I would think that neither cigarettes or vaping is good for you but I don’t really understand which is supposedly worse and why. I just remember the outrage over vaping because it was primarily marketed to young people
Vaping is, on balance, dramatically better for you while still not being good, effectively harm reduction. The outrage was marketed as their marketing being towards young people. The marketing itself was aimed at a younger crowd, yes, but more 20somethings than teens.
The real outrage was more about people adopting vaping instead of starting to smoke cigarettes, which was considered counter productive at a time when smoking rates were dropping dramatically.
It remains to be seen if smoking’s stigma continues to cause rates fall or if the crusade against vaping as a less-harmful alternative backfires.
The problem isn’t vaping, but what you’re vaping and with what.
Cheap vapes you might get contaminants from the vape itself which are unhealthy. They get very hot, and quality control on these things is abysmal.
The second problem is the actual liquid. What goes into these with all the flavor crap isn’t regulated well and sometimes chemicals are being added that are harmful to us and cause problems, sometimes faster and worse than smoking cigarettes would have.
Now, if you have a good vape, and a proper vape liquid (probably neutral, no additives), it will be safer than regular cigarettes.
I vape but used to smoke for 15 years. Been vaping only for years now. Only use vaping liquid made in house and only 2 ingredients. Nicotine and pg. The difference in how I feel is dramatic. No coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath or anything that I associated with actually smoking. However, I worry that other problems might arise we just haven’t had enough time to know about yet from doing so. What I do know is I can run, exercise, etc and suffer no ill effects like I used to. I also use quality vapes and no weird flavored shit. I will say though, I’m more addicted to nicotine than I ever was due to the accessibility and convenience of the vape. I stood a better chance of quitting cigarettes than I ever did of quitting vaping.
Yup. I’m in a similar situation. I work from home and vape in my office. I do it non-stop… I lowered the nic concentration as much as possible, but still, it’s a lot. It’s too convenient. Better than cigarettes though.
Vaping is much healthier per unit. The thing is lots of people cant stop vaping coz unlike cigarettes it tastes awesome. They suck on that thing 24h a day vaping the equivalent of 100+ cigarettes.
Also a big part of the revenue is generated from addicted kids, they know it and wont change it.
This is just entirely untrue. People generally consume more nicotine when vaping. That much is true. Vaping has significantly less toxins and dangerous chemicals than smoking cigarettes, as well as circumvent the whole tar in the lungs thing. There are no long term studies on vaping, so doctors will always say “we aren’t sure which is worse” but advise that smoking is likely to be far worse for the body than vaping. There is not a single study on earth, nor any doctors I’ve heard, that supports your claim.
I dont know what part of your comment contradicts anything I said. If you are saying I shouldnt have said ‘vaping is healthier’ but instead ‘vaping is 99% likely to be healthier’, then yeah, sure.
Smoking is much more harmful than vaping, but vaping is not necessarily healthy either. The higher temperatures from burning plant matter (any plant matter really, nicotine is just super addictive) create most of the carcinogens in smoke. The most abundant carcinogen is Benzo[a]pyrene, which is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs, a.k.a. “tar” in cigarette smoke). PAHs are formed at temperatures above 300 Celsius. And vapes typically operate around 200 Celsius. Vapes still contain carcinogens and nicotine itself harms vascular health, but they have none of the PAHs if operating correctly. The biggest issue with them is the targeting of kids, especially by Juul in the 2010s.
Coles notes: smoking, is quite literally that, creating smoke that you intentionally inhale. The desired chemical (nicotine) is mixed with other smoke shit (thousands of different compounds. The shit in that smoke can give you cancer and a long list of other problems.
Vaping is basically a handheld fog machine that has nicotine added to the liquid. Usually sweetened and flavored, but not necessarily. It has the desired chemical, nicotine, as well as a short list of additives (maybe a dozen or so, depending on a few factors), and doesn’t contain any known carcinogens (so no cancer)
At the end of the day, you’re lungs should breathe the air. If you smoke or vape, that’s not as good for you as clean fresh air. However, vaping won’t give you cancer, and has a fraction of the toxins and compounds that cigarettes do.
