The science is clear. So why can’t governments agree on vaping?

Some people seem to think that if we just correct all of our unhealthy habits we will live forever. My life has been better with some unhealthiness in it, and times that I’ve stopped has proven that. It’s your body and your time, so you should be able to use it like you want to.
- “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
  Hunter Thompson
- I would rather live a shorter life where I enjoy myself than a longer one where I restrict myself.
In countries with universal healthcare, there is an argument that government should take a more active role in dissuading the use of substances that cause social harm and harm to the body and result in long term expenditure for public health. The detail is in how far government should go, e.g. educational initiatives, regulation, or prohibition, etc.
- Countries with Universal Healthcare are always the worst places to get any treatment done, the US still to date is the best country for medical treatment of any kind
I’m all for safe substance use if wanted, but vapes are dangerous. I smoked cigarettes, then changed over to vaping and now use snus. Nicotine is a huge problem with it’s addictiveness.
Vapes in the current state they are sold, are like candy to young people and the shops treat it that way. Vaping makes it easy to consume nicotine, and once your body is addicted it craves more and more. The amount of nicotine in these vapes is obscene. And you can do it everywhere with them. You don’t smell it like cigarettes. You can get vapes in any taste you desire. I consumed way more nicotine when I was vaping than with cigarettes.
- I use cannabis to sleep (legally) and consume on moderation, just enough to do the job. While on an extended trip just now, I purchased a cartridge and battery for convenience and to try it out (I normally vape cannabis flower). It was shocking to me how quickly and frequently I would use it if I wasn't really being strict with myself. The ease of use made it trivial, the amount of product at a high concentration made it something I didn't have to think about, and it tasted and smelled like blueberry. I'll ask back to my normal methods but it gave me something to think about. There is still quite a bit left in the cartridge. To your point, it was very affordable, convenient, and psychologically speaking "addictive".
- Saying that vapes are dangerous is misinformation at best. Vaping got you off smoking cigarettes (congrats btw), which are far more dangerous. Yes, you may have consumed more nicotine, but you didn't consume any of the other thousands of toxic or even carcinogenic chemicals present in cigarette smoke.
Seriously, the other day on the bus I was enjoying my favorite snack, skunk glands infused with fox urine, and people had the audacity to tell me I can't put these things in my own body. Dictators.
It's the drugs going into air that other people have to breathe, or behavior while under the influence that endangers other people that's the problem.
- The danger of passing a cigarette on the street pales in comparison to urban pollution, poorly regulated restaurants, and even household cleaners for the number of toxins you expose yourself to. Worrying about second hand smoke outside makes as much sense as worrying about malaria from a mosquito while you’re trapped in a cage with lions.
- All that dangerous behavior like snacking relentlessly and laughing at dumb jokes, what horror! Also edibles have no secondhand smoke to inhale.
- And when the government can effectively prevent massive amounts of benzene from going into the air, they are more than welcome to work on the trace amounts of nicotine.
Being a liability to the state by taking drugs known to cause harm is also hilariously unjustified by that same metric. Sure let people decide with things like weed, shrooms whatever mellow shit they want but shit like heroin, vapes causing lung damage and putting pressure on already stressed out health infrastructures across the word needs to be governed.
- I can't believe you really just put heroin & vapes causing lung damage together. Insane. I have relatives addicted to both and it's genuinely aggravating to see someone say something so disconnected.
  I'd take a family of vape addicts over a single heroin addict a million times over.
- So people are nothing more than a statistic to you? What an insanely warped mentality that only a slave owner could love
- 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 heroin vapes this dude lives in a basement 12 floors underground

I don't quite understand how the science is clear if "there is still no data on the long-term effects of e-cigarettes".

