Stigma Around Nicotine Is Destroying Public Perception Of E-cigarettes

Last week on a road trip with my motorcycle club, I had to go back to the “ash tray”. It’s to dangerous on the road, on “two wheels” with these constant sneezing attacks. I bummed cigarettes, then bought cigarettes. There’s thousands of road miles planned this summer, I’m leaving again next weekend. I love to ride, hate cigarettes, the taste, smell and cost but vaping will surely kill me!

There isn’t much of anything here or on the WWW about my issue with sneezing attacks. Not just a little sneeze but 4, 5 6 or more with an irritable urge, watery eyes and nose. When I put down my vape for an hour, it goes away, when I hit it, it starts back. Allergy medicine doesn’t stop it and makes me drowsy. This just started about 3 weeks ago, it’s like I’m suddenly allergic to...?

I’ve been vaping since 2013 when my lovely 77 yr old Aunt shared her vape. I had tried everything on the market including prescription drugs and hypnosis to put down my 20 year pack a day stink habit. For 5+ years I’ve been using an RTA and DIY juice. I’ve been using the same DIY products from Nicotine River (fresh frozen) since Dec 2019 as well as same flavors, TFA, LorAnn, Capella and same recipes. using a VG 70/30 @ 8+ Nic.
For 4+ years with zero issues I used the Lemo 2. Yes an oldie, but ya no how it is when you find a good combination. Until last year, I could get all the rebuildable supplies at Fastech. Since 2020 I’ve been buying and using different RTA’s, RDA’s Squonks, mesh coils, etc. searching for a “new love”.
My tanks are Profile Unity, Zeus Dual RTA, Creed RTA, Drop, Brunhilde and Dead Rabbit. JIC it was the new packaged supplied wicks & coils, I went back to my old wicking material which didn’t help. Tried 100% VG with VG Nic Salts, no change. I’m at a dead end, totally out of ideas, I give up, still hate cigarettes but...

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!  

Hi All! Sorry if this is long. This place is a lifesaver. I was a 30 year PAD smoker. Tried all the recommendations to quit. Resigned to smoking forever. I heard of vaping in 2013 and found this site. The day my Ego arrived in the mail on April 15, 2013, I put down the cigs and haven’t had a puff since that day. (I still smoke in my dreams every night.) I started out at 18 mg, and went up to 24 for a while. I vaped way higher nicotine than my cigs had, and much more often. I even took my Ego pen to bed and put it under my pillow to use through the night. No matter how much Nicotine I inhaled, I still went through the same withdrawals that I did when quitting cold turkey, or the gum, or the patch, or setting a timer between smokes. It was obvious I wasn’t withdrawing from nicotine. It’s from whatever chemicals are in the cigarettes.

Over the last 7 years, I’ve gone down from 18mg, to 12, to 6, and now 3. Not by choice. I was happy at 18. I started getting lightheaded, so stepped down the nicotine in levels. Not because I wanted less nicotine, but because my body couldn’t handle it. I’m now at 3mg, and starting to getting lightheaded from it. Next step is 0mg. I’ve no problem going to no nicotine, but after so long, I can’t imagine not having the inhale/exhale/hand to mouth repetition.

Has anyone gotten to 0mg and still vapes, or have you broken the habit?  

Okay, so I Vape in very “precise” ways but I cannot figure out how to calculate (do the proper math) on how much I nicotine I am consuming. Can someone help? I have been vaping the exact same way daily for a long time, but still don’t know how much nicotine I get (just an estimate) per session because I suck at math...

Details:
1.) I vape 3mg (3mg of nicotine, per ml of juice) of nicotine using a “Smok Nfix” that holds a 3ml pod of nicotine juice. So that’s 9mg of nicotine, per pod.

2.) I set the wattage to exactly 22W on the vape, always, and it is a MTL pod device.

3.) I take EXACTLY 5 puffs over a period of 5-10 mins. Every puff is EXACTLY 5 seconds. Sometimes only 4 seconds, but just say 5 to make it easier. I use my watch or phone’s timer to make certain the timing is exact. I inhale the same way every time. So 5 puffs X 5 seconds, per puff, equals 25 seconds total for each vape session. After those 5 puffs, I don’t vape again (at all) for 1-3 hours, just depending.

....But how do I figure out how much nicotine I am getting in those 5 puffs? I know that in my Nfix pod there is 9mg of nicotine, in each pod.

I also believe 1 full pod (3ML) gives approximately 325 seconds worth of puffs, with each puff being only 1 SECOND. I only tested this one time so I am not certain, but it’s an estimate.

