Just some thoughts that are running through my head as a result of this topic and others surrounding vaping.
It's pretty easy to study and reveal the effects of vaping if you have the high tech equipment and expertise and I'm surprised that the FDA hasn't released some studies. OSHA MSDS sheets on PG and VG include lung irritation following long term exposure. That's valid and most of us vape continuously, considering that no different that many other chemicals we encounter on any given day. Sometimes, I sense irritation if I crank the voltage and vape like a fiend. Most of the time I hold the vaper in my mouth briefly, shallowly inhale, and exhale through the mouth and/or nose. I don't get an irritation response from doing that.
My point is that I believe that the FDA doesn't really want to release anything that says vaping is just a minor sin. If they did, vaping would replace smoking in no time. People like the act of inhaling and exhaling and the effects of nicotine and will go to the most satisfying method, especially if it's deemed to be safe. If they told us that we'd all die with extra fingers and toes in a painful way we'd all quit vaping, but they don't seem to be able to say that. I have to think they are silent because there's nothing earthshaking to report.
Tobacco money will eventually go away as the current crop of smokers vanishes into eternity. Not that many teenagers are interested in smoking. They've been taught that smoking is detrimental to your health and in the worst case causes lung cancer and other serious issues. I think that's a good thing. No one should be killing themselves with something that's proven to cause serious medical problems. If vaping were suddenly proven to be life shortening, I'd toss mine tomorrow.
We all want the medical community to tell us that vaping is good and that it's safe. My doctor is on board with me continuing to vape and doesn't urge me to quit. He realizes that smoking and vaping are both methods of satisfying a need for nicotine and understands that nicotine is roughly equal to caffeine in relatively low levels of harm. Vaping, according to all the resources he has available is so much better than smoking that he's good with me telling him that I have no plans to quit vaping. It's the much lesser of two evils.
Now that BT is getting into the fray I suspect that we will start to see more testing and evaluation of vapers in long term testing. That's good for us. We all want someone to declare it reasonably safe or find anything we don't know about that is reason to drop it. Not knowing is a little unsettling to me, although I have no reason at all to think that it's unsafe. I welcome extensive testing just because I like to know the ramifications of anything I ingest. When the FDA outlawed certain red dyes and required a change in their composition, I was all for it. Who wants something like that affecting our kids? Who wants vaping to possibly shorten our lives after thinking is was safe? I think most of us welcome unbiased testing for vaping materials.
