I have a friend who has been using an e-cigarette for 10+ years. He doesn’t seem any less addicted to smoking as back when he was using old-fashioned cigarettes.
I understand e-cigarettes are supposed to help you quit… but has anyone actually had success with them? Or, is it more like trading one vice for another?
I found this question surprising. “Do they work?” At first I didn’t understand - work at what? Then I realized that you’re thinking of them as quitting smoking devices. They’re not that. It’s an alternative to smoking. You inhale fewer particulates but often more nicotine, and there have been some health questions about the oils that serve as a medium for the nicotine and how healthy they are to inhale. It’s not thoroughly understood yet and there’s a big range of products out there.
The companies that sell them will swear up and down that they are to help you quit. And some users of them will tell you how much healthier it is and how they’re halfway to quitting. This is all, essentially, lies that they are telling themselves and you.
If you want to see a nicotine abatement product, check out nicotine gum or patches. There is nothing enjoyable about them. They allow the user to divide quitting into two stages: first, getting the habit out of their system, and second, phasing out their nicotine addiction. They do not deliver any enjoyment or rush, and are designed to be clinical and dull. The gum is hard and has a medicine flavor and plain grey color.
E-cigs on the other hand, enhance smoking. They allow you to smoke in more places. They add fruity flavors. The gadgets are cool and the different things you fill them with are stylishly presented. You still go through most of the motions of smoking and you’re getting more nicotine than before.
Why would anyone consider that a quitting tool? It absolutely is not.
People HAVE used them to quit successfully though. You can keep lowering the nicotine levels on them slowly in a similar manner as the nicotine gum and patches and it tends to be cheaper.
What I see are anecdotes about people who vaped and then quit. FDA has said they find no evidence that vaping improves outcomes for people trying to quit. There are other proven therapies, too, that don’t have all the health risks.
I also see a lot of anecdotes right here from people who switched to vaping and then did not quit.
The bottom line is that vaping may or may not have played a part in this or that person’s story, but there is no firm basis to hold it up as a quitting aid. So we should stop doing that.
No offense, but as someone from outside of the US, the FDA is not the sole speaker of what is safe or what helps addiction. You guys have a LOT of commonly consumed things that are outright banned in other countries.
While vaping specifically isn’t mentioned as a cessation-aid, my country states that “nicotine is approved for use in nicotine replacement therapies, (e.g. the patch, inhaler or nicotine gum) to ease withdrawal symptoms and help people quit smoking.” Research is ongoing, of course.
and there have been some health questions about the oils that serve as a medium for the nicotine and how healthy they are to inhale.
Yeah, by fear mongering satanic panic moms and by monied interests
Nicotine vapes are orders of magnitude more safe than cigarettes. All the research shows it, and the medical establishment is full of cowards with "vapes lead to cigarettes" bullshit.
The only harmful vape chemicals (on any scale close to cigarettes) are sketchy fake weed from China. 100% of the popcorn lung cases stem from that.
a Mayo Clinic study published in The New England Journal of Medicine finds that lung injuries from vaping most likely are caused by direct toxicity or tissue damage from noxious chemical fumes.
…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported more than 800 lung injury cases that are associated with electronic cigarette use, or vaping, over the past few months. Twelve deaths have been confirmed in 10 states
Yeah, and it's all from bullshit THC additive stuff. Not from nicotine vaping. If I add rat poison to my apple juice, it doesn't mean apple juice is harmful.
This is the shit I'm talking about, conflating harmful with not harmful.
Mayo Clinic says, in the link I posted, that a good proportion of cases they’ve handled had THC additives, but not all. And they repeat what I said earlier: that it is not well understood but there are signs of trouble. They link to another panic mom / monied interest, the American Lung Association, who say:
A study from the University of North Carolina found that the two primary ingredients found in e-cigarettes—propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin—are toxic to cells and that the more ingredients in an e-liquid, the greater the toxicity.2 E-cigarettes produce a number of dangerous chemicals including acetaldehyde, acrolein, and formaldehyde. These aldehydes can cause lung disease, as well as cardiovascular (heart) disease.3 E-cigarettes also contain acrolein, a herbicide primarily used to kill weeds. It can cause acute lung injury and COPD and may cause asthma and lung cancer.4 Both the U.S. Surgeon General and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have warned about the risks of inhaling secondhand e-cigarette emissions, which are created when an e-cigarette user exhales the chemical cocktail created by e-cigarettes. In 2016, the Surgeon General concluded that secondhand emissions contain, “nicotine; ultrafine particles; flavorings such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease; volatile organic compounds such as benzene, which is found in car exhaust; and heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.” The Food and Drug Administration has not found any e-cigarette to be safe and effective in helping smokers quit. If smokers are ready to quit smoking for good, they should call 1-800-QUIT NOW or talk with their doctor about finding the best way to quit using proven methods and FDA-approved treatments and counseling.
