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"Cigarette advertising back on TV" says clueless middle-class puritan numpty.

They're disease-riddled, snaggle-toothed pariahs. Some have lost limbs, some have lost lungs, and some of them poison babies. Smokers, as portrayed in today's ad breaks, tend to cut a pretty disgusting figure, cautionary tales rather than aspirational role-models. But, following a notable return to TV advertising by Big Tobacco, the modern day Marlboro man appears to be getting a makeover. For the first time in more than 20 years, cigarette ads are back on British TV screens, and several decades of anti-smoking campaigning could be undermined.

On Monday night, British American Tobacco launched the first-ever TV commercials for its Vype brand of e-cigarettes. If you missed the spots, you might be wondering how you go about advertising a vaporising device designed to deliver a potent parasympathomimetic alkaloid into a person's lungs.

Oh noes! Big long scary sciency words, it must be bad for you, just like that horrible Dihydrogen Monoxide stuff I was warned about a few years ago!

Now, personally, I think the campaign waged against smokers(and it was waged against smokers, not smoking) was often hysterical, frequently scientifically illiterate, and sometimes downright dishonest. And, considering the subject of the campaign, arguably entirely justified in being so considering how serious a threat to public health cigarettes are. I say that as someone who smoked 10-25 roll-ups a day since my mid teens. Also in that context, I enthusiastically supported Scotland's ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, on the basis that while any particular non-smoking punter might enter a smoky establishment of their own free will, it's not really fair to expect them to expose themselves if they want to spend time with their mates or attend a particular event, and even if you take hypothetical customers out of the equation, the employees don't have that choice. As general public opinion turned against smoking, I didn't even mind dealing with the occasional cretin that would give you abuse in the street for having a ciggy ten feet away and downwind -apparently they saw the advert on telly in which smoke coming from the end of a cigarette gains sentience and attempts to strangle a baby and thought that was a documentary or something- because the odd moron taking things too far is a price worth paying if it makes smokers more considerate of other people.

But now we have e-cigs, devices which vapourise a mixture consisting of nicotine and glycol(typically propylene glycol, sometimes vegetable glycol or a mixture of the two - glycols are a form of alcohol compound), resulting in a product that amounts to water vapour with some nicotine content. The vapour inhaled by the user is entirely absent the carcinogens and other harmful chemicals generated when you burn tobacco, and the vapour exhaled by the user contains levels of nicotine so negligible they're actually difficult to detect. Now, there have been some studies which have attempted to prove that nicotine is itself a carcinogen(they did not), or that it can be linked to heart disease(it could not be), but even if we were to accept the contention put forward by some people that "we just don't know what the long-term effects could be"(which itself is arguable, the "ingredient list" is not long and its components are pretty well understood), what we have in e-cigs is essentially a device which satisfies all the mental and physical components of nicotine addiction(hand to mouth action, drawing, "throat hit" on inhalation, delivery of the chemical itself) in a format which removes ALL of the known existing health risks of cigarettes to both the user, AND anyone around the user.

Now, you would think that anti-smoking campaigners would be overjoyed; if every smoker could be persuaded to switch to one of these devices, which would not be difficult considering the benefits over cigarettes(they're cheaper by a vast margin, they don't make every bit of fabric you own smell like an ashtray, you get your full range of taste and smell back just as if you'd quit by any other means), we would essentially have "solved" smoking - cigarettes, and all the health and social problems that go with them, would be consigned to history. Victory, yes?

Well, no, apparently not. Because for some people, stopping smoking has never been about public health or social ills. Vilifying smokers was not just a necessary unpleasantness, a means to an end, it WAS the end. These rabid neo-puritans seem almost to be offended by the idea that people who were addicted to nicotine now have a way to quit that involves no hardship, no "penance", and that people who enjoyed the experience of smoking can now do so without guilt or fear that they are harming others. This has led to everything from the type of idiocy on display in the linked article, all the way to the outright hilarious scene of anti-smoking campaigners joining forces with Big Tobacco companies to advocate for EU legislation that would drastically limit the availability of the cheaper and superior-quality products currently available to consumers in favour of the tobacco and smoking cessation industries' versions, which are disposable rather than reusable, as expensive as smoking traditional cigarettes, and most ridiculously considering the anti-smoking campaigners' stated grounds for opposition(vaping might "renormalise" smoking, somehow), look much more like real cigarettes.

