E-cigs and their hidden danger

[Luddly Neddite]

Tobacco is a tax on poor people who accidentally picked up a habit they wish they didn't have. It can cost thousands a year. There isn't a smoker out there who wishes they were addicted. I'd know since my community is a bunch of smokers in KY, the cheapest backy in the world.

As educated people in the US have been quitting in larger and larger numbers, it has cut into the profits of the tobacco companies so they have redoubled their efforts to get children addicted in other countries.

And, lottery tickets are a tax on idiots.

People never learn that big money is big for a reason.

 

[Montrovant]

The whole 'cigarettes are more addictive than heroin' thing is kind of meaningless. It's rarely, if ever, defined as to just what that means.

A quick search came up with nicotine having a larger percentage of users become physically addicted than heroin, at something like 32% to 26%. That says nothing about the strength of the addiction nor how extreme any withdrawal symptoms are. It also doesn't take into account other issues such as legality, price, social stigma, ease of getting help, etc.

 

[flacaltenn]

E-cigarettes: Gateway to nicotine addiction for U.S. teens -- ScienceDaily

JAMA Network | JAMA Pediatrics | Electronic Cigarettes and Conventional Cigarette Use Among US Adolescents: *A Cross-sectional Study

I'm not claiming all people who use e-cigs become hooked. But the fact remains, with the nature of e-cigs, there is a correlation between adolescent e-cig use on into adulthood.

Well, Let's discuss the "studies".... First off, getting "hooked" on e-cigs alone is not of primary importance to me unless or until evidence exists that vaping is more dangerous than consuming nicotine via gum, lozenges, or patches. The issue really is if e-cigs ILLEGALLY used by minors contributes to TOBACCO use..

JAMA Network | JAMA Pediatrics | Electronic Cigarettes and Conventional Cigarette Use Among US Adolescents: *A Cross-sectional Study

Results Among cigarette experimenters (≥1 puff), ever e-cigarette use was associated with higher odds of ever smoking cigarettes (≥100 cigarettes; odds ratio [OR] = 6.31; 95% CI, 5.39-7.39) and current cigarette smoking (OR = 5.96; 95% CI, 5.67-6.27). Current e-cigarette use was positively associated with ever smoking cigarettes (OR = 7.42; 95% CI, 5.63-9.79) and current cigarette smoking (OR = 7.88; 95% CI, 6.01-10.32).

ALL of these measurements find an association between TRYING e-cigs and cigarettes. And it's a high correlation. I have a problem with the >1 puff threshhold since that does not really establish a CHRONIC usage of the electronic devices. But that aside ---

1) Does not establish which mode of nicotine consumption was PRIMARY to the other.
2) Does not establish which mode of nicotine consumption was PREFERRED by the youth.

Therefore -- although there's a high correlation, this poll data is NOT SUFFICIENT to conclude that the progression of use is FROM e-cigs to tobacco cigarettes.. In fact , ONE of the questions and its analysis concludes that Junior e-cig users were much more inclined to consider quitting tobacco use.

In 2011, current cigarette smokers who had ever used e-cigarettes were more likely to intend to quit smoking within the next year (OR = 1.53; 95% CI, 1.03-2.28)

E-cigarettes: Gateway to nicotine addiction for U.S. teens -- ScienceDaily

The study of nearly 40,000 youth around the country also found that e-cigarette use among middle and high school students doubled between 2011 and 2012, from 3.1 percent to 6.5 percent.

Contrary to advertiser claims that e-cigarettes can help consumers stop smoking conventional cigarettes, teenagers who used e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes were much less likely to have abstained from cigarettes in the past 30 days, 6 months, or year. At the same time, they were more likely to be planning to quit smoking in the next year than smokers who did not use e-cigarettes.

The study's cross-sectional nature didn't allow the researchers to identify whether most youths initiated with conventional cigarettes or e-cigarettes. But the authors noted that about 20 percent of middle school students and about 7 percent of high school students who had ever used e-cigarettes had never smoked regular cigarettes -- meaning that some kids are introduced to the addictive drug nicotine through e-cigarettes, the authors said.

3 to 6% of those youth is a low number in the range of a LOT of MORE unhealthy practices, like consuming mouthwash, caffeinated alchohol drinks, huffing magic marker, and hard drugs. And AGAIN -- the nature of the data DOES NOT ALLOW conclusions about which direction the addiction develops..

So ... What ?
Do the work -- establish the problem. Tighten the AGE and advertising restrictions, and move on to the more important stuff..

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

FLC, if you think children should be exposed to addiction, you are just being antagonistic.

