Great video by CBC Canada. I too think they missed the mark. I sort of agree with you, I think
cigarette addiction is complicated and behavior is only a part of it. Some people need throat hit, some people like to fidget with the cig in their hands, some people like the action of hand to mouth. I had an aunt who might have kept 2 - 3 packs of cigarettes a day burning in an ashtray, like incense, but didn't actually 'smoke' much of them.
I think the biggest difference is the nicotine DELIVERY method. Sorry I can't find the reference, but I read somewhere an explanation. Nicotine by combustion from tobacco along with accelerating agents added by our good friends in big tobacco rushes nicotine to the brain. Smoke particles are smaller, more deeply inhaled into lung tissues and delivered faster to the brain than vape particles. Menthol cigs exacerbate this condition by relaxing and opening lung tissues allowing smoke to be even deeper inhaled and more quickly delivered into the bloodstream. I'm no expert but it made sense to me ... it explains why lighting up a cig is an instant fix but it takes a number of hauls on a vape to start feeling better.
From my own experience, I can confidently say I am WAY less addicted to ejuice with nicotine than I was to cigs. I believe when I read nicotine in and of itself is little more addictive than caffeine.
Yes, I think all that is true, and I think the varying ways people use smoking is also one of the less understood factors -- it's a stimulant, it's a relaxant, it's a stress reliever, it's a fidget spinner
, it's ALL THAT, at varying times, to MOST people -- but the MEDICAL profession wants to see EVERYTHING as a one-size-fits-all situation, when the medical profession knows damn good and well that it just ain't so, for ANYTHING. And then there's the fact that smoking really isn't a MEDICAL problem in the first place! It's like trying to use a screwdriver to deal with a nail!
I was powerfully addicted to the MAOIs; it took 15 months of weaning to get free of WTA, but I've been done with that for over a year and a half -- yet I wouldn't dare quit vaping, though I vape only 3mg nicotine, because I'd just go right back to smoking -- and THAT is the behavioral addiction that is so intensely powerful; even 3+ yrs of abstinence from smoking hasn't removed it, and likely never will. No, I don't vape nearly as often as I used to, when I first quit, but it's still a need. 39 yrs of a stress-relieving behavior doesn't disappear just because you want it to.
Secondly where they missed the mark, though they touch on it, is the maddening fact that people who don't smoke, including the public health officials who want to save us from vaping simply DO NOT GET that vaping ejuice with nicotine is NOT smoking tobacco. Nicotine is NOT tobacco like coffee is NOT caffeine and french fries are NOT trans fat. For example, in a very recent public survey by the Alberta Government about recreational pot use there is a section where they ask for an opinion on one's perceived social acceptability of various things, like smoking tobacco in public. One of the questions they ask is 'How Socially Acceptable is it to Vape Tobacco in Public'. Really?! Come on! Who does that?! I sent them a zillion links and told them to get their facts straight, ask better questions and not add to public confusion about vaping.
That's also true, though theoretically, given the correct type of atomizer, it actually is possible to "vape tobacco" -- it's not truly vaping, it's the "heat not burn" type of deal -- and then there are these "dry leaf atomizers" for that "other stuff" -- which could be used for tobacco as well as for the illicit stuff -- they seem to think that's what we're doing? I've never seen any liquid tobacco, and given that we use eLIQUID... I just don't understand why they're so dense about it, but I guess it gets back to the Carlin quote:
Andria