
Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can’t Shake Their Reputation as a Menace - pmcpinto
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/health/e-cigarette-vape-njoy-bankruptcy.html
======
thirdsun
For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a
very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and
without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually
started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes
without any desire to quit.

The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're
using. Once you aren't using nicotine any longer all that is left is the
social ritual and habit of going out for a smoke, which isn't a very
convincing reason after a while. Soon you'll forgot to take your e-cigarette
with you one day - you'll use it less and less. Until it simply doesn't matter
any longer.

~~~
elorant
As a former smoker I believe that the best way to quit smoking is cold turkey.
Sure, the withdrawal phase is a hell but in my case that helped me realize
just how addictive that shit was. Before I’d never imagine that quitting would
cause me depression or sleeping problems. All that, and a lot more, helped me
understand how much my body was reliant on cigarettes. From my experience most
smokers don’t realize how addictive and dependent they are on their habit. If
they were perhaps they’d think twice before lighting another one.

~~~
tankenmate
And yet the numbers say that people who go through phased withdrawal using
e-cigarettes are more likely to give up...

~~~
awinder
If I remember correctly, cold turkey has worse rates for initial quitting but
the lowest rates of people returning to smoking for those who "made it"

~~~
gr3yh47
IIRC it has to do with the anguish of quitting - if you went through the
difficulty and pain of quitting cold turkey you probably don't want that to be
for nothing

~~~
infogulch
Sunk cost strikes again? This time for good.

~~~
takingflac
I wouldn't say sunk cost so much as you now have a better understanding of
what the price is now that you have paid it once.

------
jrockway
The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is
no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus
the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their
revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their
revenue stream too.

It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford
prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers.
The poor can't, so they just die.

(I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the
government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income,
rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will
always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to
tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an
unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)

~~~
saurik
I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific
behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior:
that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price
rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those
people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should
not care that they aren't collecting the money to pay for it anymore. As an
example: taxing people who use roads to pay for roads encourages people to use
roads less, which puts less wear on the road surface and means you need fewer
lanes and thereby less road. If this mechanism is used correctly, and I
realize it often isn't, the real problem is only when there is no good way to
directly tax the damage and so a proxy is used: we don't tax people for miles
driven, we tax them by the gallon of gas purchased, and while that works for
pollution control (and people thereby think it makes sense that people who use
less gas have to pay less gas tax, under an assumption that the goal is to
encourage less burning of gas), the taxes are used to fund roads, and electric
cars still put as much wear on the road as gasoline cars; this screws up the
incentives and makes the government kind of want people to keep burning gas so
they keep getting taxes to fund the roads they continue to need. But this is a
slightly different problem than what you are describing. In the case of
cigarettes, I was under the impression the goal of the tax was to fund public
health infrastructure due to the cost to the public of caring for victims of
smoking, and so while I realize the government always mixes their accounts and
crosses purposes and generally screws this up, if e-cigarettes are generally
safe then that should have been a case of working incentives.

~~~
syshum
>>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific
behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior:

That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all
taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a
large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool.

There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax
to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health
Programs

For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social
control

Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any
activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period.

Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There
should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types

~~~
Synaesthesia
I have no problem with taxes on harmful products like tobacco and alcohol
since they are a harm to society and a burden on society.

~~~
syshum
That is a slippery slope, if you want to talk about products or activities
that "harm society"

Further then you have to define what "harm" it is doing.

I also suspect part of that "harm" you talk about is Costs associated with
healthcare that is paid for by the taxpayer, meaning you likely support
government run socialized health services. I do not.

~~~
brokenmachine
Are you seriously requesting an explanation of what harm cigarettes are doing
to society?

I suggest you have a trip to to a respiratory ward sometime.

~~~
syshum
I do not question the harm cigarettes do to individuals, but individuals make
choices every day that cause harm to themselves. That is not a reason for
government involvement

I do not believe it is my place to tell individuals what chemicals they can or
can not consume

I am 100% against the War on Drugs as well, and believe that all drugs,
including crack, cocaine, and all prescription drugs should be legal to buy if
the person desires it.

