User:David Gerard/Vaping

writing the text first, cites to follow. boy does this need full cites

Known advantages of E-cigarettes over conventional cigarettes
They don't fill your lungs with the carcinogenic byproducts of burning vegetable matter. This is an actually good thing about E-cigarettes.

Is vaping a good way to quit smoking?
People have found e-cigarettes good for successfully quitting smoking. The Royal College of Physicians in the UK strongly concurs and advocates the use of E-cigarettes to quit.

If you think this will work for you, please take caution with the precise composition of the juice and the safety of the vaporiser's construction.

Problems
E-cigarettes use nicotine, which remains as hideously addictive as ever, with its own ill effects to health: ...

E-cigarette companies are allowed to do a bunch of things that got banned with traditional cigarettes. [examples, cites]

They claim to be harm reduction but don't have any quality evidence of such.

They have created political campaigns to prevent anyone impartial from studying them and prevent information for consumers

They cast any attempt to point any of this out as an attack on the people addicted to nicotine, all while trying to addict more people to nicotine.

What goes into e-cigs
The base liquid is usually water plus propylene glycol or glycerin to improve its condensation. This is the same formula used in nightclub fog machines. The propylene glycol or glycerin isn't harmless either - long-term studies of theatre workers exposed to it frequently show lung irritation [and other? cite]

Note that we generally don't know precisely what is in vape liquid, because the manufacturers have sued repeatedly to block regulation and even research.

Dangerous equipment
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/25/health/e-cigarette-explodes-in-mans-pocket/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-father-calls-for-ban-on-e-cigarettes-1.3423099

Addicts furiously object to attempts to regulate whether their addiction equipment could literally blow up in their faces, because FDA oppression.

Harm reduction
You might assume vaping has better health outcomes than smoking (it'd be hard not to), though this rests on the assumption that every vaper was previously a smoker. However, 30% of vapers never previously smoked. [cite needed]

There is no evidence that e-cigs are an effective harm reduction method. If you hear that it saves "X million lives", this will have been from an industry-funded pseudostudy. (This is also a catchphrase that addicts and manufacturers promote on social media.)

If e-cigarettes were effective harm reduction, they would be regulated as medical devices. The FDA tried to do this based on the manufacturers' marketing, and the manufacturers blocked them with lawsuits -- they're arguing both ways.

The addictiveness is a problem in itself. People who are addicted rationalise using the substance above all other considerations, as we see with vaping. It isn't just the harm from the smoking, but that it turns you into a rationalisation machine.

Most major e-cigarette manufacturers are owned by tobacco companies. They see the writing on the wall for cigarettes, and need to move to another addiction market.

The claim that it's not intended to target new users, including kids, beggars belief.

Vaping advocates
Vapers are even more annoying than militant vegans, raw food advocates or proponents of marijuana woo.

E-cigarette people have built up a social media movement, with a body of bad or false research, around the concept of vaping as harm reduction. Addicts are convinced that e-cigarettes saved their lives, and that the FDA is colluding with Big Tobacco.

The manufacturers have left an intermediate formulation market open, so that addicts also become financially dependent on the success and propagation of vaping. This also makes it harder to say with certainty what is in "juice" in general. There are finally labeling regulations, but enforcement is of course being fought in the courts.

Vapers push back hard against such concepts as making sure the inhaled stuff won't destroy your lungs, or making sure the vaping machine itself won't literally explode in your face.

It's a militant anti-regulation movement made from addicts, who identify politically as vapers.

Non-addict advocates
The Royal College of Physicians in the UK blogged saying we should "Promote e-cigarettes widely as substitute for smoking" and notes that:

The Royal Society for the Public Health in the UK is very against tobacco smoking, but advocates e-cigarettes as a replacement. It supports e-cigarette industry claims that nicotine is no more harmful than caffeine. Their August 2015 position statement, Stopping smoking by using other sources of nicotine, advocates "Greater utilisation of e-cigarettes by smoking cessation services". It does not in fact directly substantiate the comparison to caffeine, despite being widely spread in the vaping subculture at the time as doing so. (Even vaping sites noticed it didn't quite back the claim. )