I'm interested to find out what others think; is the vague possibility that there might potentially be some unseen future health issue sufficient justification for severely limiting the sale of something which has so many obvious and immediate benefits? Are the objections raised by some among the anti-smoking lobby justified, or do you also get the sense that this is more about these devices removing an opportunity for certain types of people to look down upon and feel superior to others?

e-cigs are great, should be encouraged as a means of giving up tobacco.

I'm a non-smoker and support their use 100%, and recommend them to current smokers.

I've no problem with them being used as aids to give up smoking (and can see no clear reason for disposables only other than increasing profits for the sellers),

but they probably should be treated the same as the cigarettes they replace (banned in public places)

as they do/will help re-normalise the act (in the same way that studies showed sweet/candy cigarettes tended to set up kids to smoke which led to them being banned)

20 years ago somebody wandering down the street talking loudly to themselves was a nutter to be avoided (or helped), now we just ignore them as we think they're a showoff with a Bluetooth phone headset

at a distance seeing somebody 'smoking' an e-cig will look the same as somebody actually smoking

For the record; I'm not and have never been a smoker, nor do I socialise with many (Not discriminating against smokers specifically, just that very few of my friends/colleagues smoke)

I think the e-cigs are a pretty good idea; most of the smokers I encounter are trying to quit and a few of them have started using these e-cigs. Personally, I think tv advertisements for them are a bad move, but they should be given some more exposure; I'd rather people were introduced to these e-cigs than cigarettes. Even if people can find a health risk associated with water vapour and nicotine, they will remain a far safer alternative to whatever-the-hell they put in cigarettes!

I have to agree that whoever wrote that article is a clueless numpty though I googled those "big long scary sciency words" and was led on a fascinating trail through the internet until I found that exact phrase as the first line of the wikipedia article on Nicotine

Electronic cigarettes are untested, untried ways of creating ideally sized particles to lodge deeply in your lungs. Anyone breathing the vapor particles is exposed to whatever is vaporized... be it chemicals, active ingredients, impurities, microorganisms, etc.

The crap getting vaporized is not manufactured to established, scientifically developed standards of safety, identity, strength, quality or purity.

Sure, its supposed to be "harmless", but who knows what the long term effects of vaporizing this crap will have on people's lungs.

Vaporizing devices/e-cigarettes are too good to be true.

Anything heralded as too good to be true probably is.

These are being marketed to a public that is used to only safe (or at least nonharmful) stuff being allowed to be sold, or in the case of cigarettes and alcohol, clear and known risks.

People inherently believe its safe because they WANT to believe.

I also am amazed that the same people who see government conspiracy or social policemen in every naysayer will blindly and with total trust believe the marketing hype of the companies selling the product... again, because they WANT to believe.

There have actually been a few studies that indicate that it could cause cancer, that's why the CDC lists the studies as "inconclusive" instead of "does not cause cancer". Nicotine has been found to cause birth defects, even when used as replacement therapy.

So science has shown us that even in it's pure form it isn't "safe". You might argue about how dangerous it is, but it does have known adverse health effects. Is it less than inhaling smoke from a regular cigarette? It sure is. But it's not absent of any risks.

But the main concern regarding their use are the same reason you think they are beneficial, specifically:

 Yodhrin wrote:
what we have in e-cigs is essentially a device which satisfies all the mental and physical components of nicotine addiction(hand to mouth action, drawing, "throat hit" on inhalation, delivery of the chemical itself) in a format which removes ALL of the known existing health risks of cigarettes to both the user, AND anyone around the user.

The same reasons that make it a useful replacement therapy for regular cigarettes also make regular cigarettes are useful replacement therapy for e-cigarettes. You can become addicted to smoking by using the "safe" e-cigarettes and then bridge over to the more harmful cigarettes. You start using e-cigarettes and get all the mental and physical components of nicotine addiction in a format which removes MOST of the known existing health risks of cigarettes to both the user and people around them, but now you are addicted to smoking when you were never addicted to it before. People don't stop smoking when they switch to e-cigarettes, they still smoke and are still addicted. New people that start smoking with e-cigarettes still are new smokers and new nicotene addicts. If e-cigarettes are just as good as smoking, then smoking is just as good as e-cigarettes. And that is the problem that a lot of e-cigarette advocates don't acknowledge or realize. It's not that people don't want regular smokers to have a safer alternative (I couldn't care less if it is cheaper), it's that they want the same restrictions and safeguards to prevent new smokers from getting addicted in the first place. The calls for regulations that I have seen don't try to ban e-cigarettes. They want it treated the same way as cigarettes, specifically they want them to have the same restrictions on advertisement and use in media. Because once you become addicted to one, you are addicted to both.

