Vape Regulation Is Coming

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/vape-regulation-is-coming-and-it-just-might-kill-the-industry

by tmlee • 11 years ago

21 65 11 years ago

motherboard.vice.com

DigitalSea• 11 years ago

Good. These e-cigarettes are the worse thing to happen to health in a long time. Just as smoking rates started to decline, out come vapor cigarettes which are in some cases more dangerous (exploding in peoples faces). I've seen too many people "vaping" on buses and trains for something to not have been done about it.

Zikes13• 11 years ago

It's all pretty ludicrous even on the surface. A lot of vaping proponents try to argue the relative safety of water vapor to smoke, but in the end it's still just a delivery method for various chemicals including nicotine. Not to mention the vapor is just as obnoxious as smoke.

sneak3• 11 years ago

It's not water vapor, it's glycerin and propylene glycol, primarily.

You'd be right, except that the vapor condenses in seconds and the effect on others nearby is below the threshold of measurement, whereas secondhand smoke lingers for minutes or hours and is extremely measurably harmful to anyone in proximity of a smoker.

Nicotine itself isn't that harmful.

trhway3• 11 years ago

. A lot of vaping proponents try to argue the relative safety of water vapor to smoke, but in the end it's still just a delivery method for various chemicals including nicotine.

and so the coffee for caffeine

Not to mention the vapor is just as obnoxious as smoke.

and so the vapor from your hot coffee.

sneak3• 11 years ago

Bullshit. Vaping is tremendously less harmful than smoking, both to the user themselves, and more importantly to the people around them that are not being subjected to secondhand smoke.

Vapor condenses very quickly, and the secondhand effects are below the threshold of measurement. This is a marked difference from smoking.

I'm getting the impression you haven't done any research about this, though, and are just ranting.

PS: Smoking kills 50% of its users. What percentage of vapers have had their equipment blow up in their face? (Hint: it's not 1%.)

tptacek5• 11 years ago

Did you really just suggest that the risk of an e-cigarette exploding is comparable to the risk of heart disease, emphysema, and cancer from smoking actual cigarettes?

Zikes13• 11 years ago

Whereas elsewhere in this thread you suggest the addiction dangers of caffeine from coffee is comparable to the addictiveness of nicotine?

theophrastus2• 11 years ago

Here's my experienced-based concern about vaping. I've spent a lot of time in a medicinal/organic chemistry synthesis labs. During which I have often been around synthetic set-ups involving drawing smaller organic compounds over heated metal, (sometimes specifically catalytic), elements in order to render them reactive for the next synthetic step. Oftentimes the assumption is that an intermediate free-radical is thereby generated. Vaping juice has a variety of (poorly regulated) smaller organic solvent and flavor-ant compounds in it, which are drawn over a heated metal element. Free radicals are often implicated as carcinogenic. Of course, i have no clinical data; but you can at least see where my concern comes from.

sophacles8• 11 years ago

Most of the flavorings in vaping juice are just the stuff that's added to food for the same flavors. In fact, most of it is sold to be used in food products. Some exotic flavors differ, but mostly its just food flavorings. So how does this differ from using flavored oils in a cooking pan?

ggreer• 11 years ago

I dislike smoking and e-cigs, but by any accounting, e-cigs greatly benefit public health. Vaping is far less harmful than smoking tobacco, and around 70% of vapers are former smokers. When you plug in reasonable numbers for smoking vs vaping deaths[1]:

...if a public e-cigarette ban reduces the number of smokers who switch to e-cigarettes by 2%, you’ve just killed an extra 9000 people per year...

So if anything, e-cigs should be subsidized, not banned.

1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/28/thank-you-for-doing-som...

m_c• 11 years ago

Actually they are massively safer than tobacco cigarettes - around 95% less harmful[0]. At the moment there is no evidence that they act as a stepping stone to cigarettes (and some indication that they don't). So converting smokers to vapers could do a lot to reduce the huge harm done by tobacco.

