To E or Not to E: Are electronic cigarettes a good alternative to tobacco or is their down side just

[5150sick]

I hit a weird paywall so I changed my VPN's IP and re pasted the link in my browser.

I decided to put the whole story here in case it happens to you.

Or if you don't feel like giving these assholes any clicks you don't have to - 5150

http://www.gazettenet.com/living/he...onic-cigarettes-a-good-alternative-to-tobacco

PART 1

To E or Not to E: Are electronic cigarettes a good alternative to tobacco or is their down side just as bad?

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  Seth Herzig blows a cloud of vapor at the Enthusiast vape shop in Greenfield.">
  HUNTER STYLES
  
  Seth Herzig blows a cloud of vapor at the Enthusiast vape shop in Greenfield. Purchase photo reprints

By James Heflin Staff Writer



Monday, December 7, 2015
(Published in print: Tuesday, December 8, 2015)

For Leo Hwang, 44, of Montague, e-cigarettes managed a nifty trick. They helped him quit a smoking habit he developed as a high school freshman.

“I’d tried to quit before, and it never stuck,” said Hwang, who’s Dean of Humanities at Greenfield Community College.

When he started dating his girlfriend, he says, she didn’t want to date a smoker.

“At first I figured maybe I just won’t smoke around her. But then I heard about e-cigarettes and thought maybe I’ll give that a try.”

He’d seen one in a movie, but never in reality. Still, he quickly found what he was looking for. The devices are readily available at convenience stores, and more specialized versions can be found in the area’s “vape shops,” which sell e-cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia. There are now at least six vape shops in Hampshire County and one in Franklin County.


In e-cigarettes, an electronic heating element turns liquid to vapor, which is then inhaled. The liquid (“e-liquid”) that’s vaporized is a concoction with a base of propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerin. That base usually contains nicotine, though zero-nicotine formulas are available. The liquid also includes flavorings, from imitations of cigarette tastes to fruity flavors bearing no resemblance to cigarette smoke.

Though some, like Hwang, credit them with helping kick a dangerous habit, the devices have generated safety concerns themselves. The effects of inhaling propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin haven’t been studied much yet, if only because e-cigarettes’ widespread use is relatively recent.

There are also questions about what other effects they might have, particularly on young people, who experiment with them.

And e-cigarettes’ detractors worry that the similarities between vaping and smoking result in longtime tobacco users simply transferring their addiction to e-cigarettes temporarily, eventually returning to regular smoking.

But for Hwang, e-cigarettes started feeling like a crutch, he said. It became obvious to him that he was only pulling one out when he was stressed. “That made it easier to just let go entirely.”

SEE NEXT POST FOR PT. 2

 

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Tobacco versus e-cigs

Tobacco users who turn to technology to help them give up regular cigarettes quickly discover that the world of e-cigarettes is much different than old-fashioned, or in the parlance of e-cigarette fans, “analog” smoking.

There’s an unmistakable futuristic vibe about them.

Early e-cigarettes, first patented back in the 1960s, didn’t catch on in an era when the health hazards of smoking weren’t taken as seriously as they are today. The modern version was patented in 2003. Some e-cigarettes look like metal versions of regular cigarettes, but many of the new variations don’t resemble cigarettes at all. They sport a combination of a clear, liquid-filled chamber, a mouthpiece, sleek metal and a LED glow.

At first, it’s easy to see the devices’ appeal — vapor is not smoke, so it doesn’t have the by-products of combustion that are largely responsible for the dangers of smoking cigarettes.




They’re different from regular cigarettes in some other ways, too. Hwang said, “I have slipped up now and then and had a cigarette. It tastes terrible, and you smell terrible. ... With e-cigarettes, you don’t have to be concerned about any of that.”

Hwang says he doesn’t miss such obvious down sides to smoking, but he does miss certain ritual-esque habits that, for him, accompanied cigarettes. “I used to go outside after work and have 15 minutes of quiet to myself,” he said. “If I’m not smoking, I wouldn’t just sit outside and look at the stars like that.”

Unknown toxins

With anecdotal evidence pointing to their superiority over tobacco and their role in helping smokers give up cigarettes, what’s not to like?

Turns out it’s complicated.

Tim McAfee, director of the CDC’s Center for Smoking and Health puts e-cigarettes in context in a Q&A at WebMD: “We have to rely on what we know of toxicology, that what comes out of e-cigarettes is less toxic, but it’s more toxic than breathing clean air.”

And there’s the rub. Supporters of e-cigarettes point to the first part of that quotation. The devices indeed seem to help smokers avoid the worst aspects of inhaling smoke from burning tobacco. In that way, for those who wish to quit smoking, they resemble nicotine patches and non-tobacco nicotine delivery systems. But they remain an unknown.

Some doctors guardedly endorse their use.

Though he added that he doesn’t have much experience with the technology, medical director of the Cooley Dickinson Hospital Cancer Care Program Dr. Sean Mullally said, “My understanding is that e-cigarettes do not contain the carcinogens that cigarettes do, and because of this I would recommend using them under the direction of a doctor as an aid to help quit smoking real cigarettes.”

Dr. Douglas Johnson, a pulmonary specialist at Baystate Medical Center, points to potential dangers. “There are some studies showing adverse affects to lung function,” he said. “We don’t really know what chemicals are produced by e-cigarettes other than nicotine. It may take years and years to have enough use to do studies to find out the extent of those effects.”