I am an individualist, not a collectivist

------
mcguire
" _Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing
approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan
culture, said Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and
Health._ "

This is true.

You can see the same thing during the (alcohol) prohibition era: because ethyl
alcohol is necessary for other uses, it was mandated to be "denatured" by
adding chemicals that made it less appealing to drink. When they found people
still drinking it (or managing to separate the alcohol from the denaturants),
they increased the toxicity of the chemicals until they were actually
poisoning people.

In this case, the primary goal is to prevent new smokers. Since many of the
e-cigarette flavors are pleasant, they regard it as attractive to children.
Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't
seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's
that.

On the other hand, if you are already smoking, your soul is lost and, to a
first approximation, it would be better if you were to die as soon as possible
---outside of pharmaceutical companies, there is no serious interest in
cessation. Inside those companies, making nicotine gum and patches is big
business, and I know people who have been chewing the gum frequently for
nearly a decade.

There is a certain amount of the same feeling in those who have quit smoking.
To paraphrase an old joke, how do you know someone quit smoking? Don't worry,
they'll tell you. If you can quit cold-turkey, good; if you can't, you are
weak willed and a lesser human.

In any case, the bottom line is, like in all Puritan situations, that results
matter less than perceptions.

~~~
kstrauser
_Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach
that British advocates see as rooted in the United States’ Puritan culture_

I think that's hugely simplified. There are plenty of drugs which are
exceedingly difficult to use recreationally:

\- Crack

\- Meth

\- Nicotine

\- Heroin

People who use those at all are very likely to use them a whole hell of a lot,
and they have terrible health effects. I don't think it's Puritanism to
recommend staying away from highly addictive substances.

 _Now, getting someone who doesn 't already smoke to vape is bad, but I
haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so
there's that._

According to HHS ([http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-
topics/substanc...](http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-
topics/substance-abuse/tobacco/trends.html)):

"Eighth grade students who use e-cigarettes are 10 times more likely than
their peers who do not use e-cigarettes to eventually smoke tobacco
cigarettes. This trend continues to a slightly lesser degree for older
adolescents. Tenth and 12th grade students who use e-cigarettes are eight and
six times more likely, respectively, than their peers to smoke tobacco
cigarettes. This suggests that youth who use e-cigarettes are likely to become
tobacco cigarette smokers as they age."

~~~
mcguire
" _There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use
recreationally:_ "

Certainly. And the proper response is to discourage their use. But how do you
treat those who do use them? As a health problem or as a moral failure?

Thanks for the HHS link!

~~~
kstrauser
> Certainly. And the proper response is to discourage their use.

Totally agree, but that's an entirely different conversation.

------
halotrope
This is purely anecdotal but I have made the switch almost a year ago, also by
"accident" after buying a starter kit to see what this thing was people around
me started doing. Without actively trying to quit I just was not interested in
regular cigarettes shortly after and managed to lower my nicotine content from
24mg to 6mg and am now planning to go lower with the next batch of liquid that
I will order.

This was after many failed attempts to quit from around a pack a day with the
longest cessation time being around half a year.

I don't think that vaping is harmless and I would not be surprised there are
adverse long time health risks. But compared to real cigarettes this was a
godsend for me. It is much cheaper, it does not have that disgusting smell,
and it is much easier from the logistics side compared to having to buy
cigarettes every day, feeling like some lowlife addict in the process. What I
have now is a hobby, tinkering with my devices, building coils, trying juices
(since some time I got rid of any flavours and just vape pure VG/PG). Gone is
most of the shortness of breath when working out, disgusting mouthfeel in the
morning, cold hands and feet and this permanent feeling of being poisoned. I
gave my father a starter-kit for Christmas and he managed to quit cigarettes
completely on that very day after heavily smoking for 30 years, trying to quit
and suffering from the effects of smoking much more than a relatively young
person does. I might have saved his life that day.

So yes, maybe vaping is bad, maybe it will kill you when you are not able to
quit timely. But the time spend with the addiction is a whole lot more
pleasant with vaping than with cigarettes and I cannot imagine it being
remotely as deadly as smoke/tar. Banning vaping because of unknown health
risks is complete madness in my opinion.

------
jwr
Safe or not for smokers, non-smokers should certainly not have to inhale the
same substances that smokers do. I find it alarming that e-cigarette marketing
managed to convince smokers that what gets exhaled is just "water vapor", and
thus they can now smoke anywhere they want.

