7 ms·

E-Cigarettes are going to save millions of lives in the coming years. They're harmless, and, if you get a brand that feels like the real thing, easy to transiti

by pvnick 13y ago

E-Cigarettes are going to save millions of lives in the coming years. They're harmless, and, if you get a brand that feels like the real thing, easy to transition to. I hope the tobacco industry takes a huge financial hit from the sale of these things because they literally prevent people from dying. That being said, when I switched to e-cigarettes, it was very easy to switch back to regular cigarettes. That "narrow bridge of familiarity" was easy to cross back over, especially when I ran out of vapor cartridges. Ultimately for me to quit it took stopping cigarettes cold-turkey. Nicotine gum and a transition to regular gum helped a lot. It's been one of the hardest but most rewarding things I've ever done in my life.

blankenship 13y ago
But are they harmless? If they’re made with chemicals in an unregulated industrial process, it seems unlikely. Less harmful than ”analog” cigarettes, maybe—but completely harmless seems like an unlikely stretch.
- praxeologist 13y ago
  Ecig advocates take a harm reduction approach, rather than the quit or die approach of anti-nicotine zealots. All evidence suggests that ecigs are vastly safer than burning tobacco. Here is a recent survey of all available research. We could further extend this by looking at known cancer/cardiovascular risks of the small bits of concern with ecigs then compare to burning tobacco and you are talking about 1% danger comparatively: http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteData/docs/ms08/f90349264250e603/ms08.pdf http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteData/docs/ms08/f903492642... There is some movement for hte industry to regulate itself and suggest sensible rules, but if ecigs are "deemed" under the 2009 Tobacco act, it will potentially wipe out all innovation because of the rule that any new product be "substantially equivalent" to a product on the market before some arbitrary date in 2007 they set. There's all sorts of horrible rules being proposed which go beyond just making sure the liquid isn't contaminated.
  - Oxxide 13y ago
    thank you for this level-headed response. some of the vitriol around here is toxic.
  - konstruktor 13y ago
    I as a non-smoker can buy an e-cigarette, so one should judge the safety of the product on its own, not compared to something that is clearly harmful. Methadone, for example, is used for harm reduction. It's only available as an prescription alternative to a harmful addiction. And still, substitution therapy is treated like any other form of medicine, i.e. the industry has to prove the merits of their product before it can go on sale. Nicotine patches, which are available OTC to the general public, at least had to be proven as safe in clinical trials.
dhughes 13y ago
Safer according to what study? People just assume they are safer.
- tomjen3 13y ago
  I must admit I have tolerance for that bullshit. The cigs don't contain any of the dangerous chemical in a cigarette - you don't need a study to prove they are safe, you just need a decent understanding of chemistry. But a million anti-smoking advocates don't give a shit.
  - bashinator 13y ago
    If nicotine isn't harmful in itself, why does chewing tobacco cause cancers of the mouth?
    - radio4fan 13y ago
      Because there are more than 70 carcinogenic compounds in tobacco.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Are nicotine skin patches causing an epidemic of skin cancer where they are placed? Not all side effects are caused by the active ingredient.
  - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
    The set of chemicals in cigarettes that are dangerous is a subset of all chemicals known to be dangerous. One can conclude something quite important from that fact without any understanding of anything other than basic reasoning skills.
- fbellag 13y ago
  Yes, I know I do assume they are safer. If the ecig industry were regulated, then we could make sure the liquid has no or minimal side effects. In my country it is worse because ecigs are forbidden (given that uncertainity), so we have a black market for ecigs, making the quality of the liquids even more quetionable. I know tobacco is really bad, and I have doubts about ecig. So, I give the benefit of the doubt, as it is little probability it is worse.
hristov 13y ago
1. E-cigarettes are not harmless and I wish people would stop perpetuating that lie. It is not clear exactly how harmful they are, but they are not harmless. 2. Ecig marketers are trying to push this story line of e-cigs vs the tobacco industry. It is mostly bs as the major ecig company blu is owned by a major tobacco company and every other major tobacco company has an ecig line now. The ecig industry is the tobacco industry. I am very happy for you that you were able to quit. And it seems to me that is the only way.
- Alex3917 13y ago
  > E-cigarettes are not harmless and I wish people would stop perpetuating that lie. They might be fairly harmless, we don't know. The three biggest risks of smoking are cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. For a casual smoker, heart disease is by far the biggest risk. This is caused by the carbon monoxide, and eCigs have zero of this. There's also no reason to think that they cause emphysema. In terms of cancer, the majority of the carcinogenic effect of cigarrettes is thought to be caused by radiation rather than by the tobacco itself. So with eCigs you can easily wash off the radiation from the tobacco, or else just use synthetic nicotine or other drugs. Since the industry is completely unregulated I'm sure these things are filled with all sorts of poison, but even still there are no currently known risks. And even if there are risks, which there likely are, it's not clear that they'll be any bigger than, say, drinking the occasional glass of wine. And it's also likely that once we figure out what these risks are, we'll be able to mitigate them. I certainly wouldn't use these things today, but in twenty or thirty years they may well be a really good bet.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    > They might be fairly harmless, we don't know. They might be less harmless (though we don't know that yet), but we can be fairly certain that they are least somewhat harmful. This is not like vaporizing cannabis - the desirable compounds in cannabis are not carcinogenic[0] and actually have cancer-fighting properties, and the main drawbacks to smoking cannabis come from the act of smoking, not from the substance. Nicotine, on the other hand, is harmful in its own right. It is less damaging to consume pure nicotine without the other harmful effects of smoking, but it is certainly a toxic substance, in the medical sense. [0] Or poisonous in any other way (even overdose, since the LD50 for delta-9-THC, if one even exists, is so high that nobody has ever measured it reliably).
unlucky 13y ago
"I hope the tobacco industry takes a huge financial hit from the sale of these things because they literally prevent people from dying." From what I can tell, the tobacco industry is going to eventually own the e-cig market too. http://money.msn.com/investing/big-tobacco-invests-in-e-cigarettes-should-you http://money.msn.com/investing/big-tobacco-invests-in-e-ciga... http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57588583/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57588583/
- schrodinger 13y ago
  That seems to be a sign that they _are_ taking a significant financial hit, or at least are afraid that they will soon. I'd rather see people using e-cigs sold by big tobacco companies than real cigarettes though.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hackula1 13y ago
I tried the patch before using e-cigs to quit. The patch stopped the cravings for me even better than the e-cigs, but gave me horrifying dreams every night, and I would wake up every morning thinking for the first few minutes that they had actually happened the day before. Even if e-cigs are somewhat harmful, I would choose them over cigarettes and over wacky lucid nightmares.
- cloverich 13y ago
  > horrifying dreams every night lol please tell me you did not sleep with it, because you are certainly not supposed to!
Semaphor 13y ago
> That being said, when I switched to e-cigarettes, it was very easy to switch back to regular cigarettes. Not easy at all for me. Cigarettes taste so disgusting, I could never go back to them.

