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Secondhand Vapor? Americans are Split on Public E-Cigarette Use
- jlgreco 13y ago> "many believe welcoming e-cigarette use in public places would erode the decades of progress made in banning public smoking." Assuming that the intent of indoor smoking bans is to minimize the amount of smoke that is indoors, and assuming that e-cigarette use indoors is not causing an increase in illegal smoking indoors (why would it?), then I don't understand this specific concern.
- seiji 13y agoe-cigarettes still emit a smelly, visual byproduct. The proponents claim "It's not smoke—it's vapor!" Just wait until you're sitting next to an 80 year old nam vet on an airplane who insists on "vaping" because "hey, it's not smoking."
- kordless 13y agoMost juice is based on the same stuff in Febreze plus nicotine. It's not smoke. I've sat next to some smelly old ladies with horrible perfume on, but I'm certainly not going to compare it to something of known carcinogenic origins. Edit: speeling on my phone.
- drdaeman 13y agoIs nicotine carcinogenic by itself? I didn't research the subject (I don't smoke) but always assumed the most dangers with cigarettes are from the burning byproducts.
- nucleardog 13y agoYes. But it's a hell of a lot less carcinogenic than cigarette smoke with all the other byproducts (tar, etc). It, surprisingly, however, may have some beneficial effects as well. The wikipedia article has the relevant sources/details.
- jerf 13y agoSee also http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine .
- nobodysfool 13y agoIt hasn't been scientifically proven. What has been proven is that it helps vascularize the existing cancerous mass.
- mjn 13y agoI've had only limited "2nd-hand-ecig" experience, but I didn't really notice anything at all from across the table, nothing particularly offensive in any case. Certainly wasn't anything like a person smoking!
- tptacek 13y agoIt's not smoking.
- jlgreco 13y ago"e-cigarettes still emit a smelly" Not to be overly crude, but so does my ass after I eat to much mexican food. So do my burps, after shotgunning a bunch of vodka-redbulls. As for visual byproduct.. would it be better if it were invisible? My behavior after too many vodka-redbulls is far more of a public nuisance, yet they still let me drink those indoors (actually, I am not allow to drink them outdoors. Weird.) Anyway, I have a few friends who use e-cigs. Can't say I notice it. My hypothesis here is that people primarily get bent out of shape over e-cigs because they feel that the users are "cheating", and nobody likes a cheater. That or they forget what somebody actually smoking is like.
- wcfields 13y agoYeah, but I don't go around farting/burping in peoples faces. So don't blow your e-vape shit in my zone. It's about common courtesy.
- jlgreco 13y agoI really doubt that anybody here thinks that blowing in other peoples faces, with or without an e-cig or burp, is socially acceptable. The question isn't "can I burp in your face?", the question is "can I burp indoors?"
- lambda 13y agoFarting or burping is something that is involuntary, natural, and brief. Smoking or vaporizing is something that people choose to do for extended periods of time, and doing so in an enclosed space, especially many people doing it at once, can fill air in that enclosed space with the byproducts, which may be harmful. If people drank something that made them burp constantly, permeated the air with the smell of those burps, and that vapor was harmful, then absolutely that should not be allowed (beer does not quite count; you don't generally burp continuously while drinking it, though it may cause an occasional burp, and it doesn't cause a lingering, carcinogenic vapor to permeate the space).