There’s also sketchy fake vape juice from China. A huge amount of disposable vapes (elfbar etc) for sale are counterfeit. Who knows what they’re filled with.
For me, it was a very effective way of cutting down on my nicotine intake, as others have described, by mixing my own ejuice.
I vaped for 10-12 months with diminishing nicotine, then quit altogether. I 100% would recommend for smoking cessation.
I do wonder about those who demand an end to an nearly-harmless substitute for dirty tobacco - are we really willing to sacrifice 'good' for 'perfect'?
I suspect the big drivers of the push to demonise vaping are funded by Big Tobacco. So yes, we may be sacrificing a good alternative to protect tobacco profits for a few more years.
Aren’t there vape companies owned by tobacco companies? I know Vuse is. Tobacco has been on decline for a while now and lot of them are pivoting into other areas.
Funny enough, it's also aspects of the US government. There was a huge tobacco settlement across multiple states. The states opted to receive their settlement funds over a period of decades. The payout amount is tied to the number of cigarette smokers, NOT the number of vapers.
AND THEN, a bunch of state governments leveraged those predicted future funds into short term loans that they used to plug budget holes.
Enter vaping. The number of cigarette smokers begins to nose dive.
Enter an unholy union of cash strapped state governments and big tobacco money, and the perfect catalyst in a tiny number of stupid teenagers getting sketchy fake weed from China and dying from it. WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF UNTIL CHILDREN!! Boom, bans.
Nicotine itself is highly addictive but not terribly harmful. All the harmful shit is in the tar and other crap in cigarettes.
I personally used vaping to totally quit cigarettes. It was excellent. And now in my state vaping is effectively banned. We have to turn to black market mods and shit. It's horrible, and in 40 years it's going to be a massive "how the fuck did we let this happen" part of our history along with subprime mortgages and zero tolerance laws.
Why do people care so much if I have a vice? Why is everyone up my ass on this? I like nicotine, I’m sure your friend does too. They do not need more of a reason.
Actually, vapes were created to get you smoking MORE because you can smoke them inside. They indeed get you off of smoking cigarettes, they did for me, I probably vape 1.5-2x more than I ever smoked.
I'd say they work if you want to quit and also actively do so. They don't work for quitting if you just replace cigarettes with e-cigatettes. That's like an alcoholic that's drinking wine instead of beer and wonders why he's still an alcoholic
I switched to vaping because I'd just met my now wife and she hated the smell of smoke and all the associated stuff that goes with it, partly because she'd just come out of a bad relationship with a chain smoker but also because it's just not nice for non smokers anyway.
That was about 10 years ago and I still vape. I'm will aware that I've just swapped one addiction for another but I don't consider myself a smoker - haven't touched a cigarette since, and genuinely never wanted to for a very long time now. My lungs still feel a lot better, I can run and do excercise without feeling like my lungs are imploding.
A lot of the studies done on vaping it should be noted use old fashioned kit and unrealistic use case scenarios (such testing until a coil gives out - a coil would usually last someone at least a week) -but even taking that into account I'll take my chances with vaping. I tried all the other methods of giving up smoking and none of them worked for me so this is the closest.
As I side note, I am against disposable vapes and think the law should crack down on sales to underage people. A solution would be to only sell in established vape shops and require ID with every sale. I'm not naturally hard-line about this sort of thing but the school vaping thing is well out of control and is need of sorting out
Switched to vaping not with the intent to quit, but to just get rid of the smell I get after smoking. While trying different flavors, in time I decreased the amount of nicotine every time I time I bought a new bottle. I then slowly started to forget to bring it with me when I leave the house until I vaped exclusively in my home and after a few more months decided to just throw it all away.
It sounds like you vaped for a while and then quit (congratulations btw). I smoked for many years and then quit, and that doesn’t mean cigarettes helped me quit, or that I quit with cigarettes. You quit the day you “decided to just throw it all away.”
FDA has said that they find no evidence vaping improves quitting outcomes for smokers.
I also quit with vaping, but in a roundabout way. I used to smoke, but my wife would not have me smoking indoors, and my office was likewise no smoking, so I was on perhaps 10 cigarettes a day. I switched to vaping, and still couldn’t vape in the office, but my wife didn’t mind me vaping at home if I restricted it to one room.
Then COVID happened, and I ended up working from home. So… Even though the amount of nicotine I was using in the vape was low, I had nothing stopping me from vaping all the time, which is what I did. I actually began feeling just as bad in terms of lung capacity when vaping as I had when I was smoking, largely because I was vaping pretty much constantly whilst awake.