Can anyone help me do the right math here?
I also still smoke ultra light Marlboro cigarettes (from what I read on multiple sources you only absorb about 0.5mg to 0.7mg of nicotine per cig on the ultra lights) but only 1-3 cigarettes per day.
But I am wondering if my 5 puffs on the vape (5 puffs @ 5 second each) is even remotely close to being equal to an ultra light cigarette that has about 0.5mg nicotine per cig?
Thanks, I suck at math so if anyone can help lol  

Got this from the world wide web and wanted to share it here.

Apologies if it's already been shared. It's a handy list for reference as well as informative.

E-CIGARETTE POLICY BRIEF: Seven Things Policy Makers Need to Know

All references are hyperlinked to official WHO and government reports, and peer-reviewed studies

The death toll from smoking is enormous

8 million people die every year from smoking-related diseases (WHO), including 480,000 in the USA (CDC) 1.1 billion people smoke worldwide (WHO), including 34 million in the USA (CDC) In the USA, smoking is now concentrated among low-income and LGBTQ people, people living with mental illnesses, and indigenous peoples (American Lung Association)

→ Tobacco smoking is, by far, the world’s leading cause of preventable cancer, heart and lung disease

Harm reduction can reduce that death toll

There is growing independent consensus that e-cigarettes are safer than smoking (35+ official public statements) There is strong evidence that smokers who switch to e-cigarettes have lower risk of cancer, heart & lung disease When not in tobacco smoke, nicotine itself does not cause cancer, heart or lung disease (CDC and IARC/WHO) → Other examples of harm reduction include seat belts, bicycle helmets, parachutes, methadone and condoms

Safer nicotine alternatives help smokers quit

Big pharma nicotine patches & gum (NRTs) cause neither addiction nor cancer, heart or lung disease (FDA; CDC) NRTs increase quit success from 5% (cold turkey) to 9% (on average, smokers try and fail 30 times before quitting) E-cigarettes are two times more effective than NRTs (Cochrane review of 50 peer-reviewed studies worldwide) Many adult vapers “quit by accident” with e-cigarettes (online survey); NRTs only benefit those who want to quit 92% of US all vapers are ADULTS; 4.3 million US adults have quit smoking completely with nicotine vapes (CDC) The adult cessation total may be 5.4 million because 26% of those who quit with e-cigarettes later quit vaping 2.1 million UK smokers (UK government) and 7.5 million EU smokers (Eurobarometer) have quit with e-cigarettes ‘Flavors’ are up to 2.3 times more effective for smoking cessation than tobacco flavor (Yale study) (UK study) 80% of US adult vapers prefer fruit, dessert or candy flavors that don’t remind them of smoking (FDA submission) → Forcing ex-smokers to vape tobacco flavor is like forcing recovering alcoholics to drink rum-flavored club soda

Teen vaping is undesirable, but not a crisis

In the UK, which promotes nicotine vaping for adult smokers, teen “current use” by never-smokers is just 1% US high school “current use” of vaping products dropped 29% between 2019 and March 2020 (CDC/NYTS) By March 2020, only 1 in 20 US high school students vaped daily (4.4%, but 53% of that may be THC not nicotine) US youth & young adult vaping dropped another 32% during the pandemic (JAMA survey up to November 2020) If both surveys are combined, just 1 in 10 US high school-age teens are now “current users” (13%) → If this assumption is correct, then US teen past 30-day ever-use is now lower than it was in 2015 (6 years ago)

Proposed policy “cures” are worse than the “disease”

Proposed policies to reduce teen vaping include higher taxes, ‘flavor’ bans, online sales bans and shipping bans E-cigarette taxes have caused cigarette sales to increase in 8 US states (National Bureau of Economic Research) E-cigarette taxes “increase prenatal smoking and lower smoking cessation during pregnancy” in female smokers Ecig flavor bans increased cigarette sales in San Francisco; Washington; Rhode Island; New York; and Nova Scotia Online sales and mail shipment bans reduce adult access, so are also very likely to strengthen cigarette sales → Higher taxes, ‘flavor’ bans, and online/mail bans protect big tobacco’s main cash cow: deadly cigarettes

Unintended consequences and logical inconsistencies

Probable outcome of ‘flavor’ bans: Teen vapers will switch to THC vaping or to cigarette smoking; many adult vapers will relapse to smoking; fewer smokers will quit; an illicit market (with no age-checks) will arise

The same organizations that claim teen vaping is a gateway to tobacco smoking, also claim tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes repel teens (i.e., banning ‘flavored’ nicotine vapes will reduce teen vaping)