Part of the difficulty in knowing what’s in e-liquid and what harm it could do is that e-cigarettes are not subject to the same regulations as tobacco. They could therefore could contain most anything. Most of the ingredients that flavor the smoke are cleared for use in food, but, of course, ingestion and inhalation are different processes.

Nicotine is not necessarily a big problem on its own.

The substance is certainly addictive, but it’s not the chief component of cigarette smoke that causes cancer and other medical issues. Cigarettes’ carcinogenic properties are primarily thanks to a long list of other substances, many produced by the chemical changes of the combustion process.

Gateway to tobacco?

Still, Johnson points out that the growing number of kids who see e-cigarettes as an intriguing and “safe” version of tobacco cigarettes can easily end up with a nicotine addiction.

And since vaping and smoking are so similar, why not try smoking to get nicotine, too? It’s that weird “almost smoking” middle ground that both makes for e-cigarettes’ appeal to smokers and makes the anti-smoking crowd believe they’re a gateway to regular cigarettes for kids.

“It’s more addictive than ******,” Johnson said of nicotine. “It’s hard to ever give it up. And I’m sure a lot of people who start with an e-cigarette go on to regular cigarettes. And of course that leads to very serious problems.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the devices have become the most popular way to smoke for kids.

The 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey showed that “e-cigarette use — at least one day in the past 30 days — among high school students increased from 4.5 percent in 2013 to 13.4 percent in 2014, rising from approximately 660,000 to 2 million students.

Among middle school students, current e-cigarette use more than tripled from 1.1 percent in 2013 to 3.9 percent in 2014 — an increase from approximately 120,000 to 450,000 students.”

At the same time, the rates of tobacco use showed no decline between 2011 and 2014.

It’s an open question how often e-cigarettes lead to regular smoking, but the CDC’s study also reveals that nearly half of middle school and high school students who used nicotine delivery products used more than one type, and topping the list among those users were e-cigarettes, hookahs and cigarettes.

Northampton Director of Public Health Merridith O’Leary says that though there are no statistics to point to, observation alone has revealed to her a big leap in e-cigarette popularity among teens, particularly older teens.

In Northampton, vaping is considered the same as smoking for the purposes of restrictions on where they can be used and who can buy them. “We have the regulations in large part to protect youth,” she said.

At the same time, says O’Leary, she doesn’t know to what extent vaping leads to a regular smoking habit for kids.

A Yale School of Medicine study by Abigail Friedman, assistant professor of public health, complicates that picture.

“Conventional cigarette use has been falling somewhat steadily among this age group (12-17) since the start of the 21st century. This paper shows that bans on e-cigarette sales to minors appear to have slowed this decline by about 70 percent in the states that implemented them. In other words, as a result of these bans, more teenagers are using conventional cigarettes than otherwise would have done so.”

Nicotine poisoning

Nicotine addiction and the possibility of regular smoking are not the only dangers the devices pose for kids.

E-liquid often contains large amounts of nicotine, and that nicotine can be absorbed via inhalation, ingestion or through the skin. In February 2014, according to a CDC study published in “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” poison control centers reported that calls for nicotine poisoning went from an average of one per month in September 2010 to 215 per month. While 51 percent of those calls involved children under 5, 42 percent came from those 20 and older.

Though nicotine poisoning usually isn’t lethal, it can be. The usual symptoms, no matter whether its caused by vaping too much nicotine or absorbing it through the skin, are primarily nausea, vomiting and sometimes seizures.

Spilling the e-liquid on skin can be a problem, but Hwang says he was concerned, as a longtime smoker of regular cigarettes, about his lack of knowledge regarding how much nicotine e-cigarettes might deliver when used in the regular fashion. “I was always nervous I was going to get nicotine poisoning,” he said. “I’d take a single puff and put it away.”

Because of issues like those, Johnson and other medical professionals, including the head of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, are adamantly opposed to e-cigarettes. As to their purported up side, Johnson said he as seen very few patients successfully use the devices to quit smoking altogether.

“If there are real benefits,” said Johnson, “they’re very limited.”

Jury still out

But there are stories like Hwang’s. His decision to quit smoking altogether when he saw that he was simply replacing one habit with another is just one person’s experience, of course. Feelings run high on both sides of the e-cigarette issue.

Visit Electronic Cigarette Consumer Reviews, and you’ll find defense of and advocation for e-cigarettes that’s just as impassioned as the opposition of doctors Johnson and Frieden.

The maddening conclusion is clear: It’s wait and see until the devices have been around long enough for researchers to determine what their long-term effects may be.

In the meantime, the potential number of participants for those future studies is growing. The CDC reported in 2013 that use of e-cigarettes more than doubled, that about 8 in 10 adults were aware of them, and about one in ten, or 20.4 million people, had tried them.


Head of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, is corrupt and so is the entire CDC

They are all corrupt Big Pharma dick riders - 5150

CDC Exposed As Private Corporation Colluding With Big Pharma

http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/201...rivate-corporation-colluding-with-big-pharma/


Find MORE CDC corruption here: http://cdc.news

 

[pulsevape]

well all I can say to all that is....fuck any chick who won't date a smoker your better off without them dude.