It’s like comparing driving your car into a lamp post, or plowing through a parade with your SUV. Neither is ideal, one is definitely much worse than the other.
Cancer from cigarettes is largely linked to a small subset of compounds produced by the combustion of tobacco. Appropriately named as carcinogens. Those are the cancer-causing compounds that link cigarettes to cancer.
Vaping, by contrast, is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine (PG and VG), as the base substance (which is basically the same stuff they use in fog machines, and people breathe that constantly without any directly related issues). PG/VG makes up more than 90% of the vape liquid, by volume. The remaining 10% is usually a solution of PG/VG mixed with nicotine concentrate to make the whole solution have a particular % of nicotine content, usually measured in mg per ml, and the last few percentile are flavorings.
So from a 60ml bottle, more than 55ml will be the VG/PG base fluid, 3-4 mL will be the nicotine concentrate, and the remainder will be flavoring.
Apart from the flavor ingredients: VG, PG, and nicotine, to date, have no carcinogenic characteristics and have not been linked to cancer (to the best of my knowledge). So over 95% of the volume of the liquid is known to not be cancer causing, the rest is usually food-grade flavoring.
Needless to say, food-grade flavoring is generally not carcinogenic.
The onus of proof here is on the person challenging the statement made. If you can find any source that links nicotine vaping to cancer, I’m happy to discuss.
Please do not demand me to provide sources when you equally do not.
I have smoked and vaped alternatively. When I’ve vaped I have breathed as bad or worse than smoking. Vape liquids are propileneglycol (or some other glycol, can’t remember) and glycerine, often in 50/50 or a close ratio up or down. When vaping you are coating your lungs in oil. Probably not better than smoke. Different type of harm, but definitely very harmful.
Just think about it: oil in your lungs…
Your lungs can aspirate both Pg and Vg (derived from vegetables). It is misleading in my opinion to call them oil in an effort to make them sound dangerous. Pg is not petroleum and has been considered safe by the medical community since before vaping was a thing.
What makes it an oil? Viscosity? What’s the viscosity that makes a liquid an oil? You inhale water as steam but that doesn’t make water an oil.
You can call it an oil in general but just like when someone refers to electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) as electromagnetic radiation (EMR) I already know they are very likely to fear monger about it because it sounds scarier.
Both PG and VG are water soluble. If you have oil in your lungs after vaping, you might want to switch what you’re vaping.
I don’t know your situation, or what testing methods you used. I have no doubt that you’ve had an experience that supports your claims. With that being said, I have heard, both from people on the internet, and personal friends, who have switched from smoking to vaping, and almost every story is the same: after the tar is processed out of their respiratory system, they breathe a lot better after switching to vaping.
It seems logical to me that you’d need to vape for a few months before feeling the effects of quitting smoking as the tar will take at least that long to get to the point where you would feel a difference. That’s what I’ve heard from the people I’ve spoken to.
The only “vapes” I know of that have oil in them, are for marijuana. The active ingredients in marijuana are oil-soluble, so vitamin E acetate is usually used to dilute it to the desired strength. Vaping vitamin E acetate will absolutely mess up your lungs and cause permanent damage.
“Weed vapes” are generally purchased from the black markets or weed dealers, who are generally already breaking the law and don’t care about customer safety. So while stuff like vitamin E acetate is never used in the vape liquid you’d buy at your local vape shop, it can, and very likely will be in vapes that are made and distributed illegally.
I would think that neither cigarettes or vaping is good for you but I don’t really understand which is supposedly worse and why. I just remember the outrage over vaping because it was primarily marketed to young people
Vaping is, on balance, dramatically better for you while still not being good, effectively harm reduction. The outrage was marketed as their marketing being towards young people. The marketing itself was aimed at a younger crowd, yes, but more 20somethings than teens.
