I remember a number of years ago my then-13-year-old nephew telling his parents and me about catching another kid smoking outside a birthday party. The adults all laughed and sarcastically asked if he thought the kid looked “cool”, and he and his sisters laughed along with us.
This was during the brief period when cigarette smoking amongst HS seniors in the U.S. had dropped below 20% but when vaping was not yet a thing. My nephew is in college now and although he’s a smart and sensible kid I have to wonder if he vapes these days.
The big vape companies, greedpigs that they are*, seem to be focusing on delivering nicotine, which is generally more physically addictive and much harder to withdraw from than pot.
[* also they can’t really roll out pot in their proprietary cartridges on a national basis due to federal laws]
We called Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a recognized expert on addiction issues. Narrowly construed, he said, what Blumenauer posted on his website is correct – marijuana is less addictive than both alcohol and tobacco.
“But like a lot of things,” Boyd added, “the question is much more complicated than that. There are a lot of gray areas to all of this.”
[…]
marijuana is addictive, he said. Boyd cited research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse showing that about 9 percent of those who use marijuana become addicted. (Estimates from research suggest that 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users become addicted, according to the NIDA.)
However, when it comes to withdrawal, alcohol is by far the worst of the three, he said.
Second, let’s be honest in reporting about it - vaping is not smoking, it’s smoke, not vapor, and the major health concern with smoking cigarettes is the triple threat of cancer, heart, and lung disease.
This chart shows that vaping has had zero effect on the trend in smoking.
The trend that’s disturbing is the increase in nicotine use, which, while still uncool and addiction unhealthy, is far less concerning in vaping then it is in cigarettes.
So, it’s a problem - but nowhere near as big a problem as smoking was, and needs to be labeled accurately.
Bruce K Alexander’s “the Globalisation of Addiction” is a thorough introduction to the social complexities of addiction, rather than just the biochemistry.
short version: psycho-social isolation causes all manner of harm.
Official UK NHS policy is to encourage vaping as a means to draw people away from more dangerous cigarettes. The limited evidence that exists shows this is the quickest way to reduce harm.
Vaping is a legit way to quit smoking that is recognized as such by both Canada and the UK. it is the only way I was able to quit after smoking for 23+ years. I was able to wean off nicotine much more easily than the patches, gum, lozenges allowed for. eliquid also does not contain the nasty additives that cigarettes do, additives that flood the brain with/increase the effect of nicotine and make it more addictive. but big tobacco wants this money, so they will spread bullshit to put small eliquid companies (who tend to thoroughly test all their prodicts and post the results) out of business. and then yay! we can have those secret additives back.
Go ahead and shit on it if you feel you need to, but I (and many others, incl. ones i’ve helped.) have found it to be the only way we’ve been able to quit. Source: Me, a 23 year ex-smoker, 5 year vaper, and vape shop employee/educator.
"For two decades, adolescent smoking has been on the decline, but thanks to vaping products like Juul (which has 75% of the market), teen smoking just jumped by levels not seen for 43 years. "
Except it didn’t, because (and see if you can follow me here) vaping isn’t smoking.
I’ve been using Juul recently. I’m not much of a smoker one of a very small number of people who doesn’t really develop a habit. I suspect it’s genetic, because my father was the same way. I don’t find the experience all that rewarding. The benefit seems mainly to be that you can smoke indoors surreptitiously because the vapor doesn’t carry or cling like smoke does. People who are really into vaping don’t seem to like it because it has the appeal of sucking on a broken plastic straw. Juul is low cost, unintimidating and available.
Juul surveyed me and I notice that they do use highly scientific methods to survey their customers, with all the hallmarks of scientific data collection. The surveys take 30 minutes or more to complete and are monetarily incentivized. It’s hard to draw conclusions about the information they want because they ask a ton of questions, but I suspect Juul knows it’s customer base pretty well. My intuition is that they’re trying to pivot away from younger demographics, but are having a hard time doing so because despite the flavors, they haven’t been able to pull die-hard cig smokers over in part because the drag is so weak and the sensation is so different. It doesn’t go as well with coffee.
That said, while I think more data needs to be collected, it’s really hard to place smoking in the same category as vaping without cherry-picking data or stretching conclusions. I feel like there is a rush to see a recapitulation of old tobacco lobby tactics, but I’m looking at the overall move away from cannabis and alcohol prohibition and find the desire for more tobacco/nicotine prohibition a little weird in that context. I would like to see a broader more complicated and more consistent social reckoning with drugs, old and new, rather than this patchwork binary of “this drug is bad, that drug is okay.” It’s not like I don’t have loved ones I wish would stop smoking a pack or more a day. Based on current data, I’d be ecstatic if they switched to vaping. We’ve consistently seen that whether it’s char on a steak or something you put in a pipe, the byproducts of burning organic matter are not good for you. Vaping is unlikely to be benign, but I think it’s here to stay, and I’m okay with that fact in itself. I’d like to see a more holistic conversation about what that means.
Why is that a goal? Smoking is bad because it enormously raises your risk of cancer. Nicotine doesn’t do that. Nicotine’s only bad because it addicts you to smoking.
This is disingenuous. It’s not “marginally” less unhealthy, it’s enormously less unhealthy. Nicotine isn’t even shown to be carcinogenic! Hell, even smokeless tobacco is enormously less unhealthy than smoking.
Smoking is incredibly unhealthy.
In addition, nicotine by itself has potential health benefits:
What is with this new puritanism that makes people say profoundly dishonest things (like "vaping is only marginally healthier than smoking) in an effort to prevent people from doing things they enjoy that don’t hurt anyone?
The larger point is that tobacco companies are still working to hook kids on nicotine and they are succeeding. Only the means of delivery has changed from smoking to vaping. It’s not healthy or safe no matter how you slice it.
Look, if you want to vape, smoke, snort or shoot I don’t really give a f*ck. But don’t argue semantics here in order to justify your habit.
