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?
Current e-cig user here.
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.
Depends - it can be used to quit by controlling and lowering the nicotine content, but it could just be used as a harm reduction method.
While certainly not healthy, it’s significantly much less bad for you than smoking.
Burnt cigarettes have over 9000 different chemicals, several of which are addictive MAOI antidepressants. It’s not the nicotine hooking people to the level we see in smokers, it’s that, they’re having legitimate withdrawal symptoms from a legitimate drug dependency. Nicotine itself at the levels anyone takes it in is maybe a little more addictive than caffeine.
Ecigs, at minimum, have propylene glycol (GRAS) and nicotine which isn’t necessarily from tobacco, and even the nicotine is optional. Many have a couple other ingredients like vegetable glycerine (makes “smoke” clouds puffier) and flavorings, but even loaded up it doesn’t compare to the count in the first paragraph. Ecigs also don’t burn anything unless you’re doing it very wrong.
Also since I’m on the soap box anyway, when you hear fear stories about “vaping” they’re usually lumping in thc/marijuana which is effectively different even though it doesn’t need to be. Because it’s regulated if not illegal you’ll chance getting things like adulterated cartridges with oils in them, if you breathe in oil particles you’re getting pneumonia. So when you’re reading or hearing about some scary story it’s probably that and the one “reporting” is too lazy or too ignorant to make the distinctions they should.
That was the vitamin E acetate shenanigans from a few years ago that people were cutting with THC concentrate to make it look thicker/more quality than it actually was. Huge disinformation campaign somehow made nicotine vapes the bad guy even though it was entirely unrelated
