History
Modern history of vaping has its origins in ancient times. Ancient Egypt was well known for its vaping techniques, such as using hot stones to vape herbs. Thousands of years ago the first shisha was introduced in India, and subsequently these inventions led to the creation of modern day vapes.
Joseph Robinson came up with the idea of an e-cigarette in 1927, but it wasn’t until 1963 when Herbert Gilbert created the first “smokeless non-tobacco cigarette”. In the mid-2000s the Chinese firm Hon Lik made the first modern e-cig.
What’s the deal with people suddenly dying of vaping and the massive public panic that has ensued?
(4 months prior)
Answer: Hundreds of lung illnesses (not deaths-- there were a very small number of deaths but not hundreds) suddenly started appearing in hospitals in pretty rapid frequency. All of them were vape users, and it was quickly determined that this was probably somehow related to vaping, but since vaping has been around for a decade, it didn’t make sense that just general vaping would cause this problem all of a sudden.
So they started investigating.
They eventually narrowed it down to almost certainty that the culprit was vitamin E that was used as a thickener in homemade THC cartridges.
In other words, some people were buying blackmarket, homemade cartridges to get high, the blackmarket cartridges were cut with some dangerous chemicals to make them cheaper, and they made a bunch of people sick-- and did cause deaths, but fewer than ten total.
The media and the public did what they do and blew it into this thing where “We always knew vaping was bad and it’s finally starting to show and causing hundreds of deaths”
As a result, the Trump administration has decided to unilaterally ban all flavored juices, keeping only tobacco-flavored juices available.
Now you might be saying wait-- if vaping is so bad and causing these deaths, why keep tobacco-flavored juice legal? Why not ban all of it?
Because in a bizarre twist the reasoning for the ban has nothing to do with the recent illnesses, it’s officially an attempt to curb children's use of vape devices. What will the likely result of this be? Most experts believe that a majority of vapers will simply switch back to using cigarettes which are much more dangerous. The vape industry will nearly or entirely collapse with so few options for people to use. Many companies will go out of business almost immediately.
It is also worth noting that there is a high likelihood that this will result in even more black market vape products-- the very thing that caused the illness in the first place.
Popular studies.
“9 out of 40 mice exposed to e-cigarette vapor developed a form of lung cancer, according to a new study.” LINK
These findings have been criticized -- exposure wasn’t similar to human vaping -- but the authors argue that e-cig vapor can cause DNA damage that leads to lung cancer over time.
“Of the 40 mice exposed to nicotine vapor, nine of them (22.5 percent) developed adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer. None of the 18 mice who were exposed to the PG (propylene glycol) or VG (vegetable glycerin) got lung cancer, and the only one of the 18 mice in the control group got cancer.
Nicotine by itself is not supposed to be carcinogenic, so why would the nicotine vapor cause cancer but the nicotine-free vape juice not?
Answer: rather than initiate cancer, nicotine seems to make existing cancers more aggressive, basically this means nicotine increases vascularity of the tumor tissue. For those interested vascularity of tumors is a modern method for cancer treatment. If the body doesn’t help the tumor grow new blood vessels to support its growing size, it will die out (ideally). These are named Angiogenesis inhibitors or more specifically (for now) VEGF inhibitors.
To sum the above up-- humans use steroids, tumors use nicotine.
In this experiment: these mice were literally surrounded by vapor for four hours per day for five days each week 54 straight weeks. This isn’t how a person would use an e-cigarette, which is an issue that this team has been criticized for in the past.
This approach sounds similar to another study where they bombarded mice with non-ionizing radiation for years, then sounded the alarm that 5G is carcinogenic.
Here’s what a couple of scientists with more knowledge and experience say:
Prof John Britton, Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies and Consultant in Respiratory Medicine, University of Nottingham, said:
“This study explores the effect of exposure to nicotine e-cig vapour on mice. It shows that exposure to e-cig vapor with nicotine causes more cancers than fresh air, but no more than you might reasonably expect by chance.”
