[lemonberry]

My father's been smoking for over 50 years. I got him to switch to mostly vaping last year. The difference in his health has been profound. It almost eliminated his coughing, increased his ability to walk distances. His doctor was amazed at his last checkup. She said she couldn't recommend it to patients due to the uncertainties, but encouraged him to keep doing whatever it is that he's doing.

Edit: I bought him the vape after a friend that's been smoking for a long time made the switch and raved about the benefits. I don't doubt that the best course of action is to quit altogether, but a 50+ year addiction is pretty difficult to quit. It can be done but you really have to want it. I don't think my dad really wanted to quit. I know that seems silly, but given his circumstances I can understand.

[Symbiote]

The UK's NHS says "particularly if you've already tried other methods of quitting smoking without success, you might want to give e-cigarettes a go" and "according to current evidence on e-cigarettes, they carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes."

https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/smoking/Pages/e-cigarettes.aspx

[refurb]

Wow. Hats off to the NHS.

Is vaping harmless? Unlikely. Based on current understanding is it likely much less harmful than smoking tobacco? Yes.

[Houshalter]

Why is this even controversial? Vaping removes almost all of the known dangers from smoking. We know smoke inhalation itself is incredibly bad for health. It was never about the nicotine. Wood smoke and general pollution is highly associated with cancer and bad health and no better than tobacco smoke. There's some evidence humans have been evolving resistance to it since the invention of fire. Suggesting it's actually been a significant source of death in our species. Smokers houses are covered in foul smelling yellow residue, of course it's hurting their lungs. Smokers are actually exposed to more radiation from tobacco than the legal limit for radiation workers.

[refurb]

It's controversial because smoking has become the 20th century temperance movement, at least in the US.

Some people are so offended by the idea of smoking that even doing something much less harmful, like vaping, is enough to cause them to panic for the future of our children.

[code_duck]

Don’t half of smokers die of heart disease, not lung disease? Vaping has no effect on that - it might be even delivering more nicotine and jolting the heart more than a normal cigarette. Not sure how much heart damage comes from the stimulant decreasing blood oxygen and how much is from lung damage decreasing blood oxygen, and so forth, but it seems likely vaping is bad for your heart.

[Houshalter]

Yes, but what is the evidence it's the nicotine that's damaging the heart? The heart is part of your respiratory system. Inhaling regular wood smoke damages your heart:

https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/

>There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time.

And Heart disease is associated with pollution from burning fossil fuels: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/MyHeartandStro...

[code_duck]

I agree smoking could harm your heart in other ways. However all stimulants, including caffeine, pseudoephedrine, cocaine and amphetamines, constrict blood vessels that deliver blood to your heart, and nicotine is a stimulant with vasoconstrictive action. I’m not a medical professional but i’m sure this has been researched and reported on since it is where I got the notion.

[LordKano]

I smoked for about 18 years and I made the switch to vaping a few years ago. I haven't completely given up tobacco smoking but I have cut back tremendously.

I tried to quit several times, I tried the gum, the patches, Chantix and cold turkey. None of them allowed me to successfully quit. Vaping was good enough to temper the nicotine cravings enough that I could otherwise function without regular smoking. I have cut back on nicotine content over the years. Now, I'm using the lowest nicotine content liquid that I find readily available. The next step is to mix it with 0 nicotine liquid until I can make another attempt at quitting.

I agree that non-smokers (especially children) shouldn't do it because it can lead to nicotine addiction but for smokers, it's a miracle product.

[jfoutz]

Three weeks no tobacco. Stepping down nicotine today. I don’t like vaping much. But it has made it much easier to ramp down.

I still want a cigarette every once in a while, but I think that’s going to pass in the next month or two. At least enough for me to quit the vape as well.

I’d never recommend one to a nonsmoker. But, for me, it has been an effective way out of a vice. If anyone wants out, it has been working for me. Definitely worth considering.

[ShabbosGoy]

The key is moderation. 1 mg of nicotine can provide really positive benefits, making it a nootropic with a decent risk profile. Granted, the downsides are addiction and temporary downregulation of dopamine receptors. A spray or lozenge is better than vaping though, mainly because we don’t know the long term effects of inhaling chemicals like propelyne glycol, for instance.