We dont have long term data because e-cigarettes haven't been used for a long time. They got popular ten years back?
- Also, as a vaper who switch from cigs because I was desperate for an alternative, I'm also curious about the different strata of products that exist on the market. For example, I visit a juice shop that mixes their products on site with pure materials, and I get to customize what exactly appears within my harmful juices. I build and maintain my parts as well. How does this approach compare to 'over the connivence store counter' kits like Juul?
  It wouldn't surprise me if those products contain preservatives, or byproducts of a corporation skirting regulatory lines, that could be hazardous for consumer health. Though, that is purely my speculation — yet I wonder if my choice method of getting my sweet, sweet nicotine will get lumped in with everything else.
- So the science isn't clear yet. It's still emerging
- You would think 10 years would be enough time to see a groups increased risk to associated illnesses. If I made a study group and made them smoke daily for 10 years there would definitely be poorer health. The science is pretty clear, but the WHO doesn't want to admit that vapes are net neutral, whereas tobacco is bad, so obviously that would make vapes "healthy" in comparison.
  Nicotine in the body acts much like caffeine, it increases your blood pressure, giving the effect of a "calmer" feeling, and headaches when in withdrawal. No one is lobbying against coffee/caffeinated drinks, even though it's understood that too much caffeine can cause health risks. That's really where we're at. Alternative methods like nicotine gum or patches have existed for a long time and while there can be dependencies formed on these, no one would dare say nicotine gum is as dangerous as smoking cigarettes. The associated cancer risks from tobacco come from the carcinogens that are created when burning tobacco, not from the nicotine itself
Anything other than air going in to your lungs is bad. Vaping puts stuff that isn't air into your lungs. The science is clear on that.
Just how much damage it's doing isn't really clear because they're only becoming really popular now, but it is doing damage.
- Cool. The science is in, when are we banning coffee?

"It beats smoking" is a low fucking bar.

The science is that putting shit in your lungs is not great. There's no upside for non-smokers. It's a lark. The only truly positive side is that it's objectively better than inhaling smoke, and that only matters if it's a tobacco alternative - and contains nicotine. Which let this low-impact delivery mechanism create new addicts.

Two decades in either direction and the calculus would be trivial. 1990, the way people smoked back then? We'd solve the epidemic overnight. Trade it for vaping in a heartbeat. 2030, the way statistics were headed? Pointless and inexcusable. A brief fad that would linger in countries with hookah culture.

Instead, the worst-case scenario happened immediately. The same murderous liars made money hooking a new generation with a fairly unsafe and hideously addictive chemical. Like they'd previously done by adding filters, and then menthol, and then cloves.