As far as I can see, eCigs combine the idea of the nicotine patch with most of the behavioural factors of smoking a real cigarette, one of the most important of which is the ability to titrate the amount of nicotine absorbed by sucking less or more as desired.

While nicotine is a poison, I thought the key harm from cigarettes was the carcinogens from the tobacco, not the nicotine.

I can see the objection that people might be drawn to real smoking from "smoking" the eCigs, however if real smokers prefer to change to eCigs, then it seems less likely people would move the other way.

Therefore if we have a product that offers harmless pleasure to the user, does not endanger the by-stander, and hopefully moves people away from tobacco to a safer substitute, I don't think there is a problem.

I don't understand the suddent urge to ban e-cigs. They solve a health problem and eliminate the related social problems. reefer madness for reals.

Won't someone think of the children!!!! Brought to you by your local nanny state.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

I can see the objection that people might be drawn to real smoking from "smoking" the eCigs, however if real smokers prefer to change to eCigs, then it seems less likely people would move the other way.

Therefore if we have a product that offers harmless pleasure to the user, does not endanger the by-stander, and hopefully moves people away from tobacco to a safer substitute, I don't think there is a problem.

 Frazzled wrote:
I don't understand the suddent urge to ban e-cigs. They solve a health problem and eliminate the related social problems. reefer madness for reals.

See, I'm somewhere in the middle on this. I don't think they should be banned at all, and I think they are a good solution for current smokers. But I'm not opposed to treating them like "real" cigarettes with the same behavioral restrictions and the same advertising restrictions to make them less appealing to new users.

Maybe that's just a carry-over from my general anti-smoking hangup, I don't know.

Being a worker in the tobacco industry, I have to say E-cigs and America's FDA (the Food and Drug Administration was given control over tobacco in 2009 by Obama) will cost me my job in the long run. But as someone who quit smoking, e-cigs would have been amazing for me, and I think everyone who wants to quit should try them.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As far as I can see, eCigs combine the idea of the nicotine patch with most of the behavioural factors of smoking a real cigarette, one of the most important of which is the ability to titrate the amount of nicotine absorbed by sucking less or more as desired.

While nicotine is a poison, I thought the key harm from cigarettes was the carcinogens from the tobacco, not the nicotine.

I can see the objection that people might be drawn to real smoking from "smoking" the eCigs, however if real smokers prefer to change to eCigs, then it seems less likely people would move the other way.

Therefore if we have a product that offers harmless pleasure to the user, does not endanger the by-stander, and hopefully moves people away from tobacco to a safer substitute, I don't think there is a problem.

This is what I thought as well. I have a few friends that only use e-cigs now. I no longer have any problem being around them while they're smoking.

I still find the smell from them to be pretty horrible. Nor do I particularly want to inhale whatever the company that made your device has put into the vapour.

I recently did some research into e-cigs for a family member.

Gymnogyps has the way of it. They really aren't "safe." They're just largely untested. e-cig users are still breathing tiny particles of god-knows-what into their lungs...diethylene glycol and possibly some metals for starters. Doctors are really wary of these things for good reason...they're not just being party poopers.

If used as a mechanism to quit, they might have value. But that's not really how they're being marketed or used. The marketing push is that they're a "safe" cigarette alternative. Which is creating more nicotine addicts.

And guess who benefits from more nicotine addicts? The same group selling them and touting their safety -- the tobacco industry. And my god, if you want to put your trust in them...well, I don't even know what to say about that.

In my experiences e-cigs are a safer (but by no means safe alternative to cigarettes, what they aren't is an effective means to quit smoking. E-cigs are still extremely addictive and, because you can smoke them anywhere without hiccup, those using them tend to do so more than they would with conventional cigarettes.

If you want to quit then use patches, if you want to smoke something that isn't a cigarette then get an e-cig.

As an ex smoker and as someone who has had family members die of smoking related diseases I welcome the introduction of e-cigs and vaping.

