[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.

[Houshalter]

As far as I know caffeine isn't associated with heart disease. AT least not in the brief googling I did.