→ Definitions differ: adult current use = daily or regular use; teen current use = past 30-day ever-use

Full context of adult products that teens use, but should not use

US teens are more likely to smoke pot or use illegal drugs than to be “current users” of e-cigarettes (NIDA MTF) US teens are 2X more likely to binge drink than vape “frequently”; 3X more likely to binge drink than vape daily US teen binge drinking causes 3,500 deaths and 119,000 ER visits/year (CDC); US policy response? Age-checks US teen “current smoking” rates dropped 3X faster than historical trends after 2012 (NIDA MTF) → Teens should not vape, smoke, drink or use cannabis (and adults should try to avoid irrational moral panics)  

Takes a different angle... it’s the metals which have caused irreparable damage on a woman’s lungs...

in California though

The article goes on to say;

“Professor John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies and consultant in respiratory medicine at the University of Nottingham, suggested that the conclusions were not all they seemed.

He said there was no evidence of any cobalt particles in the lung samples and that claims made about vaping were wrong.
He added: “There is nothing in this new paper that should change advice to smokers. If you smoke, switch. If you don’t smoke, don’t vape. And just as you wouldn’t buy unlicensed alcoholic drinks, don’t vape cannabis or other bootleg products.”  

Greetings from TX, fellow vapers!

I’m pretty sure this question has been asked before, and I apologize beforehand if it has.

We all know about the proposed flavor ban, that’s a given. And it’s not a matter of ‘IF’, but more a matter of ‘WHEN’.

Sales of flavors will become illegal, but what about usage? If I’m vaping in public, will I be subjected to prosecution for ‘Possession of a banned Substance’, or is the ban restricted to sales only?

I’m so thoroughly dismayed and disgusted with the lawmakers and news media. I can’t trust anything that they say anymore.  

Would you consider chain smoking/vaping to be a habit formed out of Nicotine Abuse or out of Nicotine addiction ?. How much nicotine does a smoker/vaper need ?. Is someone who goes from sixty cigarettes a day to vaping the equivalent, or more, amount of nicotine per day an abuser or an addict ?. What would happen if they were to stop using nicotine altogether overnight ?. How and when did YOU start smoking, and how much ?. Was it through peer pressure when you were young ?, or did you just start smoking socially as an adult ?. Maybe you enjoyed smoking whilst drinking your morning coffee or whatever. Do these habit forming activites which become routine compound your addiction ?.

I'd just like to highlight the fact that substance abuse is a real thing and that the world seems to have conveniently forgotten all about it. Which i think is a perfectly good subject for debate in a forum such as ECF.

So maybe a yes or no might be sufficient. Should the use of nicotine via vaping or even smoking be considered by you as either substance abuse ?, or substance addiction ?. Nicotine is quite simply just a poison after all. It doesn't alter you consciousness, not that i know of, and serves no real purpose at all really. Unlike many other substances which i'd consider to be abused by many.

And i'm not sure how some members will respond if examples of the uses of other substances are used to describe what addiction can be like for some people. Because someone might report it as being off topic and have this thread closed.

Having said that, if you would like to use examples of addiction or abuse, (as a yard stick) of other substances as examples of how much control addiction to a substance can have over an addict, then maybe you should.


Questioning the belief of nicotine addiction could help people to think otherwise. Which is a good thing !. Writing it off as addction doesn't really help those who want to quit completely, it just serves to compound their belief in their own addiction.

A pre-emptive SORRY to anyone who doesn't understand what this thread is about. FYI, It's about whether the use of nicotine in vaping or smoking is considered to be either abuse or addiction by those who use it.

Mike.  

I work inside a retail shop for my father whom is the boss.He doesn’t support that I Vape or use cigarette,but I do think better with nicotine.I don’t want to feel guilty yet affecting others.I can serve customer better when on nicotine...I couldn’t continue with the gum as I felt it’s not enjoyable as vaping  

Juul threw millions of dollars at Washington. It hasn’t bought much.

Juul Labs has spent millions of dollars on lobbying, hired high-profile Trump administration officials, and blanketed Washington with ads touting its efforts against underage vaping.

None of that was enough to keep President Donald Trump from moving to ban flavored e-cigarettes on Wednesday, delivering a blow to the dominant vaping company and its rivals.

“Vaping has become a very big business as I understand it, a giant business in a very short period of time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, sitting alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “But we can't allow people to get sick and we can't have our youth be so affected.”

Neither Trump nor Azar mentioned Juul in their remarks. But Scott Gottlieb, who pressed for greater regulation of vaping as Trump’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner before stepping down earlier this year, said the move would have an outsize impact on the San Francisco-based company.

