Augusta, GA -- E-cigarettes in smoking ban extension

[rstreet55]

The point I am trying to make is that no matter how big or small the numbers are, it is getting released in the air and we have to be mindful of it as we don't know the full extent of the side effects. However, we do know how nicotine affects us physiologically and neurologically. We know that children and pregnant people are even more susceptible. I was making that point because I see a lot of ecig users blowing it off as if there is definitively no side effects from the vapor to them or others around.

I agree that there is a lot of disinformation floating around. Disinformation like this:

The fact of the matter is that they have never produced one death that could be shown to have been caused by second-hand smoke exposure let alone second-hand smoke-free nicotine exposure and the vast majority of illnesses from second-hand smoke (short term, public exposure) are very minor and not permanent....Second-hand smoke, like many household cleaning products, is simply an annoying irritant and an allergen, but is not deadly or even dangerous for the vast majority of the public.

After all the studies and published papers on how dangerous secondhand smoking can be, I am shocked you think that it does not contribute to premature death or prolonged/damaging effects. That secondhand smoking is not very harmful, but more of an "irritant." It would behoove you to maybe take up a few science courses at a local college because it is apparent you are grossly misinterpreting the papers, especially with regard to secondhand cigarette smoke. Or perhaps you just choose to ignore the scientific data. If you have had children, did you smoke while pregnant? If not, is there a reason you didn't? Perhaps...for health reasons given by your doctor? I will just end my discussion here as I feel it might not be worth my time to move forward with it.

[sherid]

I am shocked that you ignored the largest and longest peer-reviewed study of shs ever created. I am shocked that you did not examine Enstrom and Kabat's conclusions that shs is not responsible for much of anything other than assaulting anti-smokers' over sensitive noses. It would behoove you to look beyond the constant flow of shs studies bought and paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Pfizer. I see that you have grossly neglected to read like a scientist and examine materials from both sides of the issue. Perhaps you should enroll in a couple of logic classes at a nearby university. When you do, ask why, if shs is so deadly, we are about to experience an aging crisis with the Baby Boomers living into their 90's and beyond. EVERYONE SMOKED EVERYWHERE in that generation.

[kristin]

The point I am trying to make is that no matter how big or small the numbers are, it is getting released in the air and we have to be mindful of it as we don't know the full extent of the side effects. However, we do know how nicotine affects us physiologically and neurologically. We know that children and pregnant people are even more susceptible. I was making that point because I see a lot of ecig users blowing it off as if there is definitively no side effects from the vapor to them or others around.

I agree that there is a lot of disinformation floating around. Disinformation like this:

After all the studies and published papers on how dangerous secondhand smoking can be, I am shocked you think that it does not contribute to premature death or prolonged/damaging effects. That secondhand smoking is not very harmful, but more of an "irritant." It would behoove you to maybe take up a few science courses at a local college because it is apparent you are grossly misinterpreting the papers, especially with regard to secondhand cigarette smoke. Or perhaps you just choose to ignore the scientific data. If you have had children, did you smoke while pregnant? If not, is there a reason you didn't? Perhaps...for health reasons given by your doctor? I will just end my discussion here as I feel it might not be worth my time to move forward with it.

My thoughts about second and third-hand smoke in public spaces is a completely different topic than first-hand and pregnancy exposure (yes I quit while pregnant.) It's not that I do not believe smoke to be dangerous, it's that I do not think it is nearly as dangerous for short term exposures in large, public spaces with commercial ventilation systems or outside on beaches and in parks as they make it out to be - not enough to ban it. If second-hand smoke is that dangerous, then they should also be banning restaurants with wood grills and smokers and BBQ grills in beaches and parks. Do you really think the smoke from those sources is magically less harmful? Yet they only want to ban cigarette smoke.

I think cigarette smoke is much more harmful first-hand and second-hand in closed, small often under-ventilated spaces such as apartments and homes - just as you wouldn't use your grill indoors. Ironically, all of the public bans are INCREASING the health risks of children of smokers who would otherwise have smoked outside of the home. Now the idiot ANTZ are going after home smoking because they finally figured out the ramifications of their public nuisance bans: Maasin City bans smoking at home | Sun.Star And they want to include e-cigarettes in bans like this, even though they don't create any smoke at all!