Smoking kills 8 million people worldwide every year. I think it's worth pushing the alternatives.
- Maybe I read it wrong but what I got from it is this:
  Vaping is good as an alternative to non-smokers. The problem is that it's being pushed to non-smokers. It's not as bad as smoking, but the best is neither.
- The problem isn't pushing it as an alternative to already active smokers, that's what it was initially touted as...
  The problem is it became the new smoking fad. People who never smoked are taking this up, and are now the new generation of hungry addicts to keep the tobacco corps alive and well.
- Yeah, that's a lot of words when they could've just said "I don't understand risk, harm reduction, any statistics relavent to the topic, or science."
- Vaping was how I quit smoking tobacco and then quit vaping too. I started vaping to quit tobacco using premixed liquids for about 2 years, then switched to mixing my own so I took control of my nicotine intake. Over the course of about 8 months I kept cutting the nicotine in half. I would have a bit of a headache for a couple days then I would get better. After vaping at 0% for about 2 weeks, I noticed I was not picking up the vape as often and I could just leave it on the other side of the room and not care. About another month and I was entirely done. Previously about 1/2 pack a day smoker for 25+ years, now free of everything for about 6 years now.
- "It beats smoking" is a low fucking bar... that I already mentioned.
  What conversation do you think you're having?
I haven't smoked a cigarette in six years. Most of the time I use nicotine lozenges during the day, and my vape is for when I'm drinking or I need to fall on my crutch. It's familiar to my known vice, and stopped me from the more dangerous method of handling my addiction.
Grand stand all you will about how it was 'solved' over night, but I got hooked on the bitch in the 2000's due to family history and culture. People still smoke all around me, and it was only a matter of time before I tried it and got hooked. And I've made peace with that. That's before we even touch a more terrifying addiction that exists all over my country within opiate-families despite them having a stronger controlled classification. While the chemical exists in the environment potential addicts will happen across it and subsist.
'It beats smoking' is a pretty important bar for me, as an addict, because it reduces harm to myself
- 'Vaping is negative except compared to smoking.'
  'Oh yeah well what about compared to smoking?!'
  ... ibid.
You really wanna police what other people put in their body? How exactly does it affect you?
- People should be properly informed about what they put in their bodies.
  Edit: Just realised I posted in an American politics instance. Ignore the foreigner.
- second and third-hand smoke and vaping aerosols contain harmful, toxic and cancer-causing chemicals that can be breathed in.
- Addiction has societal impact. Reality exists outside the individual.
Are you advocating for cigarettes ban? Because if not, how you can advocate for vile ban? If you advocate for neither, then what do you mean by “it beats smocking “ is a low fucking bar”?
- Cigarettes are sufficiently regulated that the industry was going to die. No outright ban was necessary.
  That is no longer the case, directly thanks to this shit. Like if Philip Morris started selling nicotine patches as a brand new drug.
  "The science is clear" only means, vaping beats smoking. A fact absolutely no-one questions. But vaping is worse than not vaping. The lesser-evil argument only works when there's no third option. Like "neither."
  Serving the same purpose as smoking, while being less dangerous, is great... compared to smoking.
  But the purpose of smoking fucking blows.
dude its tobacco not black tar heroin get of your high horse i would blow smoke straightkbin your face at a party
except you havent been to a party in how long?
- Ape in a zoo beats his chest until the visitors walk away. That'll show 'em.
- Wow, you're really fucking cool.

If we ban vaping, we should ban cigarettes, cigars, chew, alcohol, and weed as well.

All have a negative effect on your health.

Strongly agree. We’ve already learned that prohibition doesn’t work and that people will always find other ways to get their fix.
If flavored vapes are “marketed to children”, what about flavored THC edibles and fruity/candy flavored alcohol? What about energy drinks and highly caffeinated sodas? What about high calorie ultra-palatable foods with absurd quantities of high fructose corn syrup? How is nicotine so different from any of the other drugs that society has decided are socially acceptable?
Humanity has had a relationship with mind altering substances since the dawn of time. It’s ingrained in our cultures, and may even be partially responsible for how human intelligence has adapted to where it is today. Nobody is going to overwrite thousands of years of history by banning vapes. People will just find some other way to access nicotine and other substances, probably by switching back to smoking or chewing. A brief ten-year interval of pushback against smoking in select countries didn’t mean that people no longer wanted nicotine, it just meant that people wanted a less objectionable way of consuming it than burning leaves in paper.
Yeah, that is basically my view on it. Vaping isn't healthy, but it seems to be healthier than the alternatives. If you aren't willing to ban all nicotine products, just tax it and treat it like other nicotine products.
- The problem is that this is multiple times more addictive than earlier nicotine products. The previous generation in the US almost stopped smoking entirely then this reversed all progress.
Guess we should ban sugar too.
Don't forget banning excess eating, red meat, sugar, and staying up too late. Let us work together to create our utopia of perfect, boring humans who are peak physical specimen, exactly the way we want them to be.
Who cares it's my health not yours. Life is pretty shit. Everything cost to much, forced into servitude by a system I have very little control over. Why would I want more life?

All advertising for all tobacco products should be banned, including of course the product placement bullshit.

Other than that, and age restrictions, people should have the right to consume it. They should not have the right to force other people to consume it, as in secondhand smoke.

Same with other addictive and/or harmful products.