“This problem was largely created by the cartridge-based Juul products in my opinion,” Gottlieb said in a statement to POLITICO.​
 

I was pretty upset with the wired article and wrote a lengthy response for my blog. Thought I'd share.

[h=2]Wired: http://www. wired. com/2015/04/war-vapings-health-risks-getting-dirty/"

The War Over Vaping’s Health Risks Is Getting Dirty“ - My Response to this Misleading Article[/h]I was really bothered by how misleading this article was, so I’m gonna break it down.

Before I begin, a clarification: There are many issues regarding ecig or “vaporizer” usage, and on many of them, there’s no disagreement between anti-vapers and pro-vapers. For instance, both groups do not want children getting ecigs. However, many people - like in this wired article - muddle a bunch of the issues together, so I’ll be teasing them apart.

For nicotine enthusiasts, 2015 will be remembered as part of a golden era. Less than 10 years after they were introduced in the United States, e-cigarettes have gone relatively unregulated by health agencies, with companies and users making their own rules in a nicotine-laced Wild West. E-cigarette companies have been advertising their products to adults and children alike, claiming to help smokers quit while simultaneously promoting lollipop-flavored liquids…
Reminiscent of glamorous smoking ads of the last century, many of the ads feature celebrity endorsements; in a Blu ad, Jenny McCarthy flirts with the camera while rejoicing that she can now smoke without scaring guys away with her smell. And many of them seem shockingly child-centric…
​
1. Advertising to adults: This is a legitimate question. Personally, I’m leaning toward lighter regulations for ecig ads bc numerous studies have shown they are much safer than cigarettes (American Heart Association, x, x, x, x, x ) and can act as an effecting smoking cessation aid, though they are not yet approved for that purpose (American Heart Association, x, x ). But again, a legitimate question.

2. Advertising to kids: No-one wants that. Furthermore, no-one has done that! When critics like the author of the wired article allege that is happening, they almost always are referring to the non-tobacco flavors offered. However, the reason sweet, fruity, and candy flavors are offered is because they are extremely popular amongst adult vapers (x, x). Saying they’re marketed to children is like saying sweet alcoholic drinks are marketed for children because all adults would obviously prefer bourbon. It’s ludicrous. Adults like sweet flavors too.
2b. On a related note: Some have been concerned that ecigs may increase teen use of cigarettes, but the evidence thus far says otherwise. (x, x).

…Last week, the California Department of Public Health launched a anti-vaping campaign called Still Blowing Smoke. And in January, the San Francisco Department of Health launched #CurbIt, pointing out the dangers of e-cigs and their brazen plays to hook kids while warning residents that vaping is only allowed in the same places as smoking.
There’s plenty of evidence behind the campaigns’ claims—studies that link e-cigs to asthma, lung inflammation, MRSA infection risk and exposure to harmful chemicals. But with scant data on the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes and their usefulness as a quitting tool, the ads use a number of classic psychological strategies to help beat back the ire of pro-vapers…
​
3. The Still Blowing Smoke ads were themselves blowing smoke. I’d like to discuss three of their main tv ads.
3a. One suggested that ecigs are marketed for kids bc of the flavors, as discussed above.
3b. Another suggested (or rather, alleges) that vaping is a “Big Tobacco” conspiracy! While it’s true that Big Tobacco has bought in to some ecig production, the vast majority of vape businesses are small businesses, such as the brick-and-mortar “vape shops” that are emerging. Perhaps more importantly, this is guilt by association. If Big Tobacco owned Chantix, a popular smoking cessation aid, would that automatically mean it’s evil? And unlike the vast, vast majority of small vape businesses, Big Tobacco has an incentive to make cigs fail: Users are more likely to continue smoking! (Not to mention the very impressive revenue that states gain from tobacco sales, which vaping threatens. x, x)
3c. Finally, they aired a commercial with a small toddler reaching for a vape, presenting that as a risk. Which it is, of course - just like with any other chemical left around the house, be it alcohol, cleaning supplies, or whatever! That isn’t a vaping issue; it’s a parenting issue.
More info on those ads here.
4. The #CurbIt campaign (x) similarly suggests that vapes are part of a Big Tobacco conspiracy and marketed to children (sigh).
4a.What bothered me most was the phrasing they used in one particular ad: “We know e-cigarettes are harmful, just like cigarettes.” While one could argue that it merely meant, “ecigs are also harmful”, it seems to me to be implying that they are just as harmful, which is patently false.
4b. And as others have pointed out: One is likely inhaling more toxic fumes from the curb than from vaping!
4c. Of course, that does leave the question of second-hand-vape exposure, which #CurbIt also alerts the public to. However, the evidence for second-hand vpe exposure is still very thin, with many experts thinking it has a minimal effect if any. (x, x ).

