3 ms·

I'm not saying anything about the safety of the vapor one way or the other. I've seen people cite studies saying it is safe, I've seen people cite studies sayi

by jlgreco 13y ago

I'm not saying anything about the safety of the vapor one way or the other. I've seen people cite studies saying it is safe, I've seen people cite studies saying they are not safe, I've seen even more people say that the whole deal has yet to be studied. I don't use the things, so frankly I can't be arsed to get to the bottom of it. All I'm poking at are what I do perceive to be irrational arguments against them. Arguments like: > "Impressionable kids" Ban real cigarettes in movies and outdoors then. > "people who have quit smoking but may be tempted to go back" No special considerations like this are afforded to recovering alcoholics. > "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." Their anxiety is irrational, indoor smoking is not making a comeback. If second hand e-cig vapor is a concern, it is an independent concern.

lambda 13y ago
I pretty much agree that those are fairly weak or irrational arguments. You do have to understand that psychology plays a large factor in the politics of this. If people want e-cigs to become socially acceptable in places that cigarettes currently are not, they probably shouldn't call them e-cigs and probably shouldn't style them to look like cigarettes. If they are marketed instead as vaporizers (or maybe something else, since "vaporizer" to me implies cannabis, and that's even less socially acceptable to some people than tobacco), in shapes that aren't reminiscent as cigarettes or cigars at all, they are a lot more likely to be accepted by people who have been trained over the years to cringe from anything smoking related. However, before I'm willing to support e-cigs in indoor public places, I would like good evidence from independent third parties about the safety of secondhand e-cig vapor. The problem is that there's a catch-22; this kind of information is hard to obtain without them being popular enough and acceptable enough to reach the same numbers of people in indoor places at approximately the same concentration as smokers, and for long enough for long-term affects like cancer and heart disease to become distinguishable. I'm not really sure the best way to address that kind of problem; of safely studying something that has the potential to be harmful in the long term, but also has the potential to displace something even more harmful.

by jlgreco 13y ago

lambda 13y ago

I pretty much agree that those are fairly weak or irrational arguments. You do have to understand that psychology plays a large factor in the politics of this. If people want e-cigs to become socially acceptable in places that cigarettes currently are not, they probably shouldn't call them e-cigs and probably shouldn't style them to look like cigarettes. If they are marketed instead as vaporizers (or maybe something else, since "vaporizer" to me implies cannabis, and that's even less socially acceptable to some people than tobacco), in shapes that aren't reminiscent as cigarettes or cigars at all, they are a lot more likely to be accepted by people who have been trained over the years to cringe from anything smoking related. However, before I'm willing to support e-cigs in indoor public places, I would like good evidence from independent third parties about the safety of secondhand e-cig vapor. The problem is that there's a catch-22; this kind of information is hard to obtain without them being popular enough and acceptable enough to reach the same numbers of people in indoor places at approximately the same concentration as smokers, and for long enough for long-term affects like cancer and heart disease to become distinguishable. I'm not really sure the best way to address that kind of problem; of safely studying something that has the potential to be harmful in the long term, but also has the potential to displace something even more harmful.