One day I just had a flash of self control, and. chucked my vape, batteries, coils and all the paraphernalia. That was late 2020, and I haven’t vaped or smoked since.
Weirdly, even though I ultimately went cold turkey, I do think switching to vaping from smoking helped me to quit. There was a marked improvement in my lung capacity and ability to smell during that time, and that gave me hope.
Very similar here. Smoking buddy at work was turning 40 and was like “If we don’t quit now, we never will!” so headed to a random vape shop. Bought a vape for lke £50, was on 1.2mg nicotine strength. First day was fine. 2nd day was tough. 3rd was also tough. 4th day I realised “oh shit, never going back to smoking…I feel fine. I can work with this.” So that caused me to panick but then thought ok, bought the same vape as a redundancy (so as to not have to fall back on ciagarettes).
Then, after 6 months switched to 0.6mg nicotine. 6 months after that, 0.3mg. 3 months after that 0.2mg (put my high school chemistry hat on, figured 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.0mg mixed up in a 30ml bottle = 0.2mg per 10ml). 1 month after that 0.1mg, 1 month after that 0.0mg - 1 month later, stopped entirely (you genuinely just start forgetting about it, it’s weird).
Went from 30 cigarettes a day to no nicotine and no vape in 18 months.
I quite vaping 6 months ago after 9 years. Vaping is....not good. Can it be used to stop smoking? Absolutely! Your lungs will thank you but man, everyone should be striving to quite nicotine entirely. It's does nothing for anyone. The anxiety it cures is its own creation
It’s far less harmful for you, but it’s a good aid for quitting too.
I quit by getting progressively weaker liquid. Sometimes I mixed my own and sometimes I’d have a vape shop do it. Every time, I would reduce nicotine content by 10% of whatever my current nicotine level was. Normally if I ran out, I would be in my car going to buy more. But after about a year of lowering nicotine this way, I ran out and said to myself, “I’ll get some the next time I’m out.” And I never did buy more.
The anti vaping laws are atrocious. They often seek to ban the type of e cigarettes that actually let you mix your own liquid or have vape shops mix them. The bills actually require tobacco flavoring and flavoring is the component with the least known health effects. Everything else is pretty well settled and reasonably safe relative to alcohol and caffeine.
I'd been smoking cigarettes for 11 years and just switched to vaping 2 months ago. My lungs feel much, much better. I can walk up multiple flights of stairs/longer distances without getting winded. My mouth also no longer has that eternal burnt paper taste, especially when I wake up in the mornings.
So for the purposes of what I switched to vaping for - to ease back on destroying my lungs - vaping/e-cigs work. I used to smoke 2 packs in about a week and a half. I'd say the amount I vape now is the equivalent of 1 pack every month (I don't constantly hit it throughout the day).
I have no doubt that inhaling vapor with that density is still not good, but it's better than what I was doing previously.
As for helping to quit the habit entirely, I think that's the opposite of their goal. All these fruity flavors they keep coming out with seem like they're designed to be popped like candy.
I quit smoking/vaping last year after 22 years of that. Vaping helped my lungs, to a certain extent, because I started having so many other issues from vaping, I switched back to cigarettes before quitting for good. I quit using Defumoxan, which is a brand name for generic pills with Cytisine as active substance. I’ve been recommending it to anyone wanting to take back their life from nicotine addiction. At least where I live, you can get it without prescription.
I started having pangs in my lungs around the heart area (like a stinging pain) which went away when I didn’t vape for a day. Also, while not having a wheezing breath, I did feel strain on my lungs. It got bad enough that I went back to cigarettes as those only made me cough (well, amongst other side effects of course).
I smoked for a long time, switched completely to vaping several years ago and still do it. I started at nicotine level 24mg - supposedly the equivalent of a Camel or Marlboro - decreased gradually to where I'm now at the lowest nicotine level widely available in pre-made juices, 3mg.
Remember that nicotine at these doses is not harmful, nor is it a carcinogenic. What it is, is addictive, and the documented harm from the cigarette as a nicotine delivery system comes from the combustion.
With that in mind, I admit that I'm still comfortable with vaping after several years, my health has improved dramatically since then.
I can breathe much better, easier. Now I don't catch every single throat infection and flu of the season, and if I do catch one, it's now usually so mild that I don't even need medication to sleep with a clear nose.
What keeps me on edge is the pervasive anti-vaping sentiment, caused by the anarchic environment of the fledging vaping industry at the beginning, many nicotine delivery systems packaged EXACTLY like candy. A greedy gold rush attitude poisoned the well at the outset.
As an analogy, think Bitcoin and crypto.
Honestly, as a smoker, it’s a godsend. The smoke goes away so quickly, it has higher nicotine than cigarettes when purchased the RIGHT way, and since I can now smoke inside, I can puff on it all day every day as I work from home!
