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I'm not sure this is actually bad. Nicotine, when divorced from the tar of burning cigarettes, has a number of desirable affects on alertness and appetite (as well as less desirable effects like increasing blood pressure) - it's not clear to me that avoiding nicotine as a stimulant is always desirable.

As well, vaping is so much less obnoxious to the people around you than traditional smoking (either tobacco or marijuana). I'm in favor of a lot of the social and legal pressure that has been put on smoking tobacco in public (and I think it should apply to weed as well despite being pro-legalization). But most of the actual issues go away if it's vaping and of smoking (and all of them go away if you're getting your tobacco via a pouch).

by dangus3 hours ago|

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I’m not sure how you could possibly argue that nicotine has mainly desirable effects. Merely being highly addictive on its own is a pretty badly overriding negative effect.

Here’s a paper that talks about the negative impacts on a wide variety of organs: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4363846/

by hnlmorg5 hours ago|

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I honestly still find vaping obnoxious and I’m clearly not alone here because most places that ban smoking also ban vaping too.

And weird for someone to talk about vaping like it’s a good thing when we already know there are adverse health implications from vaping. What we don’t know is just how serious that is. But why take the risk in the first place?

by JuniperMesos4 hours ago|

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What adverse health implications from vaping are there?

by dangus3 hours ago|

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Still being studied, but the idea that it’s safe seems to be a very odd default.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/e-cigarettes/health-effects.html

Why would your default assumption be that putting foreign (and poorly regulated) substances into your lungs is more likely than not safe?

This is especially true since it’s a drug that doesn’t even have much claim to fame for positive recreational or medicinal benefits.

by JuniperMesos11 minutes ago|

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The vast majority of that CDC information page is about the health effects of nicotine itself. There's a relative lack of specific information about the health risks of the vapor. "Cancer-causing chemicals" is vague (I live in California, I see prop 65 signs all over the place, I ignore them like every good Californian). "Heavy metals" is also vague - is the amount of tin that I might inhale via vaping actually a problem? Is it significantly more than if I lived in an area with a tin mine or something?

I'm not claiming that vaping is safe in some absolute sense, it wouldn't be surprising if there are some meaningful health risks. I personally do not vape myself because the times I've tried it, I've found getting the vapor into my lungs to be very uncomfortable. But it does seem like it's a strict health improvement over tobacco smoke, given that the CDC can't articulate a specific harm to the lungs caused by vaping.

by kortilla3 hours ago|

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No, the context was getting a handle on smoking, not some alternative goalpost. As lung cancer rates plummet from lack of second hand smoke nobody should ever lament that even if people are doing something else not great.

Classic “perfect is the enemy of good”.