I am not saying e-cigs are inherently bad but the looseness with which they have hit the market has enabled people who would not smoke pick up the undeniably bad habit.

Your idea about more products to cure this problem is stupid (not you the person). I guess we should continue feeding the population fast food and pick up the sextoupled medical bills down the road. Your market logic is strikingly illogical from the point of view of efficiency, you know, the whole idea behind "economy."

Yet another statist who thinks he gets to decide what's best for others.

 

[ozro]

It seems that those that speak the loudest about any subject quickly prove two things;
1) They are emotionally overcharged but factually deficient,
2) They always want to solve the probelem of the day by limiting someone else's freedoms

odd it works out that way, but there it is.

 

[gnarlylove]

The whole 'cigarettes are more addictive than heroin' thing is kind of meaningless. It's rarely, if ever, defined as to just what that means.

A quick search came up with nicotine having a larger percentage of users become physically addicted than heroin, at something like 32% to 26%. That says nothing about the strength of the addiction nor how extreme any withdrawal symptoms are. It also doesn't take into account other issues such as legality, price, social stigma, ease of getting help, etc.

Mon I'm glad you are skeptical. We need a certain gradient of skepticism as opposed to others who just want to antagonize cause they are conservative Christians and cannot masturbate.

Indirect effects of heroin are more severe among heavily addicted users and lots of this is due to the fact culture perceives heroin=worse drug in every aspect (which is totally false) and so using heroin immediately puts you on the fringes of society whether you pay your bills on time or not. But we weren't talking about indirect effects. We are talking about direct effects on the body from use.

Nicotine has a faster addiction window than heroin. In other words, try nicotine 20 times and you are hooked. For heroin it takes several months of regular use to become addicted (William Borroughs and other junkies confirm this including my own life). But after you've exposed yourself to heroin in such a fashion, the brain undergoes changes and it becomes easier to get addicted because those neuro pathways are ready--but it takes a long while and lotsa use in order to reach this stage. Trust me, I know this like the back of my hand (or should I say my main vein?).

With nicotine, you become hooked faster than heroin and since its culturally acceptable, one does not put down the cig with ease. But people who use heroin are ridiculed off the face of this planet yet their drug of choice offers non-circular benefits unlike nicotine. In order to benefit from nicotine one must already be well acquainted. Heroin was originally prescribed to children and to stop coughing, pain relief and a whole slew of other benefits.

That's why I hate pop culture because it is totally wrong in so many areas.

This is not missing on the facts. I've read several books on drugs and their addictive properties and the same facts like this one kept coming up. Check out page 192 of this book, which is where I first heard this fact and it has since been confirmed in other books.

 

[BillyV]

Just what the tobacco companies had hoped for in their new E-cig fad: swindle a new generation of smokers.
When an industry profits from sickness, you can be sure it will not serve society no matter how regulated it is.
'Drawn from two surveys of tens of thousands of American middle school and high school students, the research found that adolescents who tried battery-powered nicotine vaporizers were more likely to smoke tobacco cigarettes. And if the kids were already regular smokers when they experimented with “vaping,” they became less likely to quit. It’s evidence that e-cigarettes, as the authors say, are “aggravating rather than ameliorating the tobacco epidemic among youths.”'
E-Cigarettes Pose Real Risks to Teens - Businessweek
Hopefully Congress gets in gear to protect the vulnerable population, teens. Even if Congress puts an end to this in America, we can be sure the tobacco industry will continue marketing this in other countries to teens. Profit or people expressed yet again.
Senate Bill Would Ban E-Cigarette Marketing to Kids - Businessweek

And here is a refutation from a doctor with “25 years of experience in the field of tobacco control. He previously spent two years working at the Office on Smoking and Health at CDC, where he conducted research on secondhand smoke and cigarette advertising. He has published nearly 70 papers related to tobacco. He testified in the landmark Engle lawsuit against the tobacco companies, which resulted in an unprecedented $145 billion verdict against the industry.” He calls it “junk science”:

The authors of this study make one of the most cardinal errors in all of epidemiology. They ignore the principle that "correlation does not equal causation."
Here, they find a correlation between e-cigarette use and higher and more sustained levels of smoking. But because this is a cross-sectional study, they cannot determine which came first. In other words, what is the direction of the causal relationship? Does the e-cigarette use precede, and cause, the smoking? Or does the smoking precede, and cause, the e-cigarette use?
The problem is that in this cross-sectional study, there is no way to determine the direction of the observed relationship.
The authors admit this in the paper. They write: "This is a cross-sectional study, which only allows us to identify associations, not causal relationships."
Furthermore, later in the paper they reinforce this point more specifically, writing: "the cross-sectional nature of our study does not allow us to identify whether most youths are initiating smoking with conventional cigarettes and then moving on to (usually dual use of) e-cigarettes or vice versa...".
Thus, the authors readily acknowledge that it is impossible from this study to determine whether or not e-cigarettes lead to smoking or whether smoking leads to e-cigarette experimentation.
Nevertheless, this does not stop the authors from drawing a conclusion. They conclude, despite their acknowledged inability to draw such a conclusion, that: "e-cigarette use is aggravating rather than ameliorating the tobacco epidemic among youths."
In other words, despite acknowledging that they cannot tell from their study whether e-cigarette use precedes smoking or whether smoking precedes e-cigarette use, they nonetheless draw the conclusion that e-cigarette use precedes smoking.

The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary: Conclusion of New Glantz Study on Electronic Cigarettes is Junk Science

Which is the thesis that Flacaltenn has already advanced (just with more verifiable credentials).

On the other hand, e-cigarettes are helping thousands of people give up the smoking habit, including me. I have been a 30 year pack a day smoker; I have quit many, many times only to go back to it shortly thereafter. I decided to try e-cigarettes a couple of months ago to see if they would help. I have not had a cigarette since nor have any cravings for one. While there may be some harmful elements in vapor (although I’ve yet to see any evidence of it), it’s hard to imagine it is one one-thousandth as bad as smoking tobacco cigarettes. Restrict the use of nicotine to adults? Of course. Overregulate the industry to reduce nicotine levels? They should be doing just the opposite; regulate the nicotine levels in regular cigarettes to encourage people to give them up in favor of the safer alternative. If the nicotine levels are too low, it will not be of any use to the regular smoker in helping them quit. The knee-jerk reaction to e-cigarettes is based on the hatred of the smoking habit and anything that appears to emulate it, not real science.

 

[gnarlylove]

Billy, my views on teen use of e-cigs cannot be applied generally to adult users of e-cigs; but in a society where children are vulnerable, we must protect their vital development so they don't make mistakes that you have made. Furthermore, you failed to read my distinction on causation and correlation, so I'd suggest amending your knee jerk reaction.

I'm glad you have begun to reverse the addiction you consciously maintained for years. But if you think e-cigs are simply better, you are not thinking clearly, as most people don't in regards to their drug of choice. E-cigs are a lot closer to smoking cigs than not smoking at all. The advantages of e-cigs are minimal compared to the advantages of not smoking.

 

[Moonglow]

Want good tobacco????Grow your own....

 

[auditor0007]

The whole 'cigarettes are more addictive than heroin' thing is kind of meaningless. It's rarely, if ever, defined as to just what that means.

A quick search came up with nicotine having a larger percentage of users become physically addicted than heroin, at something like 32% to 26%. That says nothing about the strength of the addiction nor how extreme any withdrawal symptoms are. It also doesn't take into account other issues such as legality, price, social stigma, ease of getting help, etc.

Since I have never used heroin I cannot say how bad withdrawal is compared to withdrawal from nicotine. I have watched some videos of people going through heroin withdrawal though, and it looks nothing like what I went through when I quit smoking. Based on that, I call bullshit on "nicotine is harder to quit than heroin". I quit smoking cold turkey, and I didn't miss a day of work or have any health issues. I didn't puke or get the shakes or anything. I was on edge a bit for about two weeks, and I had a few times when I really wanted a cigarette very bad, but it passed.

What makes quitting cigarettes so difficult is not so much the physical addiction, although that does play a big role, but the psychological part of addiction is what is so difficult to beat. Think of it this way; if a person has smoked a pack per day for thirty years, and they take an average of ten drags per cigarette, that equates to more than 2 million drags. That means the smoker has taken his/her hand and moved his hand to his mouth over 2 million times. That's worse than chewing fingernails. Psychologically, the smoker has a need to perform this hand to mouth action followed by inhaling a deep breath full of smoke.

Smoking may not be the easiest thing to quit, but it's a lot easier if the smoker understands why he/she smokes. Beating the psychological addiction is as much a key as the physical addiction, and for those who quit for a few months and then start up again, it's because of the psychological addiction, not the physical. After two weeks, all the nicotine is out of your system. Actually, the nicotine is completely out of your system after 72 hours, but it takes up to two weeks without any nicotine for dopamine levels to return to normal. Dopamine is elevated by nicotine, and dopamine makes us feel good. That is why we need more nicotine, to keep the dopamine levels high. When dopamine levels begin to drop, the body wants more nicotine. That is why if you quit cold turkey, it gets very difficult from day ten to day fourteen. After that, dopamine levels return to normal and the body adjusts to the new normal levels. After that, the body no longer seeks nicotine to bring dopamine levels up again.