In all seriousness, it’s worse imo. It sets the precedent from the 50s of smoking EVERYWHERE and now without any of the negative outward effects like smell or yellowing of the teeth/walls.
It’s honestly made my addiction worse. To each their own for sure, but in my experience it just made my bad habit SLIGHTLY healthier, but much more accessible.
It requires a significant amount of willpower to break the addiction, but for those of us that do not, definitely do not pick this up. It will not help. If you have that willpower, it is useful.
Use your willpower in a small burst to buy a low nicotine juice and literally throw away the high nicotine stuff. You need to actually toss it and never use it again. Yes, it costs money, but do you want to quit or not?
Now use the low nicotine juice for a set amount of time (say, a month) and then switch to zero nicotine juice. Try to keep the same flavors you’re used to already.
Eventually you will stop smoking because youre only getting the positive feelings from the habit itself and not the nicotine.
Estimates put out after research by Public Health England suggest that vaping is 95% better for you than smoking. So unless you’re vaping 20x more than you were smoking you’re probably benefitting.
It seems useful for people who were addicted to cigarettes by providing a potentially less harmful alternative.
But, for the generation that didn’t have addiction to cigarettes prior to E cigarettes I wonder how many went on to pick up the addiction to nicotine they otherwise wouldn’t have, since smoking cigarettes seemed to be going out of style.
I do kind of wonder what the endgame of addictive product development is. I mean, if you assume that technology can both reduce negative side effects and make the product more-potently-addictive, absent some sort of social movement or something opposed to them, I would think that we would get closer to a point where there is stupendously-addictive stuff that has no intrinsic harm other than the addiction itself, but that the addiction could be crippling and extremely hard to kick.
Wireheading is a term associated with fictional or futuristic applications of brain stimulation reward, the act of directly triggering the brain's reward center by electrical stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of 'short-circuiting' the brain's normal reward process and artificially inducing pleasure. Scientists have successfully performed brain stimulation reward on rats (1950s) and humans (1960s). This stimulation does not appear to lead to tolerance or satiation in the way that sex or drugs do. The term is sometimes associated with science fiction writer Larry Niven, who used the term in his Known Space series. In the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the term is used to refer to AI systems that hack their own reward channel.
Wireheading, like other forms of brain alteration, is often treated as dystopian in science fiction literature.
In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a "wirehead" is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant known as a "droud" in order to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brain. Wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting their basic needs in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of humanity without self-control.
There are tons of harmful chemicals and tar you aren’t inhaling by vaping, instead of by combustion with traditional cigarettes. Not sure if they’re worse.
It's not though. Your inhaling nicotine - which does not cause cancer or any other health issues - and water vapor. Probably burns your throat which can't be too great, but no internal damage except from the mental standpoint of addiction.
Quick correction: the base isn’t water, it’s a combination of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine. Barring sensitivities, these are GRAS—Generally Recognized As Safe for human consumption.
Source: I make joose.
PS: Stay away from any flavours containing diacetyl.
Honestly I’m not yet in that camp. Sure for short term it is for a fact much better than analog smokes, but we know nothing of the long term.
Gotta remember: for quite a while, doctors recommended cigarettes. Sure tech and general knowledge have improved drastically since then, but the method of proving a hypothesis is still done the same way: testing.
I hope it is better. Maybe I’m just getting jaded in my age.
You could also argue that that doesn’t apply to everyone. I treat vaping like it’s smoking, and I have from the start.
On the health side, I don’t want other people to be exposed to my bad choices either in public or residential buildings. So, I only vape when I am far away from others out of respect for them.
From another angle, I don’t enjoy the residue buildup that would happen over time. Imagine that stuff building up on your walls, in your PC, on your counters and cabinets, etc. The vapour you exhale doesn’t evaporate like steam in the sense that it isn’t water.
I think it might be an individual thing. You have the choice whether or not you treat it like a cigarette. It sucks going outside in poor weather, but it makes me actually want to quit more.
I actually did quit using them. But it wasn’t a case of switching from cigs to vapes and then just quitting a few weeks later.
I smoked for over 30 years and then moved over to vaping. I then vaped for about 7 years before finally managing to quit. That was 557 days ago now.
I will say coming off the vapes did seem easier than coming off cigarettes which I’d never managed to do previously,
Whether the vapes actually helped me quit I can’t say for sure but when I was on them I didn’t stink of smoke and I’m sure they are probably more healthy than actual cigarettes and they’re much cheaper so I look at the time vaping as a positive comparatively speaking.
If anything, people who switched to vaping are now even more addicted. Some of the people I knew would live an entire day without ever letting go of the vape
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