~~~
x1798DE
I don't understand. In my experience these vaporizers don't have any sort of
smoke that lingers around and there is no unpleasant sensation associated with
breathing around ecigarette users like there is with tobacco. Even if there is
more than water vapor in there, I feel like it's very unlikely that I'd be
getting any sort of significant dose from their exhalations, so why should I
care if they smoke inside?

~~~
brokenmachine
Do you have any proof it is safe, or are we just basing our decisions on
feelings?

I'm personally not comfortable inhaling your random unknown vaporizer gases.
Many chemicals are dangerous at levels you are not able to smell, or indeed
have no odor.

------
lightedman
As long as people keep playing the sub-ohm game, thus keeping the majority of
heat dissipation in the battery (I've seen 5 milli-Ohm coils, imagine where
the heat's going when an 18650 has a typical resistance of 100 milli-ohms
fresh) then yes, these things will be a menace. Just the other day a sub-ohmer
at the mental health facility I was re-wiring had his battery explode on him.
POPFIZZLE! It was just sitting on the concrete in the shade, he wasn't even
using it and it hadn't been used for at least 10 minutes.

Ohm's law really needs to get more exposure in the classroom.

~~~
alexdumitru
You scared me a bit, as I'm using 0.25 ohm. Can you explain what's the problem
or provide some resources to read?

I was pretty scared of ecigs before, seeing so many exploding.

~~~
KirinDave
Okay, so... Extremely simplified (slightly incorrect) but good rule of thumb
for you at the end.

What happens when you hotwire a battery (a wire between positive and
negative)? Current flows, discharging the battery but also often melting or
exploding the battery. Normally current flow is the whole reason for a
battery, but why is hotwiring bad as opposed to tossing a LED+resistor in the
circuit?

In a circuit, heat accumulates where majority of resistance is. So when your
element has less resistance than your battery, more of the stress is going
there than on your heating element. So it's hard on your power supply. If it's
a cool 5v hobbyist power supply, you're probably cool. They're durable. Don't
stress too much, you're more likely to break the element. But if it's a
battery, you're sinking heat into something that is ultimately full of
volatile chemicals and has limited capacity to fight back.

You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the
cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by
transferring the charge to an intermediate element (obviously your ecig rig
hasn't popped yet).

~~~
vertex-four
> You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the
> cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by
> transferring the charge to an intermediate element

Of course, most people use regulated mods which do just that.

As someone who vapes, I wouldn't be opposed to banning the sale of mechanical
mods (i.e. mods which are literally just a battery, a button and a resistance
element in a circuit). They're dangerous. On the other hand, people would just
build them themselves, they're not difficult.

~~~
lightedman
Mechanical mods are only dangerous if you're using a volatile power supply -
e.g. a lithium cell. NiMH (what's used in the mechanical MFLB) doesn't do
this, those tend to burst/leak rather than go up in an incendiary ball.

------
taneq
Do e-cigarettes really have a reputation as a 'menace'? I've never heard
anyone express any significant concern about them on an individual level
(certainly nowhere near as much as about traditional cigarettes), and yet I've
read countless news articles decrying them.

It seems odd.

~~~
linkregister
Only in U.S. cities will I see scare-tactic advertisements against
e-cigarettes. What's strange to me is that the Truth campaign is sponsoring
some of them. The Truth campaign is a result of a liability suit of several
states vs the cigarette companies, and it is intended to pay for anti-smoking
advertisements and smoking cessation programs. It appears to be a blatant
violation of the terms of the judgement.

~~~
josho
Wow, that's a dirty tactic. Especially when you consider that what's bad about
smoking is tobacco and e-cigs don't necessarily have tobacco.

~~~
NTripleOne
What's bad about smoking is _burning_ tobacco.

