I know many may not agree, but vaping is not some magical 100% safe thing. Is it a thousand times safer than smoking? Yes (IMO). But is it safer than inhaling pure clean air? No way(IMO).
Plus, vaping has just not been around long enough to be so sure that it's safe. Your average smoker doesn't start getting the bad stuff (like cancer, emphisema, etc.) until 20-30 years of smoking. There's no way to know if 20 years of filling your lungs with glycol or glycerine, or even flavorings is going to eventualy be why you die.
I didn't say it was 100% safe, I said (or implied, rather) that clean nicotine delivery systems like personal vaporizers, FDA approved NRT's, and reduced harm tobacco like snus and dissolvables should relieve a nicotine user from the pressing "need" to quit.
The pharmaceutical grade nicotine used in most of these products reduces the exposure to nitrosamines from the range of 6,000-12,000+ nanograms per milligram of nicotine to
less than 1...and eliminates
completely the exposure to the 4000+ additional tars and toxins known to cause lung disease.
That means that there are more carcinogens in a single cigarette than in 1000ml of most e-liquids. If I use my PV for the rest of my life, I'll still be exposed to fewer harmful substances than if I had continued smoking analogs just
one more day before quitting cold turkey.
Plus there's still the 'ball-and-chain' factor of being addicted to something.
I say if you can get completely 'clean', more power to ya.
This part I understand, and it is why my initial question "Why?" was not rhetorical. If you believe you are enslaved by an addiction to nicotine, I wholeheartedly agree that your attempt to break the bond should be actively encouraged.
However, there
is another point of view: Dependence is not necessarily "addiction". The medical definition of Addiction is "Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one's voluntary control" The scientific definition is "A physical or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, such as a drug or alcohol. In physical addiction, the body adapts to the substance being used and gradually requires increased amounts to reproduce the effects originally produced by smaller doses. See more at
withdrawal." (From American Heritage Medical Dictionary & American Heritage Science Dictionary, respectively)
The aspects of being "beyond one's voluntary control" of psychological addiction and absent the increased tolerance characteristic of physical addiction mean that it is possible to be a habitual nicotine user without necessarily being an
addict. Many people, for example, use caffeine habitually and may or may not develop a true "addiction", and even if you want to classify it as an addiction, many people have addictions with no serious adverse effects.
I completely understand the desire to break away from something you feel reduces your freedom. I happen to feel that vaping has
increased my freedom.
My Freedoms as a Vaper:
- I am free to enjoy all the things I liked about the activity of smoking, AND I am free from all the things I disliked about it.
- I am free to smoke an analog if I really want to, AND I am free from any desire to do so.
- I am free to continue enjoying the benefits nicotine provides me, AND I am free to reduce or stop my nicotine use if I believe the risk outweighs the benefits.
- I am free to stand outside with my friends who smoke and not feel out of place, AND I am free to go inside when its too cold without fear and guilt of exposing my family to carbon monoxide and other toxins.
Just my .02
All that being said, am I going to keep vaping (even if it's banned)?.. damn strait
Me too. I'll keep vaping (though likely not as much) even if and when I decide to stop using nicotine.