All advertising for all tobacco products should be banned, including of course the product placement bullshit.
Same with other addictive and/or harmful products.
Is advertising for addictive and/or harmful products really that much worse than advertising for products in general? Think about it.
(You might be predisposed to read the above as a defense of advertising, but it's quite the opposite.)
- I agree that advertising is in itself part of the overall cultural problem of the system. However that doesn’t mean the specific forms or contents of advertisements aren’t more problematic than others.
- I think so. Every time is see someone smoke on TV I instantly want one. I imagine it's very similar for people with gambling addiction.
  Really you shouldn't be allowed to sell anything that is physically addictive. The consumer isn't choosing to buy it, they are compelled to.

Why do all of these articles always assume all vaping is nicotine-related? It's exchanging the words "e-cigarette" with "vape". Seems irresponsible of the author. It's like writing an article on the dangers of squares and mixing in the word rectangle

Most of these anti smoking articles are written by people who don’t understand smoking devices themselves. Irresponsible for sure.
The title is bad. I think the reasons though are most research is done on e-cigarettes and more people use them than thc vapes. Specifically young adults or teens use them a lot which many people didn’t expect and there is worry about.

Bro I could say the same thing about global warming, vaccines, race, and abortions, but I'm still surrounded by people fighting progress. Vaping is no different.

I appreciate your "aww shucks, kids gonna be kids" worldview; however, the data is clear, we have dramatically reduced the rate at which young people smoke cigarettes by instituting rules and guidelines concerning advertising targeting adolescents. Further, we have clear data showing that level of education greatly effects the likelihood of an individual using tobacco.
So with all due respect, this is something we can easily tackle. We know for certain the adolescents respond readily to marketing, and we therefore can control tobacco adoption by reducing said marketing to their demographic. This isn't anywhere near as futile as you're making it out to be.
- "Marketing" here being entirely incidental is the point, that the products appeal to youth simply by existing. To my knowledge, there aren't any literal advertisements going around to young people like those ridiculous Juul ads 5 or so years ago. Talking about specific types of imagery or colours on packaging, or the types of flavours used in a flavoured product as "marketing" is using an umbrella term to suggest intent to actively market to kids, but that isn't a thing that's happening.
- Having worked with my government for school dental programs, I've met my fair share of students age 12 to 17 who smoke because their parents do. You're right that marketing is a huge part of it, but I wanted to share the parents' responsibility also.

The politicians are paid by the tobacco companies. There is money to be made, and a new generation will replace tobacco smokers and ensure that the tobacco industry will survive for longer.

Nicotine is socially accepted, that is the other main problem.

Why are people all of sudden so concerned about other people’s health? I should be able to do just about anything I want to my body, as long as it has minimal impact on those around me. I can understand second hand smoke being a problem indoors, what impacts does exhaling vapor have on others?

This has been going on for a while, at least since the 80s/90s. I still remember the TV commercials from when I was a kid likening smokers to cartoon villains.
It's social engineering. Those advert programs of the 90s made it to where people felt comfortable publicly shaming smokers (walking by fake coughing, or flat telling people they're gross).
I'm with you in that as long as I'm not puffing away on a busy sidewalk or inside a shared space, as an adult I should be free to indulge as I see fit (nevermind that I won't smoke inside aside from weed, shits nasty). Point is, most of the time it doesn't do diddly squat to anyone, it's just people sticking their fingers into your private life where they don't belong, just because they can and an authority gave them permission to. It gives them something to do and something to feel superior about.
- Second and third-hand smoke and vaping aerosols contain harmful, toxic and cancer-causing chemicals that can be breathed in. Also not as much a problem with vapes, but the smell of smoke is truly disgusting and makes a lot of us feel sick to be around. I have had a conversation with someone who was smoking, and immediately gone inside and thrown up. I don't care what you put in your body on your property, but in public spaces it very much is of public concern.
its a republican psyop to pin workers against each other
- I dunno about Republican, the Clinton admin was pretty vehement on the anti-smoking train back in the 90s