by pvnick 13y ago

blankenship 13y ago

But are they harmless? If they’re made with chemicals in an unregulated industrial process, it seems unlikely. Less harmful than ”analog” cigarettes, maybe—but completely harmless seems like an unlikely stretch.

praxeologist 13y ago
Ecig advocates take a harm reduction approach, rather than the quit or die approach of anti-nicotine zealots. All evidence suggests that ecigs are vastly safer than burning tobacco. Here is a recent survey of all available research. We could further extend this by looking at known cancer/cardiovascular risks of the small bits of concern with ecigs then compare to burning tobacco and you are talking about 1% danger comparatively: http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteData/docs/ms08/f90349264250e603/ms08.pdf http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteData/docs/ms08/f903492642... There is some movement for hte industry to regulate itself and suggest sensible rules, but if ecigs are "deemed" under the 2009 Tobacco act, it will potentially wipe out all innovation because of the rule that any new product be "substantially equivalent" to a product on the market before some arbitrary date in 2007 they set. There's all sorts of horrible rules being proposed which go beyond just making sure the liquid isn't contaminated.
- Oxxide 13y ago
  thank you for this level-headed response. some of the vitriol around here is toxic.
- konstruktor 13y ago
  I as a non-smoker can buy an e-cigarette, so one should judge the safety of the product on its own, not compared to something that is clearly harmful. Methadone, for example, is used for harm reduction. It's only available as an prescription alternative to a harmful addiction. And still, substitution therapy is treated like any other form of medicine, i.e. the industry has to prove the merits of their product before it can go on sale. Nicotine patches, which are available OTC to the general public, at least had to be proven as safe in clinical trials.

dhughes 13y ago

Safer according to what study? People just assume they are safer.

