Vaping: A harm reduction tool or a public health concern? Experts weigh in

The whole discussion reeks of experts who are used to fighting nicotine addiction that now can't let go when that addiction turns into a benign habit. Many people use nicotine for regulation of emotions and who are these experts to tell them they shouldn't? Not one of those experts expressing concern about nicotine bothered to say what's so bad about it, except the danger of dual use.

What needs to be done about the vapes is to ban disposable units. Whether to ban flavours and advertisement for vapes is not very clear-cut to me. Having a debate about those topics is fine. The vaping itself? Let's ban campfires, candles, and incense before we ban vapes.

A doctor in my family pointed out that where he works (in the UK), he is seen innumerous cases of lung inflammation related to excessive vaping on teenagers and young adults. As I understood, keeping the level of hydration higher than normal for too long, which is common to vaping but not smoking, can be the root of different kinds of infections.

According to him, vaping turned to be a habit so strong for some those people most of them report extreme sadness while in hospital with the main factor being the lack of their vape.

I am not saying you should do this or that, but having someone in family to report on increasing cases of things changed my perception on how I see certain topics.

> Flavours are a major reason why youth begin to vape. We need to ban e-cigarette flavours other than tobacco flavour and we’re urging the federal government to finalize the June 2021 draft regulation as soon as possible.

I'm struggling to understand this position. I think he's saying that people (teens in particular) won't get addicted to vaping if tobacco is the only flavor available, because it's not as pleasant as the other flavors on offer today. But, there is a proven market for a nicotine delivery device that tastes like tobacco: we call them cigarettes, and teenagers have been into them for a hundred years and counting.

If the reply is that it's better for them to get addicted to vaping, because vaping is safer than cigarettes, I agree. But then what is this debate about?

I guess the idea is that there would be some difference between the number of people who would be willing to start vaping tobacco vs. smoking tobacco, and this is our margin of success. To me it seems like it wouldn't be a huge number.

I dunno, I think vaping is gross and kind of funny, but it's helped decrease the number of college students who already have smoker's coughs, so I say we sell bubblegum vape juice to minors and take the win.

Smoked for 15 years, switched to vaping, switched to low dose nicotine pouches, now switching to Gr1nds (coffee grounds). I just really don't like gum.

I don’t like to do my hair or dress very well so seeing people vaping is a relief for me.

Why do I get a whiff of these "experts" were paid off by "vaping" interests (which I believe I recall being connected with legacy "big tobacco" through Altria Inc.) to create a limited hangout of "harm reduction", an extremely loaded and manipulative contemporary phrase pattern.

What monster could ever be opposed to harm reduction through the lesser of two evils after all? I mean, is burglary really a public safety concern, or not just poverty reduction? And why do you oppose poverty reduction by spreading hate about burglars of your home? And how often do you beat your wife again?

"Expert [manipulators and gaslighters] weigh in."

The headline presents this as a false dichotomy when the answer is "both".

For people who were already smoking then vaping is a useful harm reduction tool. For people who don't smoke (especially children) it's a health concern - albeit a potentially smaller one than smoking one.