Anyone else stupid enough to smoke, but lucky enough to of swiched to e-cigs?

[AndyMorris]

35 years smoking but 7 months e-cigs only.

For me, it required zero will power.

[uphillbothways]

They're the biggest advance in public health since the polio vaccine. In a just world, Hon Lik would be up for a Nobel prize. It's thoroughly depressing to see the resistance to e-cigarettes from some parts of the medical profession. Industry figures suggest that there are at least 20 million e-cigarette users in Europe - from that, we should expect to see ten million premature deaths prevented, by an entirely grass-roots intervention. That's a staggering achievement of which the e-cigarette industry should be immensely proud, but I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. The tobacco industry are investing heavily, which speaks volumes - even Philip Morris think that the writing is on the wall for smoking.

[Pedaldog.]

Smoked for just over 40 years and been Vaping on the E-cigs (Personal Vapourisers or PV's, they don't call that other stuff "Chewing cigarettes" do they?) for about 15 months. In that 15 months I reckon I might have smoked as many cigarettes in total as I would have smoked in less then 2 days normally. Haven't had a single one for a month or two now and to be honest it is now a hobby as well as an alternative to smoking. I was the least likely to stop smoking that I know but I am Beating the Other Black Dog of Cigarettes well so far.

[Valiant]

I'm also on the ecigs. Smoked for about 15 odd years and then switched 2-3 years ago. I still have the odd one every now and again but that's only when I have run out etc.

[Euan Uzami]

Blokes at my work smoke them purely because they can smoke them in the office, they then go out and smoke normal fags at lunch time. They're all connoisseurs of them and always comparing and mixing all the different essences you can put in.

[yoav]

Nobody's sure what e-cigarettes are really for.

1. To allow current smokers to stop smoking but continue their nicotine addiction?
2. To allow smokers who have no intention of giving up continue their nicotine intake in environments where smoking is forbidden?
3. To allow non-smokers to 'experiment' with nicotine?

Who knows, probably all three and then some. What's not in doubt is that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known, or more accurately, nicotine withdrawal is one of the most unpleasant experiences known.

[Pedaldog.]

The Nicotine gives you the addiction.

The Burny chemically stuff kills you.

Nicotine addiction is about the same as Caffeine addiction really. In moderation it isn't harmful.  The main addiction for many people is the Psychological one of Hand to Mouth movement and the actual Event(?) of smoking a cigarette. The Sheer Number of Carcinogens involved in smoking a cigarette is Huge and  I know a lot of people say "Well you've not really given up smoking..." but I HAVE stopped smoking. It has, almost certainly, saved my life!


Edit to add: The Banner ad's of "Equivalent to 200 cigarettes per cartridge" are total BS! They might contain about the same amount of nicotine that the body would absorb from 200 cigarettes but the amount of it that the body takes in from Vapour is about 25 to 40% of the nicotine that is inhaled from smoking. There are also a lot of people, myself included, that are gradually lowering the % of nicotine they use in the liquids.
I smoked 45 to 50 cig's a day and now I reckon that I get around 25% of the nicotine in my system and none of the nastys.

[uphillbothways]

Nobody's sure what e-cigarettes are really for.

Harm reduction. Tobacco kills you, nicotine doesn't. Delivering nicotine in a purer form (rather than the cocktail of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals that is tobacco smoke) massively reduces the harms caused by nicotine addiction. Existing nicotine replacement therapies like gum and lozenges have MHRA approval for harm reduction - long-term substitution of a safe nicotine product in place of tobacco. The overwhelming majority of e-cigarette users are former smokers, who have tried and failed to quit (or have no desire to quit) but don't want to die of lung cancer or emphysema.

About 20% of the British population still smoke, in spite of decades of campaigning. That number is now largely static and conventional efforts to reduce the number of smokers have stalled. E-cigarettes provide nicotine to nicotine-dependent people with only a tiny fraction of the harms of conventional cigarettes. A recent high-quality study in the journal Tobacco Control shows that e-cigarette vapour contains only a small fraction of the toxicants and carcinogens found in tobacco smoke. Preliminary studies suggest that e-cigarettes do not function as a gateway to conventional cigarettes.