The real outrage was more about people adopting vaping instead of starting to smoke cigarettes, which was considered counter productive at a time when smoking rates were dropping dramatically.
It remains to be seen if smoking’s stigma continues to cause rates fall or if the crusade against vaping as a less-harmful alternative backfires.
The problem isn’t vaping, but what you’re vaping and with what.
Cheap vapes you might get contaminants from the vape itself which are unhealthy. They get very hot, and quality control on these things is abysmal.
The second problem is the actual liquid. What goes into these with all the flavor crap isn’t regulated well and sometimes chemicals are being added that are harmful to us and cause problems, sometimes faster and worse than smoking cigarettes would have.
Now, if you have a good vape, and a proper vape liquid (probably neutral, no additives), it will be safer than regular cigarettes.
I vape but used to smoke for 15 years. Been vaping only for years now. Only use vaping liquid made in house and only 2 ingredients. Nicotine and pg. The difference in how I feel is dramatic. No coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath or anything that I associated with actually smoking. However, I worry that other problems might arise we just haven’t had enough time to know about yet from doing so. What I do know is I can run, exercise, etc and suffer no ill effects like I used to. I also use quality vapes and no weird flavored shit. I will say though, I’m more addicted to nicotine than I ever was due to the accessibility and convenience of the vape. I stood a better chance of quitting cigarettes than I ever did of quitting vaping.
Yup. I’m in a similar situation. I work from home and vape in my office. I do it non-stop… I lowered the nic concentration as much as possible, but still, it’s a lot. It’s too convenient. Better than cigarettes though.
Safer, but not safe. That part is important. And vaping didn’t replace as much smoking as much as it replaced not using nicotine at all.
Vaping is much healthier per unit. The thing is lots of people cant stop vaping coz unlike cigarettes it tastes awesome. They suck on that thing 24h a day vaping the equivalent of 100+ cigarettes.
Also a big part of the revenue is generated from addicted kids, they know it and wont change it.
This is just entirely untrue. People generally consume more nicotine when vaping. That much is true. Vaping has significantly less toxins and dangerous chemicals than smoking cigarettes, as well as circumvent the whole tar in the lungs thing. There are no long term studies on vaping, so doctors will always say “we aren’t sure which is worse” but advise that smoking is likely to be far worse for the body than vaping. There is not a single study on earth, nor any doctors I’ve heard, that supports your claim.
I dont know what part of your comment contradicts anything I said. If you are saying I shouldnt have said ‘vaping is healthier’ but instead ‘vaping is 99% likely to be healthier’, then yeah, sure.
Smoking is much more harmful than vaping, but vaping is not necessarily healthy either. The higher temperatures from burning plant matter (any plant matter really, nicotine is just super addictive) create most of the carcinogens in smoke. The most abundant carcinogen is Benzo[a]pyrene, which is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs, a.k.a. “tar” in cigarette smoke). PAHs are formed at temperatures above 300 Celsius. And vapes typically operate around 200 Celsius. Vapes still contain carcinogens and nicotine itself harms vascular health, but they have none of the PAHs if operating correctly. The biggest issue with them is the targeting of kids, especially by Juul in the 2010s.
Coles notes: smoking, is quite literally that, creating smoke that you intentionally inhale. The desired chemical (nicotine) is mixed with other smoke shit (thousands of different compounds. The shit in that smoke can give you cancer and a long list of other problems.
Vaping is basically a handheld fog machine that has nicotine added to the liquid. Usually sweetened and flavored, but not necessarily. It has the desired chemical, nicotine, as well as a short list of additives (maybe a dozen or so, depending on a few factors), and doesn’t contain any known carcinogens (so no cancer)
At the end of the day, you’re lungs should breathe the air. If you smoke or vape, that’s not as good for you as clean fresh air. However, vaping won’t give you cancer, and has a fraction of the toxins and compounds that cigarettes do.