Additionally, the ANTZ make no move to ban cigarettes, rather they attempt to ban all of the much safer alternatives - leaving smoking as the only alternative. Gee, the one source where they get the most tax revenue and the one that causes people to buy NRTs over and over with one quit attempt after another. Those NRT profits then fund the research that "proves" second and third-hand smoke is evil and people need to be banned from public and encouraged to buy NRT. Doesn't that even make you wonder just a tiny bit?? If you think that sort of "conspiracy" is far fetched, look at at what the dairy industry did to margarine in the early days.

I am quite aware of "all the studies and papers" supporting second-hand smoke health risks. I am also aware of all of the politics behind the suppression of all the research, studies and papers which directly contradict those which claim significant health risks of public and outdoor second-hand smoke and the fact that there is a lot of money to be made in research supporting smoking bans. Also, I have seen many papers and studies where the researchers came to conclusions which were either shown to be pre-designed and/or completely contradict the evidence they found and/or were made based upon small samples and/or poorly designed. Just because those papers exist doesn't mean that they are well-done or produce significant evidence to support the conclusions made (which are usually prematurely announced to the public in an over-simplified, dramatic fashion and misrepresentative of what it all really means.)

Unfortunately, you read those studies with the assumption that they are complete, well-designed, conclusive and done by unbiased, ethical researchers without any agenda or vested interest in the publicized results. In fact, most of the studies you find on second-hand smoke in public are poorly designed, come from small samples and are inconclusive theory that are often reported as hard, cold facts. None of the studies you posted earlier really come to any firm conclusions - they were only a collection of "if's" "could's" and "might's."

As Sherid pointed out - how many studies have you read that were not paid for by groups with a vested interest in smokers trying to quit (Big Pharma)? There are respected doctors and researchers, many who even support public smoking bans and used to be a part of the anti-smoking industry, who criticize these poorly done and/or inconclusive studies as junk science. You need to hear what they have to say before you take all of those studies you have been reading at face value. Unless you have read and heard both sides of the argument, you are not in any position to make any conclusions.

[rothenbj]

Sherid, I'm sure you probably saw this but you have to wonder if this isn't the next step in the grand plan, of course from the left coast-

Rocklin Considering Banning Residents From Smoking Outside Their Own Homes « CBS Sacramento

They've started in the parks and outside public places, now they want to move onto you're own private property. If you're going to concede to not vaping anywhere smoking is banned, you may wake up and find very few places that you'll be able to vape. I can't believe they will get away with this, but I am amazed with what they've accomplished already so who knows.

[sherid]

Sherid, I'm sure you probably saw this but you have to wonder if this isn't the next step in the grand plan, of course from the left coast-

Rocklin Considering Banning Residents From Smoking Outside Their Own Homes « CBS Sacramento

They've started in the parks and outside public places, now they want to move onto you're own private property. If you're going to concede to not vaping anywhere smoking is banned, you may wake up and find very few places that you'll be able to vape. I can't believe they will get away with this, but I am amazed with what they've accomplished already so who knows.

Yeah, I saw it. Civil Disobedience is the ONLY solution.

[DC2]

Yeah, I saw it. Civil Disobedience is the ONLY solution.

I have long thought that it may come to civil disobedience.

Sherid, I'm sure you probably saw this but you have to wonder if this isn't the next step in the grand plan, of course from the left coast-

Rocklin Considering Banning Residents From Smoking Outside Their Own Homes « CBS Sacramento

They've started in the parks and outside public places, now they want to move onto you're own private property. If you're going to concede to not vaping anywhere smoking is banned, you may wake up and find very few places that you'll be able to vape. I can't believe they will get away with this, but I am amazed with what they've accomplished already so who knows.

They fight to defeat us while we sleep.
And we need to wake up.

[Semiretired]

How can second hand smoke from a cigarette in an open park be more dangerous than the exhaust emissions from the cars around the park?

[sherid]

\

I have long thought that it may come to civil disobedience.


They fight to defeat us while we sleep.
And we need to wake up.

In Ohio there are some places that have defied the ban since day one. I try to give them all of my business for being gutsy enough to stand up for owners' rights. Some places allow smoking all the time: others at certain times of the day. Just blindly allowing these eugenists to keep encroaching on our lives is a serious error IMO.

[Vocalek]

Despite the fact that one of the authors of http://www.mc.uky.edu/tobaccopolicy/...ndNicotine.pdf is the notorious Ellen Hahn, there is confirmation of what I stated about the fact the cigarettes emit nicotine directly from the ends the entire time they remain lit, plus a small amount of the nicotine that was inhaled by the smoker. They also offer some data regarding how much of inhaled nicotine is absorbed by the one doing the inhaling.