- xradionut 13y ago
- lambda 13y agoThey release vapors that contain nicotine into the atmosphere. There has been comparatively little study on the dangers of second hand nicotine vapor vs. secondhand smoke, but I would be hesitant to assume that there is no danger. I could also imagine that they could reduce the social pressure against smoking, as people would be seen happily puffing away on e-cigs which, from a distance, look an awful lot like regular cigarettes. Impressionable kids, people who have quit smoking but may be tempted to go back, etc. will now see smoking suddenly becoming socially acceptable again. Some people may see it and think that smoking is allowed wherever this is, and then light up a real cigarette. There's a further sort of puritanical attitude that many people have towards smoking, I think due to the fact that it was so prevalent and so obnoxious for much of the 20th century. Much as some people have a puritanical attitude about drinking (and we still have ridiculous laws stemming from that), that attitude may persist about smoking even if e-cigs turn out to be much less obnoxious than cigarettes. You have to remember, there are plenty of people who were non-smokers during the middle of the 20th century, when you couldn't go to a bar that wasn't saturated in smoke, where you had to breathe in secondhand smoke almost everywhere (even in the non-smoking section of restaurants, it would still waft over from the smoking section), where if you lent something to a smoker it would come back reeking of smoke. The idea of losing ground on the fight that was just recently won, of not allowing it in most indoor public places, makes non-smokers fairly anxious. Now, if it can be demonstrated that secondhand vapor from e-cigs is perfectly safe, and that it doesn't permeate the air with the same foul smell, then maybe their introduction would be welcomed. After all of the damage we've done over the years by rapidly accepting new technologies that wind up poisoning the air (see, for example, secondhand smoke, leaded gasoline, diacetyl, asbestos, the Great Smog of '52 and the continuing smog problems in Beijing today), we need to be less willing to simply assume that releasing something into the air we all breathe is perfectly safe, and instead only allow it once it has been demonstrated to be safe. As far as I can tell, e-cigs only started becoming popular in the last few years. While I'm fine with people using them in their own homes or outdoors (since there's a certain level of concentration below which it's not worth worrying about anything), I'd be very skeptical of accepting them in establishments in which smoking is not allowed without further study.
- jlgreco 13y ago
- freehunter 13y agoHow can people be against it, unless there's a FUD campaign I haven't heard of or people just don't know what an e-cig is and think they're talking about real cigarettes. It's literally harmless to the people around you. The jury is still out on what the health effects are of using an e-cig (but people can generally agree that it's probably not as unhealthy as tobacco), but there is 100% no health impact to anyone else. The exhalation is water vapor, which people normally breathe out anyway. In conclusion, people are morons who make decisions from emotion and without facts.
- mhurron 13y ago> It's literally harmless to the people around you. They're not sucking down plain water vapor are they? E-cigs have nicotine cartridges for them, it would be silly to believe that the smokers lungs are grabbing all of that nicotine out before they exhale. Which is, of course, what this whole thing is about.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- evilduck 13y agoHow much nicotine do you expect you're coming in contact with? And if it's just nicotine, second-hand airborne nicotine is about the least threatening public safety risk I can imagine.
- xradionut 13y agoDepending on the circumstances, enough for me to notice. I feel the effects before I usually notice the person vaping.
- jsmeaton 13y agoAnd which effects do you feel?
- freehunter 13y ago
- buckbova 13y agoI think most of this is smoker hate. In an office or on an airplane, vaping could be inappropriate because of the tight shared spaces. Otherwise, let these people be.
- jsmeaton 13y agoOn planes I just vape in the toilets. For awhile they were acceptable on most airlines, but many have brought in policies (not law) banning them. I heard (no citations, sorry) that the majority of people complaining on flights were smokers that couldn't hack not smoking when others were vaping.
- bovermyer 13y agoI can't STAND smoke from cigarettes, cigars, etc. But the vapor from these e-cigarettes? Doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't smell bad, and I'm given to understand it's mostly harmless.
- staunch 13y agoIf it doesn't hurt me it doesn't bother me. Lots of things people do in public are annoying. No reason to ban vaping just because it looks like smoking. Live and let live.
- tsotha 13y agoPeople are split because the smoking thing long ago transitioned from reasonable public health measures to a moral panic. The evidence for damage from second hand cigarette smoke in unconfined places is nonexistent, yet we have laws pushing smokers further out into parking lots and "smoke free" college campuses. My prediction is if the FDA finds there's no increased risk for anything bad from eCigs there will still be a sizable percentage of the population that wants to ban them.
- chc 13y agoAFAIK the campaign against outdoor smoking is more about litter and fire risks than health.
- ryanhuff 13y agoWhile health concerns are an obvious concern for second hand smoke, for me, the smell is a huge issue, and drives me away. If the e-cigarettes are accompanied by any odor, please keep them away.
- hvs 13y agoThe same could be said of perfume or cologne.
