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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

by 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).
  - btilly 13y ago
    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. Citation needed. Before responding, you might want to read http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine.
    - chimeracoder 13y ago
      > Before responding, you might want to read http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine. I can assure that this is a topic on which I have done far more research in my lifetime than that blog post. I'm not trying to be snarky; I'm just emphasizing that I have a lot more knowledge on this topic than I can reasonably compress into a 124-word HN post (like my original comment). > Citation needed. The post that you yourself link is a citation for my statement. Notice that I worded my post carefully - I did not say that nicotine has only harmful effects, or even that it has no positive effects. All I stated is that it is a toxic substance in the medical sense - a statement which could also apply to the drugs used in chemotherapy. Therefore, it is correct to say "we can be fairly certain that they are least somewhat harmful." I make no claim about the situations under which any alleged benefits outweigh the the toxic effects, simply that said toxic effects exist.
      - gwern 13y ago
        > I can assure that this is a topic on which I have done far more research in my lifetime than that blog post. I'm not trying to be snarky; I'm just emphasizing that I have a lot more knowledge on this topic than I can reasonably compress into a 124-word HN post (like my original comment). Then I would appreciate your links to the studies of the harmful effects of nicotine alone that I have somehow failed to find. > I make no claim about the situations under which any alleged benefits outweigh the the toxic effects, simply that said toxic effects exist. So your confident assertions are merely technically correct, since everything has toxic effects under some situations such as high enough doses. But that's OK, since technically correct is the best kind of correct, as any geek knows!
pandaman 13y ago
I'd like to see any citation for #1. For #2 you need to prove that if there exists s in S and s has property X then every element t in S also has property X.
- riquito 13y ago
  #1: they're addictive. It's in my list of harmful things
  - praxeologist 13y ago
    Sugar is addictive and vastly more dangerous than ecigs IMO.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      Conversely, caffeine is addictive, but is otherwise harmless (except in insane doses.) So long as you never try to quit, you'll never experience any negative side effects of caffeine addiction.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    You don't have to use them with nicotine. Then they are non-addictive.
- konstruktor 13y ago
  The burden of proof, in this case, should be on the e-cigarette industry. They are selling an addictive recreational product, consisting of a new combination of substances, with a novel delivery method (that involves deep inhalation). It would be naive to let them play the game the cigarette industry has played for decades, that is trying to dodge the burden of proof for safety and spreading uncertainty. And let's not forget that, for a novel product, the baseline for safety is not using the product, not using something that is known to be extremely toxic.
  - pandaman 13y ago
    All substances in e-cigaretes are harmless in dozes they are normally taken+. IMHO this is sufficient to claim that a mix of harmless substances is also harmless so the burden of proof is on somebody saying that such a mix suddenly became harmful. + I know that nicotine has LD50, so does water and even oxygen is dangerous at high pressure.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Lambdanaut 13y ago
I agree that they're not harmless. They're addictive, and being forced into reliance on a substance is never good. Though, this is the only detriment we know of.
- Zak 13y ago
  being forced into reliance on a substance is never good I find this wording problematic. I'm skeptical that any significant number of people in the developed world today start using nicotine without knowing that it's addictive or that a significant fraction of nicotine addicts developed that addiction through involuntary exposure.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  > They're addictive, and being forced into reliance on a substance is never good. How bad is it? Unless I'm exercising hard, I'll get caffeine withdrawal symptoms if I stop drinking coffee. I have read of both beneficial and detrimental effects of caffeine. What's the threshold for considering the accompanying physical addiction a problem?
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > What's the threshold for considering the accompanying physical addiction a problem? If something is addictive but not physically harmful the threshold is when it starts to affect your day to day life. Gambling is fun. Some people have a problem with gambling. When you think that gambling is affecting your day to day life it's stopped being fun and turned into a problem.
mistercow 13y ago
>The ecig industry is the tobacco industry. A large part of the ecig industry is small businesses making liquid and selling it out of little shops and small websites. We have two of these shops in my little Podunk town now. It's kind of amazing to see, and I wonder how long it will manage to last. I doubt that the future of ecigs is going to be these shitty disposable toys and prepackaged cartridges. Everyone I've known who started on ecigs pretty quickly moved on to higher quality refillable deals.
- Semaphor 13y ago
  Plus the mod makers selling rebuildable atomizers and battery casings.
Oxxide 13y ago
It's pretty clear you only have a surface understanding of the e-cig industry, the big tobacco owned e-cig lines are crappy disposables. You might start with one, but pretty soon you move on to a proper personal vaporizer with a decent battery life. It's not clear how exactly harmful they aren't, either. The truth is, no one knows. They certainly haven't done any harm to me thus far, and we aren't yet hearing reports of vapers dropping dead, so I think it's safe to assume they're relatively harmless. (at least in the short term.)
- cloverich 13y ago
  > so I think it's safe to assume they're relatively harmless. (at least in the short term.) Cigarrettes are basically harmless in the short term as well! None the less, and contaminants from crappy manifacturers not-withstanding, I'd be surprised if e-cig's turn out to be harmful (in a meaningful way).
pbreit 13y ago
"harmless" isn't quite right but calling that a "lie" is likewise a stretch. If they are, say, less harmful than sugar, is it OK to call them harmless?