Nicotine is released while cigarettes burn and is contained in expired air after puff inhalations, as roughly 82–92% of nicotine inhaled during active smoking is absorbed (Armitage et al., 1975; Iwase, Aiba, & Kira, 1991).

Dr. Laugesen's sources said that 98% of the nicotine is absorbed before the smoke is exhaled, and the older studies cited by by Okali, Kelly, & Hahn state that "roughly 82-92%" of the inhaled nicotine is absorbed. Let's take the worst case scenario. if we took the smallest estimate of absorption and applied it to the largest estimates of nicotine per puff, we end up with 18% of 103 mcg exhaled for the combusted cigarette and with 18% of 10 mcg for the e-cigarette, with no additional nicotine emitted from the end of the e-cigarette. That works out to 18.54 mcg (plus 100% of the nicotine emitted from the burning end) for a combusted cigarette versus 1.8 mcg for the e-cigarette.

According to this article from the NEJM, 10 grams of eggplant delivers 1 mcg of nicotine. MMS: Error

A 4 oz serving of eggplant is equal to 113.4 grams, which would deliver 11.34 mcg of nicotine.

Now keep in mind that if someone is using an e-cigarette in the same room as you, unless you lock lips with him or her, you are not going to inhale all of the 1.8 mcg of nicotine that they exhale. You will probably take in a tiny, tiny fraction of those 1.8 mcg because vapor does not linger on the air the way that smoke does, nor cling to surfaces as it does when attached to droplets of tar. Vapor dissipates quickly.

Now let's turn the discussion to the effects of nicotine.

Acute nicotine improves cognitive deficits in young adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Acute nicotine improves cognitive de... [Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2008] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotine improves working memory span capacity in rats following sub-chronic ketamine exposure.
Nicotine improves working memory spa... [Neuropsychopharmacology. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI

Effects of nicotine on attention and inhibitory control in healthy nonsmokers.
Effects of nicotine on attention an... [Exp Clin Psychopharmacol. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotine effects on default mode network during resting state.
Nicotine effects on default mode n... [Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2011] - PubMed - NCBI

Effects of nicotine on novelty detection and memory recognition performance: double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of smokers and nonsmokers.
Effects of nicotine on novelty det... [Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009] - PubMed - NCBI

Positive effects of nicotine on cognition: the deployment of attention for prospective memory.
Positive effects of nicotine on co... [Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009] - PubMed - NCBI

Effects of transdermal nicotine on episodic memory in non-smokers with and without schizophrenia.
Effects of transdermal nicotine on... [Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2008] - PubMed - NCBI

Chronic nicotine administration improves attention while nicotine withdrawal induces performance deficits in the 5-choice serial reaction time task in rats.
Chronic nicotine administrat... [Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2007 Aug-Sep] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotine improves cognitive deficits of dopamine transporter knockout mice without long-term tolerance.
Nicotine improves cognitive deficits... [Neuropsychopharmacology. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI

Visual and auditory alertness: modality-specific and supramodal neural mechanisms and their modulation by nicotine.
Visual and auditory alertness: modality-speci... [J Neurophysiol. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI

Acute effects of nicotine on attention and response inhibition.
Acute effects of nicotine on attenti... [Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2005] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotine improves memory for delayed intentions.
Nicotine improves memory for delay... [Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2005] - PubMed - NCBI

Acute effects of nicotine on visual search tasks in young adult smokers.
Acute effects of nicotine on visua... [Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2005] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotinic treatment for cognitive dysfunction.
Nicotinic treatment for ... [Curr Drug Targets CNS Neurol Disord. 2002] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotine effects on alertness and spatial attention in non-smokers.
Nicotine effects on alertness and spatial a... [Nicotine Tob Res. 2002] - PubMed - NCBI

Nicotinic systems in central nervous systems disease: degenerative disorders and beyond.
Nicotinic systems in central nervous systems... [Pharm Acta Helv. 2000] - PubMed - NCBI

Cognitive mechanisms of nicotine on visual attention.
Cognitive mechanisms of nicotine on visual attention. [Neuron. 2002] - PubMed - NCBI

So the bottom line would appear to be that if you could take in enough nicotine merely by breathing in a room where others are using an e-cigarette that contains nicotine, you might find that your ability to concentrate and pay attention is improved, that your visual memory is improved, that your information processing abilities are improved, and that your symptoms of depression are reduced.

Wow, that sounds really awful!

But don't worry, because it is unlikely that you could take in enough nicotine from 2nd-hand vapor to have any effect whatsoever.

[Vocalek]

Glitch caused double post. Deleted text of second copy.