[jfoutz]

oh yes. yes there are better ways to ingest nicotine. I, however, don't have the self control to avoid smoking a pack a day. If you're the kind of person that can handle small situational doses to improve whatever you're optimizing for, go for it. Me, on the other hand, i'm a chump. Lozenges didn't really meet the need of the vice i'd set up for myself. No plans for long term vaping. In the short run, i haven't screamed at anyone. I quit once before long ago and used an ssri. Of the set lozenge, patch, gum and ssri, this seems the least painful. It's effective without me checking out from reality. The ssri's made me kind of disconnected from reality. That worked, and worked well, but the blast radius was quite a bit little larger than i really wanted. this feels much more like i can separate the specific smoking impulse without affecting my other impulses.

so, yeah. n=1. not data, just an observation. I think unrestrained smoking will kill me. Perhaps the damage is done, at it will kill me regardless. That said, continuing smoking only expands the risk profile. Vaping likely narrows the risk profile. Even if it does not, vaping is a temporary thing for me. I'll be done soon.

[LordKano]

I've been vaping for 4 years. I still want a cigarette sometimes but it's becoming less frequent that I feel like I need one.

[reitanqild]

Another benefit I've seen a number of times is that people seems to have an easier time quitting. (Based on my sample of < 5 coworkers that switched to vaping.)

The pattern, as explained to me and IIRC, was as follows:

Started vaping insteadof smoking.

Tried vape with less nicotine. Worked equally well.

Tried with half strength.

Tried with even less. Also worked.

At this point it just felt silly so they just stopped.

(Note that these where young people.)

[paulmd]

Cigarette companies devote significant resources to building the positive feedback loop to increase the addictiveness of their products (the experience of unwrapping the cellophane packaging is a classic example). Vapes are a much more straightforward delivery method that lack these enhancements.

Of course there's some parallels there for the software world, like the endless A/B testing social-media sites do to maximize the amount of time people spend glued to their product.

[lemonberry]

I also think it's kind of a controlled dose thing. When one smokes a cigarette it tends to be the whole cigarette, whereas with a vape you can take a couple of hits, get a fix and put it down.

[corobo]

When looking for this I think it's useful to note that immediately after switching the amount of vaping can be huge. I was actually experiencing nicotine rushes and nausea in some cases when I first started

The problem I had was that a cigarette has an obvious stop point - it runs out - whereas a vape will go on as long as you have juice and power.

Over the 6 months or so getting used to it I've been vaping it's started to fizzle out. I know, n=1, but I think it's something worth noting in case people see an increase in nicotine intake immediately after switching

[miragle]

When I first tried a disposable cigalike this happened to me. I was previously smoking just under a pack a day, but without an obvious stopping point I found myself using the whole thing in a few hours, when it was supposed to be equivalent to a pack. Because of this, when I started using a sub-ohm tank, I only bought 3mg liquids (the lowest available). I could vape it as much a I wanted and it took pretty much constant vaping for 10 minutes to feel slightly unwell from the nicotine, so this worked very well for me.

[code_duck]

That is basically how it went for me. I tried vaping, liked it, and substituted it for cigarettes. I liked the effect but found it easier to forget about. Eventually I bought some juice I didn’t enjoy, and simply stopped using it.

[chillwaves]

This is how people taper off of addictive drugs.

A proven strategy.

[mathgeek]

> I don't doubt that the best course of action is to quit altogether, but a 50+ year addiction is pretty difficult to quit. It can be done but you really have to want it. I don't think my dad really wanted to quit. I know that seems silly, but given his circumstances I can understand.

Much as your physical health is probably best by quitting, mental health certainly has to be considered as well.

[agumonkey]

got my mom had a device, before she had a heart attack, then she stopped smoking for a while, but she hates tech so much, she got back to smoking instead of vaping to fill nicotin craves.

it's hard to convince people some times (also not helping that things are still fuzzy and depending on your friends, you can also hear horror stories like lung cancer due to weird vaping byproducts ..)