by hristov 13y ago

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).
- btilly 13y ago
  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. Citation needed. Before responding, you might want to read http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    > Before responding, you might want to read http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine. I can assure that this is a topic on which I have done far more research in my lifetime than that blog post. I'm not trying to be snarky; I'm just emphasizing that I have a lot more knowledge on this topic than I can reasonably compress into a 124-word HN post (like my original comment). > Citation needed. The post that you yourself link is a citation for my statement. Notice that I worded my post carefully - I did not say that nicotine has only harmful effects, or even that it has no positive effects. All I stated is that it is a toxic substance in the medical sense - a statement which could also apply to the drugs used in chemotherapy. Therefore, it is correct to say "we can be fairly certain that they are least somewhat harmful." I make no claim about the situations under which any alleged benefits outweigh the the toxic effects, simply that said toxic effects exist.
    - gwern 13y ago
      > I can assure that this is a topic on which I have done far more research in my lifetime than that blog post. I'm not trying to be snarky; I'm just emphasizing that I have a lot more knowledge on this topic than I can reasonably compress into a 124-word HN post (like my original comment). Then I would appreciate your links to the studies of the harmful effects of nicotine alone that I have somehow failed to find. > I make no claim about the situations under which any alleged benefits outweigh the the toxic effects, simply that said toxic effects exist. So your confident assertions are merely technically correct, since everything has toxic effects under some situations such as high enough doses. But that's OK, since technically correct is the best kind of correct, as any geek knows!

pandaman 13y ago

I'd like to see any citation for #1. For #2 you need to prove that if there exists s in S and s has property X then every element t in S also has property X.

riquito 13y ago
#1: they're addictive. It's in my list of harmful things
- praxeologist 13y ago
  Sugar is addictive and vastly more dangerous than ecigs IMO.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Conversely, caffeine is addictive, but is otherwise harmless (except in insane doses.) So long as you never try to quit, you'll never experience any negative side effects of caffeine addiction.
- Nursie 13y ago
  You don't have to use them with nicotine. Then they are non-addictive.
konstruktor 13y ago
The burden of proof, in this case, should be on the e-cigarette industry. They are selling an addictive recreational product, consisting of a new combination of substances, with a novel delivery method (that involves deep inhalation). It would be naive to let them play the game the cigarette industry has played for decades, that is trying to dodge the burden of proof for safety and spreading uncertainty. And let's not forget that, for a novel product, the baseline for safety is not using the product, not using something that is known to be extremely toxic.
- pandaman 13y ago
  All substances in e-cigaretes are harmless in dozes they are normally taken+. IMHO this is sufficient to claim that a mix of harmless substances is also harmless so the burden of proof is on somebody saying that such a mix suddenly became harmful. + I know that nicotine has LD50, so does water and even oxygen is dangerous at high pressure.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Lambdanaut 13y ago

I agree that they're not harmless. They're addictive, and being forced into reliance on a substance is never good. Though, this is the only detriment we know of.

Zak 13y ago
being forced into reliance on a substance is never good I find this wording problematic. I'm skeptical that any significant number of people in the developed world today start using nicotine without knowing that it's addictive or that a significant fraction of nicotine addicts developed that addiction through involuntary exposure.
Zigurd 13y ago
> They're addictive, and being forced into reliance on a substance is never good. How bad is it? Unless I'm exercising hard, I'll get caffeine withdrawal symptoms if I stop drinking coffee. I have read of both beneficial and detrimental effects of caffeine. What's the threshold for considering the accompanying physical addiction a problem?
- DanBC 13y ago
  > What's the threshold for considering the accompanying physical addiction a problem? If something is addictive but not physically harmful the threshold is when it starts to affect your day to day life. Gambling is fun. Some people have a problem with gambling. When you think that gambling is affecting your day to day life it's stopped being fun and turned into a problem.

mistercow 13y ago

>The ecig industry is the tobacco industry. A large part of the ecig industry is small businesses making liquid and selling it out of little shops and small websites. We have two of these shops in my little Podunk town now. It's kind of amazing to see, and I wonder how long it will manage to last. I doubt that the future of ecigs is going to be these shitty disposable toys and prepackaged cartridges. Everyone I've known who started on ecigs pretty quickly moved on to higher quality refillable deals.

Semaphor 13y ago
Plus the mod makers selling rebuildable atomizers and battery casings.

Oxxide 13y ago

It's pretty clear you only have a surface understanding of the e-cig industry, the big tobacco owned e-cig lines are crappy disposables. You might start with one, but pretty soon you move on to a proper personal vaporizer with a decent battery life. It's not clear how exactly harmful they aren't, either. The truth is, no one knows. They certainly haven't done any harm to me thus far, and we aren't yet hearing reports of vapers dropping dead, so I think it's safe to assume they're relatively harmless. (at least in the short term.)

cloverich 13y ago
> so I think it's safe to assume they're relatively harmless. (at least in the short term.) Cigarrettes are basically harmless in the short term as well! None the less, and contaminants from crappy manifacturers not-withstanding, I'd be surprised if e-cig's turn out to be harmful (in a meaningful way).

pbreit 13y ago

"harmless" isn't quite right but calling that a "lie" is likewise a stretch. If they are, say, less harmful than sugar, is it OK to call them harmless?