[Euan Uzami]

Nobody's sure what e-cigarettes are really for.

1. To allow current smokers to stop smoking but continue their nicotine addiction?
2. To allow smokers who have no intention of giving up continue their nicotine intake in environments where smoking is forbidden?
3. To allow non-smokers to 'experiment' with nicotine?

Who knows, probably all three and then some. What's not in doubt is that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known, or more accurately, nicotine withdrawal is one of the most unpleasant experiences known.

I do know the liquid that goes in e fags is apparently "nasty stuff" and would poison you if you drank even a little bit of it .

[uphillbothways]

I do know the liquid that goes in e fags is apparently "nasty stuff" and would poison you if you drank even a little bit of it .

Nicotine will poison you if you take too much, like most drugs. E-liquid is highly concentrated, because a single puff on an e-cig is a small fraction of a millilitre. Drinking a swig of e-liquid is like downing a litre of vodka - the dose makes the poison.

[red marley]

There's been a recent advertising blitz on London busses for 'N-joy' brand eFags. I was trying to work out why they unsettled me so. And I think it is because they are trying to ape the old ciggie ads that have long been banned from public places.

I haven't got a photo of the bus advert yet, but they do feature a comically small-print paragraph of, er, small-print that presumably contains all the bad stuff about nicotine being addictive and this product in no way appeals to under 18s and is not a smoking cessation product etc. etc. And it appears that NJoy has form when it comes to fag-style advertising.

For as long as 'real' cigarettes can still be bought, e-cigs marketed to imitate them are doing their bit to make all forms of oral-pulmonary nicotine ingestion seem more acceptable. I can't see that being for the public good. One of the reasons tobacco manufactures are so opposed to advertising and sponsorship bans is that without the ads, smoking becomes an increasingly marginal activity. The branding and advertising of eFags are bringing smoking back into the mainstream.

[clarion]

I think you may be right at that.

Locally, the binmen are calling a strike because a worker was disciplined for having an e-cig.  Smoking is banned. 

E-cigs were also banned, but no one had told the staff about that decision at the time he was caught.  Still, Viridor decided he had broken the rules, so should be punished.

OK, yes, he had broken the rules.  But a rule that had just been brought in and he hadn't been told about?  That's a bit ridiculous.

[uphillbothways]

OK, yes, he had broken the rules.  But a rule that had just been brought in and he hadn't been told about?  That's a bit ridiculous.

That's the state we live in - ignorance is no defence, and the powers that be can change the rules without telling us.

[LEE]

Never smoked, never will.

Never tried and e-ciggy either, never likely to.

I find it hard to argue against them considering my intake of alcohol.

What's the difference?

[Kim]

The main difference, as I see it, is that I'm not going to be ill as a result of sharing a space with someone using one.

[clarion]

Not necessarily true.  Don't you have an adverse reaction to some perfumes?  And I believe these e-cigs use volatile chemicals, don't they?

[Pedaldog.]

Vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol, both normally pharmaceutical grade. Flavourings and various levels of nicotine.  The glycerine stuff is used as a base for many medicines, including asthma inhalers.

[urban_biker]

I think the problem is that there has been little research done as to the effects of breathing just the nicotine component of cigarettes. To say it is harmless is incorrect, there is just no solid research, but I would agree that it seems likely that it is less harmful than burning tobacco to get your nicotine hit.

If they become a gateway for people to start nicotine addiction then I think that is a negative thing and we need to control advertising and marketing to prevent this.

If they are used as substitute by existing smokers or as an aid to easing oneself off nicotine addiction altogether then they can be a positive thing.

I have seen some of the e-cigarette advertising and I'm pretty sure that they feel the market for those giving up smoking is saturated and they are looking for some new addicts to farm.

I am an ex-smoker. I'd rather not be addicted at all. 

[Kim]

Not necessarily true.  Don't you have an adverse reaction to some perfumes?  And I believe these e-cigs use volatile chemicals, don't they?

I was under the impression that they were basically really small glycol smoke machines.  I know I don't have a reaction to those.  But fair point about the flavourings. 

