Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/20/watch-how-to-do-six-easy-smoke.html
…
In my experience your ability to do smoke tricks depends on the structure of your mouth. I have trouble blowing even simple rings because my lips make Mick Jagger’s look puny.
5 Likes
7 Likes
back when i DID smoke, smoke rings were my favorite, and popping one through another was my favorite trick.
also, waiting for someone to post a Gandalf GIF.
5 Likes
What’s with all the smoking on BB? The last few weeks feels like there’s been —on average— a story every day about how cool smoking paraphernalia is, about how cool and easy this vaping kit is, or how neat this hash pipe looks. I get that you’re selling some of this stuff but are you really going to go full Camel and wash your hands of any public health notice?
When did we forget that exposing lungs to contaminates usually ends in people getting lung cancer? That heat causes throat damage and cancer. That our understanding of the chemical interactions happening on atomisers, or what’s even in the fluids sold is laughably limited.
But whatever’s cool, eh? Ignore me and smoke like it’s 1949.
5 Likes
I find it somewhat annoying and i often have to fight the urge to really be snarky or negative. The image i posted above was the best i could do today. At the end of the day, even though smoking bothers me these posts are clearly not for me and i need to shut up… which is a tall order most of the time 
1 Like
He makes clear in the video that he’s using cannabis, not tobacco. And as cannabis has yet to claim a victim in its approximately 3000 year history of use, I think we’re good. The BB posts mostly tend to be about cannabis smoking paraphernalia too, or vaping nicotine, not tobacco.
As for the fluids used in vapers for nicotine, well. that’s made from glycerol, the same fluid used in night-club smoke machines for over 40 years.
My word. Buckle up. This will come as a shock, but burning most plant matter —including marijuana— releases really bad stuff. Remember those contaminates I was talking about earlier? Yeah. You get those from marijuana too. Cancer Research UK puts this quite succinctly:
Cannabis smoke contains many of the same cancer causing substances (carcinogens) as tobacco - at least 50 of them. In addition, cannabis is often mixed with tobacco when smoked.
Now I freely admit that THC has therapeutic (and direct medical) uses related to cancer but saying stuff like “cannabis has yet to claim a victim” is silly. People clearly do smoke it and that has an observed effect on lung cancers. Not to mention people are killed drug-driving all the time, all over the place.
It might be true that nobody has ever directly overdosed on it but as with alcohol and nicotine, that’s not the real health concern here.
Edit: Almost forgot to mention that nicotine itself (not tobacco) is a destructive chemical to take through the lungs. It denatures the elasticity of your alveoli (the bits in your lung that stretch open when you breath). Do that a lot and you break your lungs. COPD, pneumonias, death. Hoorah.
1 Like
I’ve been buckled up for years.
No, it’s factual. There are no deaths yet from cannabis.
From your link:
There are still no deaths directly related to cannabis consumption.
Mixing with tobacco is a different story, like blaming the cup after drinking poison from it.
Drug-driving accidents are not cause of death by cannabis either. That’d be like blaming cellphones as the cause of death when driving, when in fact it’s undue care.
Apart from the fact that alchohol and tobacco claim thousands of lives every year, I’m interested to know what you think the real health concern with cannabis is then.[quote=“OliWarner, post:8, topic:85742”]
nicotine itself (not tobacco) is a destructive chemical
[/quote]
From Wikipedia
[quote]The general medical position is that nicotine itself poses few health risks, except among certain vulnerable groups.[/quote].
We’re getting into nested-quote hell territory, so I’ll just take them in order.
I think I used the wrong link. That meta-study decries its own data sources as fairly hard to pick through. It still concludes that you should avoid smoking marijuana. Though some controlled studies (the link I meant to use) are happy to give solid figures. It’s a small controlled study but an 8% increase in lung cancer, after adjustments.
Your definition of “deaths directly related to” is utterly bizarre. It can impair you physically and mentally and that impairment has lead to deaths. It’s not an overdose but that doesn’t mean it’s blameless. If you want to pursue this segment, you’re going to need to explain what you mean by directly related to, with an example. Otherwise agree to disagree.
Alcohol (in excess) and tobacco (virtually, at all) are also bad, and you’ve not found me saying otherwise. Together these kill 8 million people around the world a year (by my and epidemiology’s definition of “cause”) but that makse sense because they’re also consumed by a much higher proportion of the population. They’re widely legal and omnipresent. Use has dipped because of education (that I’m asking for here) and regulation (that vaping really needs).
