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Comment by kevindong | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, vaping is probably safer than smoking actual cigarettes. That being said, vaping/Juul has undone a decade of progress in reducing teen smoking. It should not be celebrated.

I don't understand anyone that intentionally starts vaping. I'm a senior in college and Juuls are fairly common on campus, so it's not just a high school/teenager thing.

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Nobody intentionally starts smoking, either. Nicotine is very deceptive; once you realize the dependency, it's very likely too late.

Frankly, I'd probably still be smoking if tobacco use didn't have the social stigma it does today. This -- oddly enough -- is why I never touched vapes (no disincentive to quit!) and why I think Juul/Juul-like products are going to create a new epidemic of nicotine addiction in this country.

This is just Altria -- Phillip Morris -- playing the same game they have been for generations. I really haven't the slightest idea why we're just sitting back and letting them do it again.

> Nobody intentionally starts smoking, either.

I just tripped and it fell into my mouth!

That’s not the implication.

For me personally, it started with a friend who would bum me cigarettes here and there, and I would partake for the sake of stepping outside with him.

What seemed like an innocuous “just one cigarette” here and there started to turn into cravings. It was all downhill from there.

Electronic nicotine delivery devices:

- Contain ever increasing amounts of nicotine per "hit"--many teens report using an entire JuulPod per day, equal to a whole pack of cigarettes in nicotine volume.

- Like menthol cigarettes, manufacturers develop ways (ex patented JuulSalts) to overcome body's natural resistance to starting and continuing nicotine abuse.

- Use concentrated "e-liquid" that poses serious acute toxicity concerns to users and small children, not an issue with cigarettes

Amazingly enough, research shows that youth who intentionally start nicotine abuse via electronic delivery rationalize their behavior by differentiating it from "real" smoking--compounded by misinformation from peers. It's no accident that Juul's design looks nothing like a "real" cigarette--despite delivering deadly drugs every bit as well.

The vape industry (which is quickly becoming an extension of big tobacoo) wants you to believe that this is justified because they help smokers. But there is no evidence that they help people quit--and ample evidence that youth who develop nicotine use disorder from electronic delivery readily begin use of "real" cigarettes. JuulLabs/Altria do not make an FDA-approved smoking cessation device. They make an extremely effective delivery device for new abusers of nicotine.

We must take a stand before the next wave of nicotine abuse takes permanent root in our society: make nicotine a schedule I controlled substance at the federal level. No longer can bigwig suits legally addict our country to a deadly drug.

Sources: https://www.yalemedicine.org/stories/teen-vaping/ https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1805758 https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17529442/juul-vapes-nicoti...

Health Canada and Public Health England would beg to differ.

> make nicotine a schedule I controlled substance at the federal level. No longer can bigwig suits legally addict our country to a deadly drug.

Forgive my ignorance, but my understanding is that nicotine by itself is not particularly deadly, merely addictive. The only reason we consider nicotine any worse than caffeine is because of all the genuinely deadly stuff that comes along for the ride with typical nicotine delivery mechanisms (i.e. cigarettes.)

If we had to smoke to get caffeine instead of drink tasty and arguably healthy beverages it would be just as stigmatized.

Is caffeine really addictive? Comparatively to nicotine? I find issue in selling addictive products, not in terms of health, but just financial abuse. Like Casinos, micro-transactions in games, etc. The buyer is drugged by your product to need to buy more of it. There's definitly a bit of a moral dilemma here.

Agreed--I'd argue that a physically harmless, pleasure causing, addictive product is inherently worth of regulation. Dependence (use without truly wanting to) and abuse (use despite harm--which can arguably include financial harm even with no physiological affects) are the criteria for a substance use disorder which is in itself a medical diagnosis. Products that serve no useful purpose and readily lead to the development of use disorders should not be sold.

Tar poisons the lungs; nicotine poisons the heart.

This is oversimplified but it's not wrong.

You are correct in that its not deadly in it's own right, I should have written that tobacco should be banned and nicotine with it. However, I think it certainly is fair to consider attendant consequences of its modes of abuse in regulating it--while the drug itself is not lethal in normal patterns of abuse, it's patterns of abuse do lead to deaths.

It's acute lethal dose can be as little as 500mg and it is considered a deadly posion; it's actually a good thing in that regard that nicotine is rarely used "directly," as it would be hard to develop poisoning from regular use. But with the liquid in vapes themselves, that is a concern, particularly if small children have access. In terms of chronic effects, the biggest concern is adolescents and effects on brain development--not deadly, but definitely a direct harm from the drug itself. It is not a carcinogen, but it may be a tumor promoter. And it can lead to death or severe harm to the fetus if used by a pregnant mother as it crosses the placenta readily (a case of chronic levels harmless to mother reaching acute toxicity levels against the tiny weight of the baby). Lastly, the harvesting of tobacco does lead to consequences for the workers such as GTS which can cause serious symptoms.

And regarding the addictive affect itself, I do see your point with regard to caffeine, however, I think it is important to consider the relative magnitude of its effects. Caffeine can lead to dependence and withdrawal, but the frequency of these effects doesn't lead to a public health concern on the level of nicotine, which is one of the core factors for a CSA scheduling action.

Nicotine by itself is not really that dangerous, even its negative side-effects on the cardiovascular system are debated and nicotine is addictive but apart from that generally "safe" [0].

Of course, it's better no vape at all than one but between cigarettes and e-cigarettes I'm glad, as an ex-smoker, that the latter exists as an alternative.

I've quit cigarettes for 6+ years now, completely cold turkey from a pack a day and it would've been much better if at the time I had the option of an e-cig, the damage compared with normal cigarettes is severely reduced and much easier than doing what I did.

[0] https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/nicotine-withou...

> vaping/Juul has undone a decade of progress in reducing teen smoking

How much of that reduction in smoking is because of teens who would otherwise be smoking but are now vaping instead?

Just look at the chart? It’s pretty obvious that smoking is consistently declining, while vaping started at a low point of smoking.

Pretty much every year on that chart is a low point for cigarette smoking compared the years that preceded it.

Note that 2015 is not when teens started vaping. It's when whoever collected this data started paying attention to vaping.

I'd rather teenagers weren't using any tobacco products whatsoever, but I'm pretty sure inhaling vaporized ecig juice is much better for people's health than cigarette smoke.

> I'm pretty sure inhaling vaporized ecig juice is much better for people's health than cigarette smoke.

I've seen this thinking many times in this thread. How is this so? Smoking seemed harmless in the 1950s as well.

http://gwern.net/Nicotine

Lighting a fire in your mouth is so obviously worse it's comical to debate.

How would adding smoke to nicotine make it healthier?

That's a drastic oversimplification. Dosage amounts and patterns are wildly different. Ecig "juice" has many components that cigarettes don't.

If you look on the graph on the tweet linked [0], very little. There's a very clear and consistent downwards linear trend in terms of cigarette use since at least 1997. Admittedly, cigarette usage does appear to have gone down faster since ~2013 (which is around the time that vapes became well known [1]). Is that caused by vapes? Maybe, maybe not. But it's clear that more teens are exposed to nicotine now that vapes are available than if vapes were not available.

[0]: https://twitter.com/themehakvohra/status/1076433054099492864

[1]: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=v...

https://imgur.com/a/i9rWJbb

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