It’s like comparing driving your car into a lamp post, or plowing through a parade with your SUV. Neither is ideal, one is definitely much worse than the other.
Has that been proven though? I don’t think there’s yet any sufficient long-term research to know the full risks of vaping.
More or Less, yes, it has.
Cancer from cigarettes is largely linked to a small subset of compounds produced by the combustion of tobacco. Appropriately named as carcinogens. Those are the cancer-causing compounds that link cigarettes to cancer.
Vaping, by contrast, is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine (PG and VG), as the base substance (which is basically the same stuff they use in fog machines, and people breathe that constantly without any directly related issues). PG/VG makes up more than 90% of the vape liquid, by volume. The remaining 10% is usually a solution of PG/VG mixed with nicotine concentrate to make the whole solution have a particular % of nicotine content, usually measured in mg per ml, and the last few percentile are flavorings.
So from a 60ml bottle, more than 55ml will be the VG/PG base fluid, 3-4 mL will be the nicotine concentrate, and the remainder will be flavoring.
Apart from the flavor ingredients: VG, PG, and nicotine, to date, have no carcinogenic characteristics and have not been linked to cancer (to the best of my knowledge). So over 95% of the volume of the liquid is known to not be cancer causing, the rest is usually food-grade flavoring.
Needless to say, food-grade flavoring is generally not carcinogenic.
That’s one hell of a confident statement… Backed up by exactly zero sources.
The onus of proof here is on the person challenging the statement made. If you can find any source that links nicotine vaping to cancer, I’m happy to discuss.
Please do not demand me to provide sources when you equally do not.
I have smoked and vaped alternatively. When I’ve vaped I have breathed as bad or worse than smoking. Vape liquids are propileneglycol (or some other glycol, can’t remember) and glycerine, often in 50/50 or a close ratio up or down. When vaping you are coating your lungs in oil. Probably not better than smoke. Different type of harm, but definitely very harmful. Just think about it: oil in your lungs…
Your lungs can aspirate both Pg and Vg (derived from vegetables). It is misleading in my opinion to call them oil in an effort to make them sound dangerous. Pg is not petroleum and has been considered safe by the medical community since before vaping was a thing.
What makes it an oil? Viscosity? What’s the viscosity that makes a liquid an oil? You inhale water as steam but that doesn’t make water an oil.
You can call it an oil in general but just like when someone refers to electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) as electromagnetic radiation (EMR) I already know they are very likely to fear monger about it because it sounds scarier.
Both PG and VG are water soluble. If you have oil in your lungs after vaping, you might want to switch what you’re vaping.
I don’t know your situation, or what testing methods you used. I have no doubt that you’ve had an experience that supports your claims. With that being said, I have heard, both from people on the internet, and personal friends, who have switched from smoking to vaping, and almost every story is the same: after the tar is processed out of their respiratory system, they breathe a lot better after switching to vaping.
It seems logical to me that you’d need to vape for a few months before feeling the effects of quitting smoking as the tar will take at least that long to get to the point where you would feel a difference. That’s what I’ve heard from the people I’ve spoken to.
The only “vapes” I know of that have oil in them, are for marijuana. The active ingredients in marijuana are oil-soluble, so vitamin E acetate is usually used to dilute it to the desired strength. Vaping vitamin E acetate will absolutely mess up your lungs and cause permanent damage.
“Weed vapes” are generally purchased from the black markets or weed dealers, who are generally already breaking the law and don’t care about customer safety. So while stuff like vitamin E acetate is never used in the vape liquid you’d buy at your local vape shop, it can, and very likely will be in vapes that are made and distributed illegally.
It’s the difference between eating a Tic Tac, and just pouring the whole box in your mouth. Neither are good, but the second is definitely worse.
https://youtu.be/cHEOsKddURQ
Here is an excelent Kurzgesagt video.