I love vaping, DONT GET ME WRONG, took me out of smoking, but it's still a harmful product (maybe 10x or 100x LESS harmful than cigs, but it's still nicotine, a toxic and addictive substance) that should be somehow regulated.
In the fall of 2010, the FDA held a public workshop on Risks and Benefits of Long-Term Use of Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) Products. Many scientists gave presentations. Dr. Neal Benowitz, who is considered one of the world's leading experts on Nicotine Safety and Toxicity (and authored/edited a book by the same name), noted that there is no existing research on long-term use of NRTs. So to provide information on nicotine safety, he looked to the decades of research that has been conducted on Swedish smokers who switched to snus, a type of spit-free moist tobacco product.
He found that nicotine does not cause or promote cancer, and that if there is any increased risk at all of cardiovascular disease, it is minimal. The only definitive harmful effect he could find in the literature is that nicotine can be problematic for pregnant women because the risks for pre-eclampsia and for pre-term birth are elevated (Relative risks of 1.58 and 1.98 respectively).
This is a link to the Benowitz presentation:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/NewsEvents/UCM232147.pdf
The CASAA web site contains a discussion of nicotine's beneficial effects and of the possible negative health consequences of nicotine abstinence.
Nicotine Effects
The Tobacco Harm Reduction Organization also provides an FAQ on nicotine. It includes a discussion regarding the controversy over whether or not nicotine is addictive.
FAQ: Nicotine (tobaccoharmreduction.org)
And here is another discussion of whether nicotine, per se, is addictive.
Professor: Nicotine does not cause cigarette addiction | The State Press - An independent daily serving Arizona State University
Proof that nicotine does have beneficial effects lies in the fact that one company, Targacept, is developing treatments for attention deficit disorder, depression, anxiety, and even Alzheimers based on nicotine.
http://www.targacept.com/wt/page/science
When nicotine is ingested orally, the body reacts by purging the contents of the stomach, thus minimizing toxic effects on the rest of the body. Poisoning fatalities from nicotine are extremely rare. Only one poisoning fatality of a child was found in a review of 27 years of reports from the National Poison Control Centers. In at case, the child had ingested cigarettes but also had Valium in his system. The Valium may have suppressed vomiting.
Frequency and outcomes of accidental... [Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI
The only nicotine poisoning fatalities of adults seem to involve the wearing of multiple nicotine patches.
Most vapers are alert to symptoms of too much nicotine which include dizziness and headache. When they've had too much nicotine, they stop.