Whilst I am under no illusion that they do not help a user to stop smoking they are a leap forwards as an aid to satiate the desire for nicotine without having to ingest other poisons such as carbon monoxide, tar, mercury and others.

I'm sure I smoked less since I could just pick up the stick and puff and have a quick absent minded draw rather than having to go outside and light up and smoke a whole - and expensive - stick of burning leaf.

I don't 'smoke' at all now, the result of not picking up any refills and I am quite content but I do miss my Bubblegum, cherry, Mocha and banana flavour vapours.

As someone who is asthmetic and being around smokers is like being punched in the lungs. I do indeed support E-cigs, because at the very least I can breath better around them.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As far as I can see, eCigs combine the idea of the nicotine patch with most of the behavioural factors of smoking a real cigarette, one of the most important of which is the ability to titrate the amount of nicotine absorbed by sucking less or more as desired.

One of the problems is they don't replace patches or gum. They just replace a cigarette. The point of patches and gum is to taper off the addiction. With patches you get smaller and smaller controlled amounts. With gum you hold out as long as you possibly can then chew it when you really can't stand it any more. Never tried patches, but gum worked for me. Unlike an e-cig or a real cigarette it doesn't give you the "Hit" or the warm fuzzy "thats better" feeling of smoking, just dulls the craving until it is gone.

E-ciggerets are better than smoking, but they are defiantly not a way to quit. I can see the danger with the adverts.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As far as I can see, eCigs combine the idea of the nicotine patch with most of the behavioural factors of smoking a real cigarette, one of the most important of which is the ability to titrate the amount of nicotine absorbed by sucking less or more as desired.

One of the problems is they don't replace patches or gum. They just replace a cigarette. The point of patches and gum is to taper off the addiction. With patches you get smaller and smaller controlled amounts. With gum you hold out as long as you possibly can then chew it when you really can't stand it any more. Never tried patches, but gum worked for me. Unlike an e-cig or a real cigarette it doesn't give you the "Hit" or the warm fuzzy "thats better" feeling of smoking, just dulls the craving until it is gone.

E-ciggerets are better than smoking, but they are defiantly not a way to quit. I can see the danger with the adverts.

Yes they are, I've done it myself and it's really easy, just buy liquid with lower nicotine contents every time you run out.

Anything that helps smokers give up is a good thing.

Except possibly for massive taxation.

I agree with Steve, everyone I know that has tried to quit with patches has succeeded whereas almost everyone that has tried to quit with e-cigs still smokes the e-cig.

 d-usa wrote:
There have actually been a few studies that indicate that it could cause cancer, that's why the CDC lists the studies as "inconclusive" instead of "does not cause cancer". Nicotine has been found to cause birth defects, even when used as replacement therapy.

So science has shown us that even in it's pure form it isn't "safe". You might argue about how dangerous it is, but it does have known adverse health effects. Is it less than inhaling smoke from a regular cigarette? It sure is. But it's not absent of any risks.

Do you have any idea the levels of nicotine they had to use in those "may cause cancer" animal studies in order to generate those results? I recall reading one in which the equivalent dosage by weight in a human being would have required you to smoke several hundred cigarettes a day, every day, for the duration of the study. In several of the studies I looked into, the methodology was questionable, particularly as most failed to properly account for certain quirks in the rodent renal system not present in humans which can distort results. Alcohol, caffeine, and many other substances have been shown to cause birth defects if consumed during pregnancy in sufficient quantity, none of them are regulated as medicines, and since it is already possible for adults to ingest nicotine during pregnancy, by smoking actual cigarettes, I don't see how that point should affect how e-cigs are regulated; government health advice regarding their use, certainly, but it hardly counts as a point against their relative safety.

Nothing is absent of any risks, but when you're comparing a current, extant, and well established threat to public health with an alternative which, while more testing is required(more testing is always required, we still test and retest food and chemical products that were approved for general use decades ago), has been tested without bringing up any actual problems, and is composed of compounds we understand fairly well and don't present any big cause for concern.

But the main concern regarding their use are the same reason you think they are beneficial, specifically:

 Yodhrin wrote:
what we have in e-cigs is essentially a device which satisfies all the mental and physical components of nicotine addiction(hand to mouth action, drawing, "throat hit" on inhalation, delivery of the chemical itself) in a format which removes ALL of the known existing health risks of cigarettes to both the user, AND anyone around the user.