5. To be sure, no-one thinks that vaporizers are completely harmless. Almost nothing is! The question is relative harm (as well as harm-reduction). Are ecigs bad for asthmatics - well, how bad? Certainly they’re better than cigarettes. Might ecigs cause some lung inflammation? Very possibly, but are we going to outlaw every activity or product poses any amount of tissue inflammation?! Clearly that’s an absurd approach. We need to look at overall health, relative health, and common standards in other areas. (For instance, caffeine is addictive, but the public has no qualms with allowing people to use it.)

6. I’ll add that in addition to the lack of studies demonstrating long-term adverse affects, the research on short-term affects are mixed, with many indicating that it is very safe in general, and particularly in contrast to cigarettes.

One CDC ad relies on anecdotal evidence to make its point. It features a story from an e-cigarette user, a 35-year-old wife and mother named Kristy from Tennessee who says she started smoking e-cigarettes hoping to quit combustible cigarettes. Instead, she began to smoke both, until her lung collapsed. The American Vaping Association reportedly called the ad “patently dishonest,” saying that it implies vaping led to lung disease, when in reality Kristy had gone back to smoking cigarettes alone in the months before her lung collapsed. California’s anti-vaping campaign lists toxins that humans once thought were safe—arsenic-laced powdered wigs, radium therapy, and of course cigarettes—and compares them to e-cigs, using a deceptive associative tactic that we’ve called out before.

​
7. This is one of the few points where the piece describes one obvious instance of misleading advertising - and the vaping community’s obvious and necessary response to such deception. (And for what it’s worth, there are thousands and thousands of people who credit ecigs with saving their lives #VapingSavedMyLife). But even here, the article’s authors don’t really take the anti-vaping activists to task for it. In fact, they almost seem to endorse that very same tactic:
The problem is, as in the early days of campaigns against cigarettes, there isn’t definitive evidence that e-cigarettes cause long-term harm—a point that pro-vapers will be quick to remind you of. But there also isn’t definitive evidence that they’re safe. And there are many good reasons to assume they’ll be found in time to increase cancer and heart and lung disease.

​
The Wired article doesn’t explain what those reasons are… just that it’s a good assumption! (I guess they also think they’re like arsenic-laced powdered wigs.)
What firm science there is to rest on is fairly obvious: E-cigarettes are almost certainly less toxic and carcinogenic than regular cigarettes. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not a health hazard. “We already know you’re breathing in a lot of toxic chemicals, which is bad,” says Glantz. “You’re breathing in a lot of toxic particles, which is bad. You’re taking in nicotine, which is bad. A cigarette is by far and away the most dangerous consumer product ever invented. So to say it’s not as bad as a cigarette is not saying very much.”

​
8. This was, to me, perhaps the most balanced paragraph in the article, but even here I’d challenge some aspects. In essence, of course breathing anything other than air isn’t going to be good for you, but it’s a matter of degree for the general public, and relative health for smokers. This might be a good time to mention that the studies thus far indicate that 99% of vapers are smokers or ex-smokers (x, x ). That is, they switched from “the most dangerous consumer product ever invented” to something less harmful, perhaps much, much less harmful, for at least part of the time.

In the absence of incontrovertible evidence, then, public health agencies have to continue to play a little dirty themselves to get citizens to pay attention. In a couple of years, researchers will begin to do association studies to pull out long-term health effects. Until that science rolls in, the, prepare to sit back and enjoy the show. These two camps will be hashing it out for a while.

​
9. This another area where I disagree: If there is a lack of evidence, don’t treat it like a deadly substance. If the evidence suggests that it’s getting many people off of a horribly injurious habit, then definitely don’t treat it like a deadly substance.

All in all, very disappointed in the article. It basically boasted propaganda for a cause that may further harm millions. It presents very little actual information, and seems to ignore the information which extols the virtues of vaping over smoking. To be sure, we need more studies, as many of the study’s done so far have been faulty (like the popularized “formaldehyde” study - x) or contain a conflict of interest. Still, much of the evidence thus far is positive, and legislating as though it were negative is unfair to vapers and the millions suffering from tobacco cigarette addiction.
All Wired really seemed to care about discussing is the social media attention the debate is getting - and probably just trying to cash in on that by stirring the pot.
P.s. Of Interest: List of studies related to ecigs and vaping. (x)