I agree I'd rather not sit next to someone using one on a train but I'd also rather not sit next to someone eating strong smelling food.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-an-e...

dogma1138• 11 years ago

As some one who uses an eCig I wouldn't put much faith into the claims of X% less harmful because we don't know yet. There's just too much crap going on as the scene exploded in the past 2 years I know some people that spend more time engineering their "coils" than what JPL spends on designing mars rovers and vape at with devices that look like a battery pack of a T1000 at like 150W. No one can estimate the current effects of the oily residue in the lungs, the interactions with the flavoring, and other components, as well as the effects of in taking heated vapor, possible metal deposition and what ever wicking media is uses (silicon, cotton, other fibers). Although it appears to be safer because you don't intake tar and the 100000's compounds in a cigarette it could end up being just as much of a health risk for a plethora of other reasons.

So it will probably take several decades until we can begin to asses the actual health impact, and considering how many variations of possible variables (liquid base, nicotine level, nicotine source, flavor base, flavor components, wattage, coil type, wick material etc.) are there it might not be a clear cut case either.

And I also hate people that "vape" in confined spaces such as trains, luckily in the UK most places put on signs that do not allow you to vape anymore, I've been seeing people do that in the movies and that's probably the most annoying thing to see as the clouds of smoke constantly catch the light from the projector. Vaping should be treated as smoking as far as other people go if you are with some one that would not want you to smoke near them do not vape near them, having separate vaping areas might come in the future but I don't expect to see that anytime soon, sadly the place that is affected the most is the airport, especially those with the "phone booth" style smoke areas which I couldn't stand to enter even when I was smoking.

rcurry• 11 years ago

I see the spirit of Andrew Volstead is still alive and well after all these years. Frankly, I don't care what people smoke, or how they choose to smoke it. I also don't care what they choose to read, or what they choose to drink.

splawn3• 11 years ago

I vaped for over a year starting last summer. Over that year I was able to gradually decrease the amount of nicotine in my juice. A few months back I switched to nicotine free juice (Which oddly enough, is exactly the same thing as a fog machine..which I don't really see anyone complaining about.) Anyways I haven't vaped for a month now.. and don't really feel the need to. Bottom line is vaping allowed me to quit smoking and it only cost me half my face. Of course I am just kidding about the half a face thing.... "exploding in peoples faces" ,LOL!! ...let's ban swimming because of shark attacks!

sneak3• 11 years ago

This is so fucking stupid. People aren't going to give up their nicotine addictions; giving them a cheap and convenient alternative that is many orders of magnitude safer for themselves and their families than smoking is the single best outcome that could happen.

It's really simple: Make vaping less accessible, continue to destroy the lungs of children and others with secondhand smoke.

onetwotree3• 11 years ago

Exactly. I switched from smoking to vaping a few months back, and I haven't looked back. My lungs don't hurt when I wake up in the morning, I don't smell like cigarettes all the time, and my landlord has, based on some industry research or something, decided to let me vape inside.

I'm always trying to cut back and quit, but I'll switch right back to smokes if I can't vape.

saurik• 11 years ago

This "grandfather" date is so dumb and such obvious pandering to an existing large business faction: this kind of law should apply to everything and everyone. "We now require all food to be tested for contamination with [insert newly understood poison here], unless it was marketed before we discovered the poison... in that case, have fun!" :/

panglott• 11 years ago

Vaping is clearly less harmful than cigarette smoking, and shifting from cigarettes to vaping is a great move. But somehow the most gullible vapers have convinced themselves that vaping is utterly harmless, and they should be able to do it everywhere the way they did when omnipresent secondhand smoke was taken for granted. So we get all this clear propaganda about how harmless it is, and how the nonsmokers are bunch of unreasonable fascists for not letting people do it all over the place.

cjoelrun• 11 years ago

I really hope regulations don't go that as far as this article describes. I realize that formal review of drug delivery products are important for safety, but the deadlines they're imposing will hurt what vaping has done for public air quality.

I don't vape, but I wish that everyone who smoked in public spaces would just switch to vaping because of how much better it is on everybody around them.