The same reasons that make it a useful replacement therapy for regular cigarettes also make regular cigarettes are useful replacement therapy for e-cigarettes. You can become addicted to smoking by using the "safe" e-cigarettes and then bridge over to the more harmful cigarettes. You start using e-cigarettes and get all the mental and physical components of nicotine addiction in a format which removes MOST of the known existing health risks of cigarettes to both the user and people around them, but now you are addicted to smoking when you were never addicted to it before. People don't stop smoking when they switch to e-cigarettes, they still smoke and are still addicted. New people that start smoking with e-cigarettes still are new smokers and new nicotene addicts. If e-cigarettes are just as good as smoking, then smoking is just as good as e-cigarettes. And that is the problem that a lot of e-cigarette advocates don't acknowledge or realize. It's not that people don't want regular smokers to have a safer alternative (I couldn't care less if it is cheaper), it's that they want the same restrictions and safeguards to prevent new smokers from getting addicted in the first place. The calls for regulations that I have seen don't try to ban e-cigarettes. They want it treated the same way as cigarettes, specifically they want them to have the same restrictions on advertisement and use in media. Because once you become addicted to one, you are addicted to both.

Which would be the puritan attitude I referred to. Setting aside that I think it's a bit ridiculous to suggest that people who "get hooked" on e-cigs would willingly move over to a product which is more expensive, dampens your sense of taste and smell, makes you stink, has demonstrable and substantial health risks, and is actually less efficient at delivering the nicotine; why is it any of your or anyone else's concern?

By which I mean, in the case of cigarette smoking, intervention and even social stigma is justified to some degree, because there are direct and indirect costs to society; smokers are typically less healthy than non-smokers and will require additional resources, and there's an unacceptable level of risk to the general public. Neither of those factors apply to e-cigs, and nobody is suggesting that the regulations surrounding the advertisement and sale of actual cigarettes be relaxed, so where in your reasoning is the justification for intervention? If a person chooses to use a vapouriser to ingest an addictive substance, they're not harming anyone else, and by all the evidence so far are likely not harming themselves either, no more so than someone who drinks coffee every day or goes out boozing at the weekend; in the IMO hugely unlikely case they move from using a vapouriser to smoking actual cigarettes, they will run into exactly the same laws and social stigmas which already exist to limit smoking. The only way to use this argument to justify regulating vapourisers as medicines(or even just as stringently as real cigarettes) is in the context of believing the actual act of ingesting nicotine as "immoral" and something that is, in and of itself, deserving of censure.

EDIT2: Oh, one last quick point; you may not consider the cost to be a factor, more the health aspects, but when weighing the likelihood of someone transitioning from vaping to smoking, the differential is significant enough to be a factor; I used to spend approx £18 a week on tobacco and paraphernalia, and that's smoking rolling tobacco, it would have been closer to £40 if I'd been buying packs of cigarettes. By contrast, I spent £15 on my Protank2 Mini kit, which costs me less than £10 a month to run(bulk-bought liquid is cheap as chips, as are the replacement coil heads, and the rechargeable battery should last at least a year before I need a new one). Do you really think it's likely people would be willing to pay 8-20 times as much money for an inferior and more dangerous product, which is the choice someone would face when considering transitioning from vaping to smoking?

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I've no problem with them being used as aids to give up smoking (and can see no clear reason for disposables only other than increasing profits for the sellers),

but they probably should be treated the same as the cigarettes they replace (banned in public places)

as they do/will help re-normalise the act (in the same way that studies showed sweet/candy cigarettes tended to set up kids to smoke which led to them being banned)

20 years ago somebody wandering down the street talking loudly to themselves was a nutter to be avoided (or helped), now we just ignore them as we think they're a showoff with a Bluetooth phone headset

at a distance seeing somebody 'smoking' an e-cig will look the same as somebody actually smoking

While the argument I make above applies to this as well, I wanted to pick out on particular point, the last one.