Tobacco lobby

Oh wow governments don't follow the science

I vape. I hate it, but its probably better than cigs

I vape and I love it and it's definitely better than cigs. Nicotine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine and is incredibly useful at treating my adhd and depression symptoms. I smoked for 8 years and now have been vaping for ten. While I smoked I felt like shit all the time. Since switching to vaping I haven't had a single negative side effect. I make my own juice, it's unflavored. It's literally just nicotine, propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which basically makes it an asthma inhaler but for nicotine instead of asthma drugs. I never plan to quit because I buy the ingredients in bulk and it only costs me like $40 a year for me and my girlfriend. There is no downside. Yes I'm addicted but so are many people to coffee. I see no downside at all.
- I see no downside at all.
  Apart from the health risks, of course.....
- How does one get started intelligently on this? I’m using disposable and would love to cut waste and expenses but I really like the draw of the disposable. I don’t care about blowing clouds. I want some restriction to the drag and would love to mix my own vape. I’ve thrown away over $500 of vapes trying to figure out how to get something that just works. I hate all the parts and settings with the ones I’ve gotten. With the disposable I can pick them up and vape. I don’t have to worry about what the wattage or other bs is. Is their an effective option for someone that’s not a vape snob? I just want the miller lite of vape solutions and while saving money would be great I already spend significantly less than I did on cigarettes, I mostly hate myself for all the battery and plastic waste I’m creating.

How are the health risks of vaping marijuana?

Data suggest it mainly affects the ability to formulate clear sentences.
- Lol!
(Guesstimating) Better than smoking, but as any doctor will tell you, putting anything that isn't air into your lungs is worse than not putting anything that isn't air into your lungs.
I say this as someone who both smokes and vapes cannabis.
- Man, I dunno about you, but as someone who vaped and smoked weed a couple years back, the vaping was way worse for me. I would get these weird phlegmy coughs that I never got from smoking. I think part of it is that vapes hits feel so weak, so I would end up just power dragging my hits, causing this effect. There were days where I swear my lungs actually felt like they hurt.
  Stopped vaping and haven't had this issue since. Anecdotal, but there you go.
- Vapor Genie and properly vape flower. 0 side effects.

Aside from the same "tobacco lobbyists" answer everyone else is giving, I'd also bet the hesitation comes from it being highly stable, relatively large source of tax income that governments are keen to keep going until they find a suitable replacement source.

Those that do crackdown on cigarettes do so only because they know it would be bad PR not to do so with their popularity decreasing generation to generation. They're probably thanking heaven that vaping arrived, as it gave them a can to kick down the road.

Make vaping look as disgusting as it is, the same we did for tobacco. Vaping in public is gross, portray the act as such.

Also, "These are your lungs. These are your lungs on vape."

Yeah well the “problem” if you want to call it that is that e cigarettes don’t harm your lungs anywhere near the level of tobacco smoke.
There is no “these are your lungs on vape” bc frankly your lungs will look pretty normal.
If you’re interested in the data, look at the studies that have come out of the UK and the statements their public health officials have put out.
There is a public knowledge problem in the US regarding vaping because of reporting on the short lived emergence of so called “EVALI” (ecig/vaping associated lung injury) which hospitalized some teenagers and adults.
EVALI was determined to be caused by Vitamin E Acetate which was a flavoring additive used in some illegal THC vapes. Once the cause was determined, even the shady illegal vape makers stopped using that ingredient. But the reputational damage to ecigs remained. EVALI was a US only problem and a short lived one at that.
Data broadly shows that ecigs are a much safer alternative to combustible cigarettes for nicotine consumption.
- EVALI was determined to be caused by Vitamin E Acetate which was a flavoring additive used in some illegal THC vapes.
  It wasn't even a flavoring additive. It was sold under the name "Honey Cut" and was used to dilute cannabis oil to rip off customers. That's why it never showed up in the legal market.
- There was also the diacetyl scare that affect e juice internationally.
  Regardless, the nicotine itself causes emphysema, it just takes a while so we don't have a lot of visible damage yet.