Sticking with that, I’m not sure what your point is. I started by saying these posts about smoking and vaping (substances unknown) have completely washed their hands of any public health issues. Yes. People might just be playing crazy golf with their bongs
And I maintain my stance on nicotine. The citation for nicotine being safe is in the context of reducing tobacco impact. That’s actually an awful bit of editing on Wikipedia. When you look at it in that context, it’s the difference between being shot with a 50cal and a low power air rifle, so of course that’s safer, but it’s not safe. In the context of smoking cessation, all doctors are going to tell people to take NRTs instead of tobacco. But nicotine itself interferes with elastin (and collagen). Ain’t “safe”.
1 Like
This is a fallacious argument. Yes, it can impair you temporarily whilst high and if you happen to be driving, but that’s akin to saying that texting on your phone can impair you whilst driving. It doesn’t make the phone nor cannabis responsible, it makes the driver directly responsible for operating whilst under the influence. In other words, if you’re driving don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t text and keep off the meds.
What I mean by “directly related to” is; it causes no physical nor physiological harm on its own, with the small exception of those who are mentally prone to instability. i.e. it has no harmful effects on the health of the user. It’s safer than peanuts, and it’s safer than aspirin.
I agree with your stance on the dangers of alchohol and tobacco, but this has nothing to do with population-consumption size. Both have effects that are demonstrably bad for the health.
Your assertion of “substances unknown” (in regards to vaping) is incorrect. We know exactly what is in vaping fluid. Glycerol and nicotine. Occasionally flavouring. (I have friends in the vape-fluid business).
Again, incorrect. Current scientific consensus shows that nicotine on its own is relatively harmless.
Now I agree that anything in excess can cause harm, but that’s true for sugar, salt, fat, oxygen and even plain old water.
Yes, perhaps these posts should come with a health disclaimer, but as far as we can tell, these things are relatively safe. Smoking a spliff is safer for your health than eating a cheeseburger.
I’d be interested to hear what kind of regulation you’d like to bring regarding vaping.
Nearly aways flavoring, and that’s where a lot of uncertainty lies. Beyond what inhaling propylene glycol and glycerine may do to you, health-wise (likely not much), there’s a very wide range of sources of flavorings. What does repeatedly filling your lungs with artificial piña colada flavoring do? Or naturally-sourced hazelnut flavor? We don’t know, but I’m guessing it doesn’t act as lung balm to keep them fresh.
1 Like
Well, food flavourings are use in vape-fluid. These may catalyse into something harmful or may not. You’d need to ask a chemist about that. Perhaps @ActionAbe might have some insights?
Here’s an interesting link about the ingredients.
Exactly, and to be clear, I’m not terribly concerned about them, just curious about what effect they might have. I’ve got a vape pipe myself that I occasionally use, nicotine-free, because I think it’s fun to inhale flavors. These guys make stuff called “Long Bottom Leaf” that tastes the way fantasy pipe tobacco smells.
1 Like
It’s an interesting point. We know that they’re harmless when heated to similar temperatures and eaten, it’s lung-ingestion that’s the relative unknown.
I’ll bet it’s a LOT safer than having a barbeque though, and we don’t advise people to avoid those.
No clue. It will probably be about a decade before any real consensus emerges, and that consensus will be fragile. There are several issues to consider:
-
A lot of the substances that go into the fluid do absolutely form harmful byproducts like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, this is an expected contaminant and what little research I’ve read on it bears this out to be true. However some of this research indicates that the substances aren’t present in sufficient quantities to be of concern. I would like to see this finding replicated more systematically (this finding was in a metastudy/review and I have some issues with the methods.) It’s not hard to imagine some mechanisms by which the various components of the e-juice can mix and react on heating to form something that isn’t great for you. However, it’s probably not ideal. a good vaporizer should minimize this because it means you’re burning and therefore altering the e-juice and changing the flavor profile.
-
What effect these chemicals and intermediaries have on the lungs is largely a question of what lung tissue can take. People who smoke are not in the same risk-category as people who sat around a bonfire once, even though they both have inhaled smoke. The same applies to these e-cigs, where the level of consumption may make a difference.
-
The question of how potentially harmful vaping is, must be placed in context. Harmful compared to what? We’re don’t care about skydiving or cliff diving, the most meaningful comparison is to smoked tobacco. Smoking kills a lot of people. Even if it turned out vaping was a risk factor for something like cancer, it seems doubtful it can be as bad as smoking. You’re not filling your lungs with tar and Polonium (yes, that Polonium, the stuff they Putin some guy’s sushi). When vaping is compared to cigarettes, it’s entirely possible that it may turn out the consensus becomes, “Yeah. Vaping isn’t great for you, but who cares? We’ve saves millions from cigarette-related deaths in exchange for a very nominal bump in the hiccups (or whatever).”
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