Important distinction.

~~~
montecarl
You can be even more general than that. Inhaling burning organic matter is
probably worth avoiding. There is some good evidence that wood smoke is also
quite bad for you.[1]

[1]
[https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf](https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf)

------
moron4hire
I think that the two properties--that it is safer than cigarettes and that
it's a menace--are not a contradiction. It's certainly not _as_ bad to be
around a vaper than a smoker, but that doesn't mean it's not _bad_ to be
around a vaper. It's relatively better, absolutely still on the "gross, don't
do that around me" end of the spectrum.

I try pretty hard to not subject people to my disgusting habits. How is it
that people expect inhaling chemicals to be any different? They act like they
are surprised that you don't want to be exposed to their disgusting clouds of
stink.

~~~
brokenmachine
But it isn't _nearly_ as stinky! And I _have a feeling_ that it's much less
noxious! And the vapour _hasn 't even been proven yet_ to kill everyone
around! It's totally amazing and we should all be encouraging everyone to
vape!

If you can't tell, I'm agreeing with you. I pray something is done about
vaping before the horse has bolted like it did with cigarettes. Just because
it _could be_ less dangerous doesn't mean it should be encouraged or indeed
allowed at all. Every vaping liquid being sold should have to be tested
thoroughly for safety IMO, and really I'm amazed that it doesn't have to be.

Vaping is too new for long-term studies to have been performed, and also with
the zillions of different kinds of vaping juices, each one with a different
formulation, how can we know that they are all safe?

It's an absolute joke how much secondhand smoke a non-smoker is forced to
inhale nowadays with what we know about how dangerous it is, and I live in
Australia, with relatively progressive smoking laws. I don't want to be
subjected to secondhand smoke in public places, and I don't want to be
subjected to secondhand vapor either, regardless of whether or not the inhaler
considers it "safe enough".

Actually it is illegal here to sell nicotene-containing liquid. I do think
that nicotene-containing liquid is being sold however, as I do see people
vaping around the place, and just quietly, they don't seem like the kind of
people who could get their stuff together enough to make their own ecig juice.

------
Spooky23
How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients,
particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.

~~~
SparkyMcUnicorn
It's true that flavorings are the biggest variable and it's a risk that people
are taking because many feel that risk is extremely low.

For example; some flavorings contain diacetyl which, if inhaling too much,
will lead to Bronchiolitis Obliterans or "popcorn lung", but the amount
actually inhaled in e-cigarettes is 750 times less than cigarettes and vastly
less than the amount inhaled by people that have developed popcorn lung.

Yes, there are some chemicals in the flavoring, but the amount is fractions of
that in cigarettes (flavorings usually account for less than 10% in my liquid,
and much of the flavoring is more base liquid; VG and PG). I've taken the risk
assessment and decided that e-cigs are much safer. Each person must do that
for themselves.

~~~
mcguire
For anyone who hasn't followed this, "popcorn lung"[1] is named that because
it was found in workers at factories making (microwave?) popcorn products. In
other words, they were dealing with diacetyl in industrial quantities.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans)

------
imgabe
Of course it's great if you're replacing normal cigarettes with it. But why
should we pretend it's healthy to do if you weren't smoking to begin with?
Nicotine is still highly addictive and causes heart disease. If you're not
currently using nicotine, why start?

~~~
vilhelm_s
Lots of reasons! :)

[https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine](https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine)

~~~
wyager
Wow, that's crazy. The most interesting part is that for Tobacco, it's MAOIs,
not nicotine, that is the most addictive.

------
dghughes
I know many people say short term use of e-cigarettes have helped them that's
great but I have to wonder about those who have no plans to stop.

There seems to be a vocal battle between e-cig users and scientists each
having their own claims about diacetyl. It's the famous fake butter compound
for microwave popcorn that caused lung cancer in the workers who handled it.

My dad has IPF and COPD two lung diseases from years of working a blue collar
job breathing in small damaging particles over time. Sawdust, paint drops,
metal from grinding, probably welding fumes, etc. any small particles may seem
harmless but over time damage lungs.