 

[RosieS]

Nicotine is a pesticide. It is used as a spray to kill aphids.

So if nicotine vaping is the same as inhaling Raid, why the heck would you do it?

Because you are hopelessly addicted and lack the willpower to quit, even if it kills you.

Doesn't mean you should be blasé about teens getting addicted to inhaling bug spray.

Regards from Rosie

 

[Katzndogz]

Nicotine is no more dangerous than caffeine, another pesticide. If you want to keep bugs out of your flowers, spread out some used coffee grounds.

 

[BillyV]

Billy, my views on teen use of e-cigs cannot be applied generally to adult users of e-cigs; but in a society where children are vulnerable, we must protect their vital development so they don't make mistakes that you have made. Furthermore, you failed to read my distinction on causation and correlation, so I'd suggest amending your knee jerk reaction.

I'm glad you have begun to reverse the addiction you consciously maintained for years. But if you think e-cigs are simply better, you are not thinking clearly, as most people don't in regards to their drug of choice. E-cigs are a lot closer to smoking cigs than not smoking at all. The advantages of e-cigs are minimal compared to the advantages of not smoking.

First, I indicated that nicotine should not be available to minors. Nor should caffeinated beverages and many other things that are perfectly legal and even encouraged. As for your distinction on causation and correlation, I don't see it, but if you believe that the study you quoted does not provide a reasonable basis for its conclusions, then we agree and the OP is meaningless. Since it is clear that even the authors of the study don't believe the conclusions they themselves draw are supported by the evidence, there is a strong presumption that it arose from that "knee-jerk" reaction.

I maintain that as it relates to minors, the evidence strongly suggests that excessive regulation is ineffective; your implication that limiting the legal adult sale of nicotine-based e-cigarettes to prevent children from using it while concluding that it leads these same children to engage in smoking tobacco, already heavily regulated and illegal for sale or distribution to children, is ludicrous. When I started smoking (at 12), it was also illegal for sale to minors, yet then as now it was easily obtained.

As far as “reversing my addiction”, I don’t think that is what I’m doing. I have continued to smoke all these years because while I would have “liked” to quit because of the health risks, I really didn’t want to, and still don’t. I actually did stop for five years in my 30’s and never lost my desire for it, ultimately returning to the habit that never really lost its grip. The point of the e-cigarette is that it is a less damaging product than a tobacco cigarette, while providing most if not all of the same benefits smokers get from tobacco. How could anyone decide that was a bad thing? Don’t you think it’s a good thing if people have a way to greatly reduce if not eliminate their health risks in a palatable way, or is it only enough that we eliminate all these “evil smokers” through attrition by forcing them to continue to indulge in tobacco? Somewhere you stated that another poster was more concerned about the health of the tobacco companies; it seems to me that the e-cigarette could be the greatest threat to their business.

 

[whitehall]

Real cigarettes contain all sorts of junk like tars and small amounts of chemical designed to keep the cigarettes lit if they are put down. The second hand smoke from cigarettes has been determined by federal authorities to cause all sorts of diseases including cancer. The E-cigarettes never claimed to cure cigarette addiction among teenagers or cure the smoking habits of adults. They are intended to eliminate 2nd hand smoke.

 

[gnarlylove]

They are intended to eliminate 2nd hand smoke.

And they are creating a sensational market here in KY where bacco is king. People want to smoke inside and this obviates laws of standing 20 feet (in Ohio). It will trickle down to those who are vulnerable.

I must admit this cuts back on littering big time. It takes over 10 years for a cig butt to disintegrate!

 

[flacaltenn]

Real cigarettes contain all sorts of junk like tars and small amounts of chemical designed to keep the cigarettes lit if they are put down. The second hand smoke from cigarettes has been determined by federal authorities to cause all sorts of diseases including cancer. The E-cigarettes never claimed to cure cigarette addiction among teenagers or cure the smoking habits of adults. They are intended to eliminate 2nd hand smoke.

I'm with ya all the way on that post WhiteHall, except for the "chemicals ... to keep them lit".
The inhibitors were added to EXTINGUISH the flame if they are laid down due to fire hazards.

It was one of those decisions where the health of smokers was secondary to preventing fires.

 

[Benthe21]

Sad, just when I was considering how to break the ciggy habit, and was thinking about investing in the "vaping" thing. Don't fancy throwing a couple of hundred away on something that may well make my current habit even worse (if that were possible).