There's a way to getting to what regulators want, but demanding things happen on a timeline that not even they can keep up with is ridiculous and needs to be rethought.

asift• 11 years ago

I realize that formal review of drug delivery products are important for safety

Can we be certain of that? How do we define safety? The FDA focuses on ensuring that no one is harmed by the use of a product, but they pay very little attention to those who are harmed by the lack of access to a product. The institutional incentives that exist encourage this conservative approach to drug access.

There are also many forms of regulation outside of governmental regulation. No bureau is needed to verify the quality of my Uber driver, but they still tend to be better than most taxis I've ever taken. 10 years ago you could have said "formal review of taxi drivers is important for safety" and most people would have agreed with you, but fortunately some entrepreneurs realized there was a better form of regulating driver quality.

digitalzombie• 11 years ago

I dislike vaping.

People thinks it's ok to blow those things in your face or near people.

It's basically spitting to me.

I also think Vape is bad for you and is up there with smoking. Just cause it less bad than smoking doesn't mean it's not harmless, it's just an excuse to not quit a harmful habit.

It's a free country but still I wish they can't vape in certain area or have a designated area so they can vape.

wtf237372• 11 years ago

Do you drive? You realize you are pumping extremely harmful smoke into the air in large quantities?

I'd rather take a puff of someones second hand vaporizer smoke then to breath in the shit that comes out of your tail pipe.

knieveltech2• 11 years ago

Dude you are not helping anyone here. This kind of tortured logic and aggression does nothing to improve the public perception that vapers are completely out of tune with the desires of those around them.

Full Disclosure: Vaper for 2 years & counting, I take that shit outside and keep it out of people's face.

onetwotree3• 11 years ago

Wat.

knieveltech2• 11 years ago

Vaper here. It's incredibly rude for someone to inflict their vape on you. I would support designated vaping areas similar or identical to designated smoking areas.

Your statement about exuses to not quit imply that you believe that quitting is easy, or even possible, for all smokers. This is certainly not the case. Studies have shown that it's easier to kick a heroine habit than it is to quit smoking.

jeletonskelly• 11 years ago

Former smoker turned (former) vaper here. Not everyone who vapes is that inconsiderate, but I will acknowledge that there are many who subtly attempt to create confrontation by blowing it in peoples faces like it's no big deal. They want you to give them an excuse to rant about how "safe it is."

I'm not going to argue that it's healthy or harmless, but I can guarantee you that it is less harmful than smoking. After switching to a vape my cilia healed, I had better lung capacity, my gums stopped swelling, and my sense of smell and taste returned to normal. Vaping also allows you to control the amount of nicotine you consume, so you can slowly decrease the amount and ween yourself off of it once and for all which is what I did.

This is a big public health issue. E-cigs are one of the most effective methods for quitting altogether and they're about to ban it; that should be an outrage.

onetwotree3• 11 years ago

Um, blowing smoke or vapor in someones face is and always has been an act that signals aggression. Maybe you just need to hang out with nicer vapers?

dwc• 11 years ago

From articles and interviews about the health effects of vaping, I've gathered that there are basically two distinct groups of people: 1) ordinary people, who hold views ranging from skepticism to enthusiasm, and 2) anti-smoking activists who are sure that vaping is as bad as smoking, no matter what.

The extreme anti-tobacco people don't believe in harm reduction. They also battle snus, which is far healthier than smoking and is probably far less harmful than other forms of "chewing tobacco" due to the way it's processed. Rather than seeing fewer health problems from tobacco related products, these people would will stand on principle while people continue to smoke.

sophacles8• 11 years ago

A lot of people get this idea of "poison, therefore avoid at all costs" in their head about a lot of things. For instance, my local makerspace does a "teach people to solder" table at public events to get folks into making things. So many parents upon learning that solder has lead, decide to take their kids away, because lead will probably kill them right now. Several times they have tried to get us shut down because we have lead.

It doesn't make it ok, just how some people seem to think.

jbob2000• 11 years ago

This mentality is also present with food. "Genetically modified food is bad because the word genetic is dirty and I don't know what it means, even though every type of food ever has been genetically modified! Won't someone think of the children!?!"

ende• 11 years ago

Probition should be prohibited.

Vape Regulation Is Coming

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