| > I think where we disagree is on "no evidence". There is not definitive, comprehensive evidence, but there is some evidence. We don't disagree on this, as I indicated, we're not starting from a null hypothesis here. It's a useful abstraction for the sake of argument. All available evidence suggests that vaping is dramatically less harmful than cigarettes. There is a large enough population, who have been vaping long enough, that we should have some evidence to the contrary by now, if any was to be forthcoming. Cigarette smoke, in addition to dozens of known carcinogens, contains small particle and carbon monoxide. Both of which are known to be terrible for your health, both of which are completely absent in vaping. If I were trying to convince a young person not to vape, I'd stress that nicotine addition is a pointless and expensive mental slavery that is best avoided. Unless I knew they had ADHD or schizophrenia, in which case I'd leave them alone, since other people's medication is none of my business. Stressing unknown harms that haven't been observed and probably won't be is a bad argument. They would be right to ignore it. |
We have to measure and make decisions about unknown harms every day. We're not always good at it, but it's unavoidable. With respect to vaping, we know of very little in the way of foreign chemicals that can be safely inhaled. I think it's fair to say that available medical knowledge about inhaling chemicals points to a non-negligible chance that it might be bad for you. You seem to be saying we should mostly avoid reasoning about such uncertain risks. I'm saying it's not unreasonable to tell people, "we know inhaling many type of chemicals is harmful to your health, so there is potential for harm here as well. We'll know more in about a decade, and be fairly certain in 30 or 40 years."
Scientific rigor does not preclude reasoning about these risks before those 10 to 40 years are up.