tomjen3 13y ago
I must admit I have tolerance for that bullshit. The cigs don't contain any of the dangerous chemical in a cigarette - you don't need a study to prove they are safe, you just need a decent understanding of chemistry. But a million anti-smoking advocates don't give a shit.
- bashinator 13y ago
  If nicotine isn't harmful in itself, why does chewing tobacco cause cancers of the mouth?
  - radio4fan 13y ago
    Because there are more than 70 carcinogenic compounds in tobacco.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Are nicotine skin patches causing an epidemic of skin cancer where they are placed? Not all side effects are caused by the active ingredient.
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  The set of chemicals in cigarettes that are dangerous is a subset of all chemicals known to be dangerous. One can conclude something quite important from that fact without any understanding of anything other than basic reasoning skills.
fbellag 13y ago
Yes, I know I do assume they are safer. If the ecig industry were regulated, then we could make sure the liquid has no or minimal side effects. In my country it is worse because ecigs are forbidden (given that uncertainity), so we have a black market for ecigs, making the quality of the liquids even more quetionable. I know tobacco is really bad, and I have doubts about ecig. So, I give the benefit of the doubt, as it is little probability it is worse.

hristov 13y ago

1. E-cigarettes are not harmless and I wish people would stop perpetuating that lie. It is not clear exactly how harmful they are, but they are not harmless. 2. Ecig marketers are trying to push this story line of e-cigs vs the tobacco industry. It is mostly bs as the major ecig company blu is owned by a major tobacco company and every other major tobacco company has an ecig line now. The ecig industry is the tobacco industry. I am very happy for you that you were able to quit. And it seems to me that is the only way.

Alex3917 13y ago
> E-cigarettes are not harmless and I wish people would stop perpetuating that lie. They might be fairly harmless, we don't know. The three biggest risks of smoking are cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. For a casual smoker, heart disease is by far the biggest risk. This is caused by the carbon monoxide, and eCigs have zero of this. There's also no reason to think that they cause emphysema. In terms of cancer, the majority of the carcinogenic effect of cigarrettes is thought to be caused by radiation rather than by the tobacco itself. So with eCigs you can easily wash off the radiation from the tobacco, or else just use synthetic nicotine or other drugs. Since the industry is completely unregulated I'm sure these things are filled with all sorts of poison, but even still there are no currently known risks. And even if there are risks, which there likely are, it's not clear that they'll be any bigger than, say, drinking the occasional glass of wine. And it's also likely that once we figure out what these risks are, we'll be able to mitigate them. I certainly wouldn't use these things today, but in twenty or thirty years they may well be a really good bet.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > They might be fairly harmless, we don't know. They might be less harmless (though we don't know that yet), but we can be fairly certain that they are least somewhat harmful. This is not like vaporizing cannabis - the desirable compounds in cannabis are not carcinogenic[0] and actually have cancer-fighting properties, and the main drawbacks to smoking cannabis come from the act of smoking, not from the substance. Nicotine, on the other hand, is harmful in its own right. It is less damaging to consume pure nicotine without the other harmful effects of smoking, but it is certainly a toxic substance, in the medical sense. [0] Or poisonous in any other way (even overdose, since the LD50 for delta-9-THC, if one even exists, is so high that nobody has ever measured it reliably).

unlucky 13y ago

"I hope the tobacco industry takes a huge financial hit from the sale of these things because they literally prevent people from dying." From what I can tell, the tobacco industry is going to eventually own the e-cig market too. http://money.msn.com/investing/big-tobacco-invests-in-e-cigarettes-should-you http://money.msn.com/investing/big-tobacco-invests-in-e-ciga... http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57588583/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57588583/

schrodinger 13y ago
That seems to be a sign that they _are_ taking a significant financial hit, or at least are afraid that they will soon. I'd rather see people using e-cigs sold by big tobacco companies than real cigarettes though.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hackula1 13y ago

I tried the patch before using e-cigs to quit. The patch stopped the cravings for me even better than the e-cigs, but gave me horrifying dreams every night, and I would wake up every morning thinking for the first few minutes that they had actually happened the day before. Even if e-cigs are somewhat harmful, I would choose them over cigarettes and over wacky lucid nightmares.

cloverich 13y ago
> horrifying dreams every night lol please tell me you did not sleep with it, because you are certainly not supposed to!

Semaphor 13y ago

> That being said, when I switched to e-cigarettes, it was very easy to switch back to regular cigarettes. Not easy at all for me. Cigarettes taste so disgusting, I could never go back to them.