“It also shows that e-cig vapour without nicotine causes fewer cancers than fresh air. These findings are based on very small numbers and need to be interpreted with extreme caution.”
“The comparison between mice breathing vapour and mice breathing air is not statistically significant. There is no sample size justification and no power calculation. There is no message to the public here - I suspect these results are just noise.”
Prof Peter Hajek, Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said:
“The study has unclear relevance for human vapers.”
“Rodents were exposed to what are for them huge concentrations of chemicals that bear no resemblance to human exposure from vaping. Several animals in fact died during these exposures.”
“The authors assigned the effects they observed to a carcinogen NNK (Nicotine-derived nitrosamine ketone) -- but NNK has been measured before in human vapers, and it is known that exposure from vaping is either negligible or none.”
“New review suggests normal use of electronic cigarettes is unlikely to raise significant health concerns.” LINK
TOKYO, Aug. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Smokers should be confident that vaping with e-cigarettes is much less harmful to the lungs than smoking cigarettes, according to a new review of the relevant science. A new article published in the Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine journal contends that there is growing evidence showing that electronic cigarette (EC) emission aerosols are relatively safe compared to tobacco smoke. Led by Dr. Riccardo Polosa, director of CoEHAR, the Center of Excellence for the Acceleration of HArm Reduction at the University of Catania, The effect of e-cigarette aerosol emissions on respiratory health: a narrative review provides a critical assessment of the research published on the effects of ECs on respiratory system. (LINK)
“For smokers who want to do something about their health, our review shows that switching to vaping is a very good option if they don’t want to or can’t quit completely. No-one can prove that e-cigarettes are one hundred percent safe, but all the science points to vaping being very much safer than smoking,” said Dr. Polosa.
Polosa added: “We agree with Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians of London that it is reasonable to proceed on the basis that vaping is at least 95% less risky than smoking, and probably even less risky than that.”
How is vaping 95% safer than smoking?
Public Health England declared vaping to be 95% safer than smoking cigarettes. LINK
In order to understand where these statistics come from, we have to take a look at another study conducted by “international expert panel convened by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs”. The researchers of the latter “developed a multi-criteria decision analysis model of the relative importance of different types of harm related to the use of nicotine-containing products”.
Analyzing twelve products, fourteen harm criteria were defined, seven of which present harm to users and the other seven present harm to bystanders. The study authors scored all the products on each criterion for their average harm worldwide using a scale with 100 defined as the most harmful product on a given criterion, and a score of zero is defined as no harm.
The results were as follows”
As clearly displayed above, ENDS (E-cigs) obtained a score of less than 5, meaning that the devices carry approximately 5% the risks of smoking. In other words “vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking.''
“Study says e-cigarettes may lead to cancer and heart disease - No matter how you get your nicotine, it damages your DNA.” LINK
There is a very important point in the study that I believe is highly flawed, they used the same technique that was used in the 60s to study marijuana. They doze the mice in very high numbers over a short period of time.
“Mice subjected to the equivalent of “light” e-cigarette smoking for 10 years (12 weeks in reality)”.
That sounds problematic. I am sure many things are very damaging if you consume the amount you’d consume over 10 years in just 12 weeks. Take water as an example; if you drink 2 liters of water per day, 10 years worth of it in 12 weeks would mean about 87 liters per day. That’s more than enough to kill yourself via water intoxication.
Conclusion: ineffective study.
Follow the money!!!
“CDC study finds e-cigarettes responsible for dramatic increase in tobacco use among middle and high school students erasing the decline in teen tobacco product use from previous years” LINK
“A significant nonlinear increase in current e-cigarette use occurred from 2011 (1.5%) to 2018 (20.8%). During 2011-2018, significant linear declines in combustible tobacco product use (from 21.8% to 13.9%) and ≥ tobacco product (from 12.0% to 11.3%) occurred; by product type, significant linear declines occurred for cigars (from 11.6% to 7.6%), smokeless tobacco (from 7.9% to 5.9%), and pipe tobacco (from 4.0% to 1.1%). A significant nonlinear decline was observed for cigarettes (from 15.8% to 8.1%).