These are the devices which the tobacco industry and the anti-smoking campaigners are attempting to get rid of, and which make vaping a superior and cheaper alternative to smoking cigarettes;



These are the inferior, expensive, disposable devices which are manufactured by subsidiaries of the big tobacco corporations and the companies which make smoking cessation products like gum and patches, which said companies and the anti-smoking campaigners want to limit people to buying by regulating the "juice" which you fill them with as medicine;



Now, if their concern was, as they claim, to try and avoid "normalising" smoking, why are they going with the version that looks like a cigarette, rather than the one that looks like a huge silver pen?

I'll state it more comprehensively, as on reading my initial post again I wasn't very clear on the point; we're not talking here about treating these as we treat cigarettes. Frankly, I think even that is ridiculous; put an age limit on them and you're done, since they pose no threat to other people there's no rational justification for banning their use in public as I outlined above(even if we accept that there is a potential risk to the user, what the user exhales is essentially water vapour, no more dangerous than what comes off your bathtub). But no, that's not what is being lobbied for; they want them regulated as medicines, they want them limited in the same way smoking cessation products are limited; buyable only in pharmacies, subject to a testing regime far beyond any normal consumer product. This suits the tobacco companies down to the ground, since the costs of the testing regime will drive all their small competition out of business almost immediately, allowing them to sell their disposable e-cigs at or around the price of an equivalent number of cigarettes, thus reducing the impact on their core business, and once they're regulated as medicine and labelled as smoking cessation aids, they open up extremely lucrative opportunities as they can have state healthcare buy the products as part of their periodic smoking cessation programmes, just as they do now with patches and gum.

EDIT: Regarding the efficacy of vaping against patches for actually quitting smoking, I can't agree. First you have to account for intent; how many of the people using vapourisers are actually trying to quit? You would need to conduct a study comparing three groups who all have a sincere desire to stop smoking(cold-turkey, traditional cessation aids, vapourisers) and compare the rates of cessation and relapse over time between them. They can be used as a cessation aid, because just like patches, the "juice" used in the devices is available with tapering dosages; I started using and still use the "medium" 18mg liquid, but I had no intention of stopping smoking at all and only tried the device on the recommendation of a friend, a far heavier smoker than I, who began using the "strong" 24mg liquid, and over a period of months went down to the 18mg, then the 12mg, the 4mg, and now uses 0mg "flavour-only" liquid(cherry-bubblegum, for which he is teased relentlessly). Just as with patches or gum, the physical addition is overcome, only the phantom "need" to mimic the action of smoking something remains, which he aims to be rid of by the middle of the year. I see no inherent reason why the rate of relapse would be any higher in people who quit in that way than those who quit using patches.

I tried ecigs as a way to quit smoking cigarettes. Please note, I had no real intention to also eventually quit vaping; I just wanted to quit smoking. After the initial novelty of the ecigs wore off, I went straight back to cigarettes. For me, ecigs did not give an equivalent experience. I also worried about the content of ecigs, considering they are entirely unregulated.

Here are my thoughts in vaping which I've taken to:

1. Does smoking cause cancer? absolutely yes. Does vaping? possibly. I'll take my chances with vapor over the sure thing with tobacco.
2. Cost is significantly cheaper overall. Depending on use, a 15ml bottle of juice can last a month or more, all for around $10.
3. Flavors are endless. Some shops have literally hundreds of options, and all at varying mg of nicotine. So you can go straight with full strength like tobacco, or you can wean yourself off by dropping the mg a few each time you get a new bottle.
4. The social aspect is favorable. I was just in Vegas last weekend, and at the karaoke bar I was at, 7/10 people smoking there used vapor. So even in places where it is perfectly acceptable to smoke, people are switching over. Here in my office those of us with personal offices are allowed to vape away all day. If anything we're more productive as we don't need to go outside and stop working as often.

Now while I get the concern over "we don't know what it does to our lungs and omg second hand vaporz!!!", honestly it's barely noticeable in public.

I'm fine with it not being allowed in confined spaces like restaurants(other than bars) and in stores or malls. But open spaces like outdoor malls or events I fail to see the issue.

I think it needs to be said again. E-Cigs are not smoking cessation products - They are a replacement for Cigarettes.

Willpower is what is needed to give up. Either with or without medical aids.

 Aerethan wrote:

4. The social aspect is favorable. I was just in Vegas last weekend, and at the karaoke bar I was at, 7/10 people smoking there used vapor. So even in places where it is perfectly acceptable to smoke, people are switching over. Here in my office those of us with personal offices are allowed to vape away all day. If anything we're more productive as we don't need to go outside and stop working as often.