What concerns me about e-cigarettes is maybe the damage doesn't appear until
30 from now. Will we see an increase of lung disease 30 years from now?

~~~
vertex-four
Note that diacetyl has been removed from almost all flavour compounds used in
the creation of ejuice, aside from some custard ones, and even then there's
variations without diacetyl.

In any case, I doubt there's a very significant amount of people who've
started ecigs who wouldn't have started cigarettes, and cigarettes are well
known to cause lung damage.

------
DougN7
I wonder about the culture around vaping. From my observations, pretty much
everyone I see doing it is young and from appearances seem to be counter-
culture. Doesn't mean they're bad people, but if they're the only one doing
it, it doesn't make it mainstream.

~~~
M_Grey
It also leads to the vape being classed in the same breath as "neckbeard" and
"fedora"... which is unfortunate as hell for people just trying to quit
cigarettes. The problem is, the person who quietly vapes out of sight and mind
doesn't make an impression. The guy with a fedora and a neckbeard who's
blowing huges clouds of vapor in a public space makes a lasting and terrible
impression.

At the end of the day though, if you're a smoker, the choice is pretty
straightforward, and you should use a "vape". You should however, be
considerate of others, and unfortunately also accept that for a while you're
going to be lumped in with the more anti-social element of society.

------
rawfan
I quit smoking 7 years ago and helped a dozen people to quit as well.

NONE of the people I know who used e-cigarettes were able to quit for good.

Here's my recipe:

1\. Quitting sounds hard but it isn't. The majority of people who try to quit,
actually succeed. 2\. Don't use ANYTHING as a substitute (no chewing gum, no
patches or e-cigs). Substitutes usually can never replace the original and
will just keep you "hooked". 3\. Read affirmative stuff (like news stories,
studies). Reading about a study that showed most people quit for good,
actually helps. As does reading about the consequences for continueing to
smoke.

That's it. Just quit. It's easy, you'll be off cigarettes in no time.

Everyone can do it. Smoking is totally a 90s thing.

~~~
yuubi
And the one person I know who had tried various ways to quit over the years
got a vape set, tapered down gradually to no cigarettes over about 6 weeks (I
think on day 1 she only had half a pack instead of her usual ≥ 1 pack habit),
and hasn't had an actual cigarette in over 2 years. Different people seem to
respond better to different approaches.

~~~
rawfan
I know the initial success is great. The question is, will she be able to stay
off cigarettes for good (and ecigs, too). Most ecig-users I know went back to
cigarettes without hesitation when they forgot to bring extra liquid to the
party and they got drunk. Even after years of abstinence from real cigarettes.

Everything anyone here will say is anecdotal of course.

~~~
iamatworknow
I think (as someone who hasn't touched a cigarette in two years, and hasn't
touched an ecig since February) that the most important part is that you have
to taper down the nicotine content of the ecigs, otherwise you're just
replacing one nicotine delivery system with another and not making any
progress. The leap between being nicotine and tobacco free and a cigarette is
far greater (mentally and physically) than between a nicotine supplement
(ecigs) and a cigarette.

------
the_watcher
It's only briefly alluded to in the piece, indirectly at that, but one of the
most frustrating things about vice taxes is that they are sold as methods to
disincentivize behavior, but as governments use the revenue, as that behavior
falls, there's a tendency to try to create an equivalent tax on the new
behavior. The worst of these are the periodic proposals for a "mileage tax" on
high efficiency vehicles in states like California, which has actually been
pitched (unsuccessfully) for the explicit purpose of replacing the revenue
lost on gas taxes from the shift towards electric and high mileage cars.

~~~
redblacktree
Gasoline taxes aren't "vice taxes." They're usage taxes that pay for the
maintenance of roads and bridges.

~~~
the_watcher
If the gas tax was pitched and passed as a usage tax, rather than as an
incentive for purchasing more efficient vehicles, I'd have a different
perspective on moving to a mileage tax. However, in California, at least some
gas taxes were pitched and passed as vice taxes, and the mileage tax here was
explicitly pitched to replace the revenue generated by it (by at least one CA
representative). Thankfully, thus far we've resisted.

Related: a usage tax for maintenance of roads and bridges has a far simpler
option than taxing gas that may be used in boats, tractors, and other non-road
uses: toll roads, which tax everyone who uses the roads equivalently. And
before anyone argues that such a tax is regressive: a gas tax is far more
regressive, as those with older, less efficient vehicles are hit harder than
those with the money to buy a Tesla.