[AndyMorris]

I have seen some of the e-cigarette advertising and I'm pretty sure that they feel the market for those giving up smoking is saturated and they are looking for some new addicts to farm.

They are not allowed to advertise them as smoking reduction or cessation aids, because then they would count as medicine and be subject to way more expensive regulation.

[alexb]

I'm pretty anti- towards them. I think that the marketing smacks of what I remember form the 70's and 80's when smoking was everywhere and as kids we just had to put up with it.

I also feel that the government has to put some serious effort into regulation and testing of the effects. Nicotine is a really potent poison. If cigarette smoking hadn't been so ingrained into society, then there's no way it would have been legalized, yet here we go, ignoring a new habit-forming technology for delivering a very potent poison.

What we should be doing is framing some sensible, conservative precautions to set acceptable levels of nicotine in the products and then doing some very rigorous and long-term testing of their effects.

[cake monster]

I have mixed feeling about them. I used to work in the smoking cessation field in the NHS, and when I left in 2010 the World Health Organisation and others were supposed to be doing research on them as they were an emerging market that had no regulation.

I know these thing sometimes occur at a glacial pace but to still not have any published and widely publicised official results (maybe there is, I've not seen any but neither have I really looked) from any  reaseach 3 years later is piss poor. As had already been mentioned the EU decided recently that they were not classed as medicines and therefore are not subject to a whole host of regulations.

What annoys me is that they are clearly marketed like fashion accessories at young people and nicotine is indeed a very poisonous substance so I'd tend to be wary. Also a number of these companies are being bought up by big tobacco companies as they see it as a substitute to lost tobacco revenues. And having done extensive work in tobacco control and knowing how downright evil the big tobacco industry is that does make me a little uneasy.

Having said all that I have old school friends who were heavy smokers and failed to quit using NHS approved quitting aids, that are now on ecigs and have'nt gone back to tobacco, which i agree has got to be an improvement. The other problem I have with them is these friends do not seem any closer to actually quitting ecigs so they just seem to have substituted one addiction for another.  And nicotine is regarded as being as addictive as heroin and crack.

Do any of those on here that are using them actually going to the next step and quit ecigs? If they were actually leading to people quitting nicotine completely then I think it has to be a good thing, but I'd be intererested to know if that is actually the case.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Over the last few decades we've gone from smoking being acceptable everywhere - cinema, bus, all sorts of public buildings - to a situation where most of the smokers I know don't even light up in their own homes, because they don't want their children to be harmed (so they go into the garden to smoke). I'm not old enough to remember cigarettes being advertised as good for your throat and endorsed by doctors, but the ads are in the archives. E-cigarettes have overturned that assumption and we're almost back to the bad old days of smoking (electronically) being allowed everywhere. Great, no tar, but we can all inhale your nicotine and get hooked. I'm reminded of the advent of unleaded petrol - back when it was called "lead free" and cost more than 4-star, remember? - when it suddenly became alright to let your kids play in the petrol station because they weren't inhaling lead.

[Kim]

E-cigarettes have overturned that assumption and we're almost back to the bad old days of smoking (electronically) being allowed everywhere. Great, no tar, but we can all inhale your nicotine and get hooked.

Can someone who knows about these things clarify this?  The wikipedia article isn't clear on the subject.

I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that electronic cigarettes only vaporised the stuff when sucked on - they don't sit there spewing vapour into the room between puffs like smouldering tobacco does.  There's still going to be some leakage, and whatever's in the exhaled breath of the user, of course, but how much?  How does it compare with, say, sharing a room with a tobacco smoker who isn't currently smoking?

[Manotea]

The elephant in the room is that these are drug delivery systems for use in social settings. Today its nicotine, tomorrow, it's... take your pick. I'm amazed they're being rolled out with barely a whisper "because of the health benefits".Jesus Wept.

You can draw a straight line from these gadgets to the Penfield Mood Organ and Wireheads. Rest assured somebody's going to be taking profit, and power from these.

So the world is going to hell and we're all going to die. No change there, then. Sorry, I came over all "Amish" for a moment...