Yes, but if you were allowed to SMOKE in your personal offices, which do you think they would choose? Because I will bet my left hand the answer is overwhelmingly smoke.

Cancer is far from the only health problem caused by smoking. COPD is a terrible disease. Can e-cigs cause it? No one knows, so I guess just vape away...?

 scarletsquig wrote:
e-cigs are great, should be encouraged as a means of giving up tobacco.

I'm a non-smoker and support their use 100%, and recommend them to current smokers.

I think so too. Haven't smoked myself for years, but have a number of friends who do. They've now quit regular cigarettes, and as a 'reformed smoker' (who by right has to be much more critical than those who have never smoked) I would much rather be around them when they are 'smoking' these things.

I suppose eventually there will be full clinical trials and a certain answer to a lot of these questions. Personally, I think there is a lot of crap that we breathe in, things we are exposed to each day, and this doesn't strike me as particularly bad compared to a lot of things.

@Yodhrin: you make my point again.

The social stigma of smoking cigarettes is what keeps quite a lot of people from getting addicted to smoking in the first place. The rate of smoking is going down year after year. People don't want the social stigma of being a smoker, so they never start and never get addicted.

Now you can smoke without the stigma, and you can get addicted without the stigma. Somebody that is addicted to smoking has a much higher likelihood of picking up cigarettes than somebody that is not addicted to smoking.

This is not some sort of "Puritan" viewpoint. That is now addictions work. There is a reason the tobacco folks make theirs look like real cigarettes, it makes the jump more likely.

Is it better for people that already are addicted? Probably. If you trust the guys mixing all the stuff not to add anything bad that would get delivered a couple cells away from your blood while taking a hit.

Is it worse for people that would have never become addicted to begin with because the social stigma of smoking is that strong? Definitely.

 d-usa wrote:
@Yodhrin: you make my point again.

The social stigma of smoking cigarettes is what keeps quite a lot of people from getting addicted to smoking in the first place. The rate of smoking is going down year after year. People don't want the social stigma of being a smoker, so they never start and never get addicted.

Now you can smoke without the stigma, and you can get addicted without the stigma. Somebody that is addicted to smoking has a much higher likelihood of picking up cigarettes than somebody that is not addicted to smoking.

This is not some sort of "Puritan" viewpoint. That is now addictions work. There is a reason the tobacco folks make theirs look like real cigarettes, it makes the jump more likely.

Is it better for people that already are addicted? Probably. If you trust the guys mixing all the stuff not to add anything bad that would get delivered a couple cells away from your blood while taking a hit.

Is it worse for people that would have never become addicted to begin with because the social stigma of smoking is that strong? Definitely.

But you have missed mine, it seems.

The justification for the stigma existing in the first place are the health problems it causes the individual(and the fiscal results for the state/insurance companies that follow), and the potential for a smoker to inflict those risks to health on unwilling third parties.

Those justifications do not apply to vaping, but still exist and are applicable to tobacco smoking regardless of how many people choose to vape nicotine solution, so there is no rational argument that we must transfer the social stigma over to vaping - if you're vaping, you're not(to the best current evidence) harming yourself, costing the state anything, or risking harm to others, and so are doing nothing worthy of stigma; if you stop vaping and start smoking, you are harming yourself and you are risking the health of others, and there's no reason to believe people would be any less harsh on those behaviours just because someone first began using nicotine by another method.

So in order to make the argument that we should use legal regulation and social stigma to prevent people from vaping at all, you are necessarily taking a moralistic, neo-puritan position, because you are advocating that we limit the freedom of individuals to engage in an activity they enjoy with minimal risks to themselves and none to others, on the basis that you disapprove of that activity. It's no different to people who argue that we should, through regulation and stigmatisation, not simply encourage people to drink alcohol in moderation and in a responsible manner, but to stop drinking at all.

We, as a society, can distinguish between the person who goes down the pub for a couple of pints and walks home, and the person who slams a litre of vodka and then goes out behind the wheel of a car; we have found a balance that allows individuals to enjoy their vice, while still penalising the expressions of that vice which cause serious harm to themselves or to others, why is that balance impossible with nicotine?

 Orlanth wrote:
Anything that helps smokers give up is a good thing.

Except possibly for massive taxation.

Just because I can: death penalty for smoking!