~~~
greglindahl
Because diesel is commonly used for non-vehicle purposes, diesel fuel is
frequently marked with color to indicate if it was taxed at the vehicle rate
or not:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel#Taxation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel#Taxation)

However, if you're talking about a carbon tax instead of a roads maintenance
tax, burning diesel or gas is the same, whether it's in a car or not.

~~~
the_watcher
A carbon tax is a vice tax, not a use tax.

------
tjohns
I find it really interesting that the bulk of the comments here are about
folks using them as a smoking cessation aid.

In my case, every friend I know who's started using e-cigarettes took them up
without having an existing tobacco habit. Some of them add nicotine to the
vape juice, some don't.

I don't know how common this is, but it's certainly given vaping a negative
impression for me. At the very least, it seems like an unnecessary risk given
how little public health data there is.

~~~
ryuker16
You sure they're not vaping weed?

------
no_wave
We actually don't know that they're safer to puff. We simply don't have any
evidence that indicates that they're as or more dangerous.

Every variety of plastic or food additive that ended up being proved harmful
was thought safe for years. People are right to be skeptical of them for the
next thirty years or so.

------
vivekd
I used e-cigarettes to quit smoking and I can attest that they did work for
me. Although my friend and brother tried it as well without any success - so I
guess its an individual thing.

Although I would recommend e-cigs as a temporary quit smoking aid only and not
as a replacement. I noticed I got more lung infections while vaping and my
brother noticed the same thing. Also I wouldnt trust some of the flavors out
there, they put anything in there. So if its a temporary measure taken as a
quit smoking aid, great, as an alternative to cigs - that Im still on the
fence about.

------
autoreleasepool
For anyone looking at e-cigarettes, I have recommend the JUUL [0] as it is by
the far the safest, best pulling, and sleekest looking e-cigarette I've tried.
The only downside is that there isn't a simple way to reduce nicotine content.
That aside, it's a wonderful little piece of hardware.

[0] [https://www.juulvapor.com/](https://www.juulvapor.com/)

------
mfukar
Pretty sure I would rank immunodeficiencies [1] as a menace, but I'm not a
doctor of any kind..

[1]
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php)

------
SimpleXYZ
>Use of the devices is slumping because they are not as good as cigarettes at
giving a hit of nicotine

This is total nonsense. You can use e-juice at a level that will give you
nicotine poisoning.

~~~
zamalek
I find that I sometimes still crave a cigarette. I suspect that has more to do
one or more of the 599 additives (4000 when burnt)[1] in them being addictive.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes)

------
walid
A slow paced serial killer is safer than a fast paced serial killer.

~~~
NTripleOne
Also harder to notice.

------
transfire
No. The media can stop dissing them at the behest of their corporate masters.
That's all that's going on.

------
api
That reputation as a menace was purchased with a huge amount of tobacco
industry money.

------
timwaagh
the malboro man does not smoke e cigarettes. they're not cool. they're a
medical tool for addicts. being an addict is not cool. as smoking is just
silly herd behaviour of putting burning stinking sticks into your mouth and
somehow being part of something cool, it's no surprise e cigarrettes don't
take off.

only a big shift in marketing of these things can change that. if e cigarettes
where seen as the Apple of smoking surely they'd sell better.

~~~
totalZero
It's 2016, cigarettes aren't cool anymore.

I used to date a girl who used an ecig and would exhale a cloud of vanilla
cookie aroma everywhere we went. I thought that was pretty cool to be honest.

~~~
brokenmachine
It's 2016, being addicted to something that kills you (regardless of flavor),
isn't cool anymore.

~~~
evgen
Interesting, except for the fact that nicotine is not carcinogenic and doesn't
kill you. It is about as dangerous as caffeine, and we can look around us and
see how uncool that dangerous substance has become over the past few
decades...

