful than vaping, I'm personally just interested in cigarettes as that seems to be the replacement part, I'm not sure someone would quit drinking or smoking weed and replace with vaping Edit: I know you pointed me to a solid report in an earlier comment, any additional ones? There are huge numbers of reports on tobacco in general and it's easy to find 1 or 2 reports reflecting one opinion or another
- mattbessey 7y ago
  See https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes which cites > Public Health England's 2015 independent evidence review found that, based on the available evidence, vaping is around 95% less harmful than smoking. The Royal College of Physicians came to a similar conclusion in its 2016 report 'Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction'.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > Agreed, there's a lot of FUD, but a lot of it is coming from sources that give me a lot of hesitation to doubt (lots of public health leaders, tobacco control groups, WHO people) None of these sources are saying that vaping is comparable to smoking in terms of harms caused. They're saying that some harm is caused, and that we don't know what harms are caused, and so the precautionary principle means we should make sure that non-smokers do not take up vaping, and that smokers should use other nicotine replacement methods.
  - pavelludiq 7y ago
    > we should make sure that non-smokers do not take up vaping How about we let adults do as they please instead. The most anybody should ever do about vaping is warn people that maybe it's not the safest thing in the world. Instead in the EU we have a ridiculous law that makes it illegal to sell nicotine liquid in container bigger than 10ml, which means that if I don't want to spend twice what I used on cigarettes, I have to buy non-nicotine 100ml bottles of liquid and then buy separate 10ml bottles of nicotine concentrate and mix them myself, doing the math myself to get the proportion I used to be able to just order and generating a small pile of empty small plastic bottles every month because people who can't sleep at night unless somebody does something about everything!!!OHGODSTHECHILBREN!!! keep coming up with stupid ideas like that. Please we should not be making sure of anything! We don't need to be sure that every body is absolutely safe all the time, put a warning label and let us do as we wish with our health.
    - julianlam 7y ago
Kiro 7y ago
You sound extremely biased.
matwood 7y ago
> Bear in mind that I'm comparing this to smoking weed or drinking alcohol - both extremely common pastimes throughout the world, and both clearly more harmful than vaping. What about the dosage though? The people I know who drink alcohol and have a beer or 2 on the weekend. The people I see who vape, do it constantly. Are there people who vape once or twice a week?

troydavis 7y ago

Here’s some detailed analyses from neutral third parties about just how much less hazardous vaping is than smoking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18717697#18718028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18717697#18718028 (For THC, strongly consider eliminating lung damage entirely by consuming edibles instead of either vaping or smoking.)

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
Thanks for this! Agreed on THC, but I'm purely looking at cigarettes/tobacco right now A few Swedes have also highly recommended looking into Snus as an alternative and I need to do some more research there
- fragmede 7y ago
  Snuff or chewing tobacco, as it is more commonly known in the states, still causes cancer.