- jsmeaton 13y agoThe smells are different depending on the device. Devices producing lots of vapour will give off a smell, while less vapour has less of a smell. The smell each juice gives off is similar to the taste and dissipates really quickly. The flavours in my devices are currently "honeydew melon" and "tobacco+caramel" which has a caramel-ly smell. As long as someone isn't blowing the vapour directly in your face you'll either barely notice, or it'll be like walking by someone that's wearing perfume or aftershave.
- lambda 13y agoSmokers huddling in the doorway means there's a nice big cloud of smoke that I need to walk through and breath in, which then gets blown into the bar as soon as I open the door. Even if smoking in completely unconfined spaces is harmless due to the smoke dissipating too quickly to be concentrated enough to cause harm, what winds up happening when you ban smoking indoors is that people just smoke huddled up in the doorway (especially if you live somewhere cold, where the smokers huddle in the door for a quick smoke, and then drop their butts all over the ground). Setting aside the danger, it's quite obnoxious. It's a powerful, unpleasant odor to many people, and can trigger asthma attacks. Smokers seem to believe that because they want to inhale something, everyone else around them must want to inhale it as well. Why do they think that? Anyhow, if it is shown that there's no secondhand risk from e-cigs, and they turn out to be less obnoxious than regular cigarettes (I've never walked through a cloud of vapor from a bunch of people using e-cigs, so I can't say), then I would be happy to allow them. As long as they don't affect me, I welcome you putting whatever you want into your body. Heck, I'd welcome them if it meant not having the huddling smokers outside and pile of discarded butts on the ground. But if they are harmful, or if they do lead to obnoxious odors (and I find many perfumes offensive and wish those were banned too, so telling me that they are flavored or smell nice won't help), they should be treated similarly to any other form of smoking.
- msg 13y agoBeside the point, but the graphics are a little hard to read because they don't range from strong approve to strong disapprove. The first graph is: Strong approve Approve Strong disapprove Disapprove Neutral It would make much more sense in the spectrum from negative to positive. It would also look like a bell curve on that particular graph. Strong approve Approve Neutral Disapprove Strong disapprove This happened to the other graphs in this article too.
- xradionut 13y agoSome of us are sensitive to nicotine as well as smoke. Don't be blowing vapor around like it's doing no harm while inside. I'll have a reaction, (starts with tingling lips), then I'll have a polite reaction to tell you to take it outside. If you need nicotine, use a patch or gum, not a device that may spew shit in the air. If you "vape" take that stuff outside.
- catshirt 13y agoi'm sensitive to volume but i wouldn't have the audacity to ask a loud patron to leave a bar. i realize it's not a totally fair comparison given possible health implications. but as long as it's legal it seems strange to expect someone to leave a public venue on a stranger's preference.
- xradionut 13y agoI used not go to bars and events for years due to the smoking. Then it got better with more restrictions of smoking. Now with the vaping, I can't go again unless it's a place that restricts it.
- jlgreco 13y agoWhat sort of bars are you going to that it is that frequent? I can count on one hand the number of people I have seen with these things in the wild.
- catshirt 13y agoyeah. and that sucks. but that is the nature of the trade-off you want to make. you can stay home, or you can go to a bar and deal with the nicotine vapor. i guess asking someone to stop vaping is an option. but expecting them to comply is delusional, and the request would strike me as selfish and pushy. i'll add that people vaping in places of congregation is sparse enough in NYC that i'm surprised anyone has even had the opportunity to be inconvenienced by it.
- jerf 13y agoWould you be willing to clearly assert that you have had at least one dining experience ruined in the real world because of people vaping? And not ruined by the mere act of vaping, but because of some uncontrollable physical reaction you had (as opposed to emotional revulsion)? My experience with vaping is not extensive, but so far I've stood right next to a couple of people and been unable to notice anything, and for reference, my reaction to cigarette smoke is a pretty significant headache pretty quickly so it's not like I'm unsympathetic. Is there an actual problem, or are you projecting experiences from smoking onto something that isn't really the same experience? (This is, BTW, an honest question, though I freely admit its nature is a bit hostile since I'm asking about whether your fears are "real" or projection. But I do mean it honestly, and if anyone else can speak up with a real negative experience, I'm all ears. But please make sure it's real, and not just a moral panic projection based on expectations.)