In other words, there was a DRAMATIC decrease in teen use of products containing tobacco. Actual cigarette usage was cut in half. That means the tobacco industry is losing a lot of money because of the vaping industry!!!
CONCLUSION.
People have it wrong.
You have to prove vaping is harmful. It has been around since 2003, and not one documented medical case of illness, or death due to e-cigarette inhalation.
In fact, even all the scare tactics - Diacetyl, AP, Formaldehyde were all unproven scientific hypotheses or unrealistic testing.
So basically, the medical community can only say they think a few things have the potential to be harmful in high enough quantities but they aren’t really sure.
Cigarettes were linked directly to lung cancer and emphysema in the ’50s after a short period of testing.
Cigarettes contain 1000’s of harmful chemicals in them.
E-cigarettes contain less than 100 chemicals all known to be safe.
These are huge differences when you stop twisting the words around.
Now, do we know the long-term effects? Not medically, but again people have been vaping for YEARS without anything but positive effects versus when they smoked. No one is going to study something that doesn’t seem to be a problem - and that’s where e-cigarettes really fall. Some might argue 5-10 years is not enough, that we need 25-30 years to come to conclusions.
Answer: they only researched tobacco cigarettes for 8 years and linked it to multiple fatal and chronic conditions - and this was in the late ’40s and early '50s when the medical sciences were not nearly as advanced as we are now.
All of the negative research, if you follow the money, leads back to big tobacco, or those who receive money from big tobacco tax, master settlement agreement money, or funding due to it. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY.
The tobacco industry relies heavily on new smokers to replace smokers that have died or quit. Not only has vaping hurt tobacco sales but the number of new smokers is even more reduced as vaping is more appealing. Tobacco companies pay the government additional compensation for the cancer caused to smokers but the government doesn't put all that money into helping treat them. Finally, the tax on the sales of tobacco products is a source of revenue that governments depend on.
Banning flavors will not stop underage users from trying the product. They want the nicotine. They won't care if it's mint or tobacco flavor, they will use it for the 'buzz'. If the government banned nicotine in vape juices, kids would just smoke.
Trump is a prime example of a leader that was governing with the bias towards corporation profits, he wouldn't care about what he said was '14 deaths in a year is alarming', and no this isn't a post about Trump, just an observation.
In Canada, it is even more evident. The tax rate of cigarettes was increased at the same time nicotine levels were regulated down to 20mg. The cost of the CERB and how much it was abused is catching up to the Liberal government. Even worse, the statistics in Canada were done with the question 'Did you try vaping at least once?' NOT 'Are you vaping every day?'. They then took this number and spun it around as some false epidemic.
No one ever claimed vaping was 100% safe or healthy. We only claim that it is a much safer alternative to smokers who can't or don't want to quit smoking. The government only cares about money, not our health. For those who have never started smoking but started vaping, it's still a great possibility that a lot of new vapers would have started smoking at some point.
The chemicals produced from burning any substance are the real killer. With the legalization of Cannabis this just creates more people breathing smoke. Furthermore, these stores sell candies and edibles yet the government refuses to notice the potential harm because it poses no threat to the tobacco industry, and generates more revenue for the government.
Lastly, let's just briefly talk about Alcohol. Do we see the government restrict alcohol concentrations to 1%? If you walk inside a liquor store today, you will find fancy new coolers and premixed can drinks, even ones with energy in all flavors. They don't care if it appeals to kids.
Funding into education at schools and placing the responsibility on parents to pay attention to what their children are getting into is the best solution. Although it will never be 100% effective, it's the best method of stopping kids from getting into adult things. As long as there are laws requiring identification to purchase from retailers, the government has done all it needs to do.
The simple fact is if someone is smoking cigarettes, knowing that it causes multiple forms of cancer, emphysema, COPD, makes you smell like shit, and they are skeptical about e-cigarettes which aren’t even remotely considered a possible cause of anything harmful - their mentality is way out of whack.