I am late on this as I have been in the ACA repeal and then the CSR/Basic Health Plan rabbit hole. But there is some incredibly good public health news coming out of the Food and Drug Administration from last week. They are proposing a rule that will only allow non-addictive levels of nicotine in cigarettes.
The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it wants to reduce the nicotine in cigarettes to make them less addictive. The unexpected announcement sent shares of tobacco companies plummeting and sparked praise among some public health advocates.
If successful, the effort would be the first time the government has tried to get the Americans to quit cigarettes by reaching beyond warning labels or taxes to attacking the actual addictive substance inside…..
The goal is a harm minimization strategy. Lowering the nicotine level on cigarettes where the harm is from the combustion by products while allowing the addictive buzz to be delivered by vapor systems makes sense. It is a strategy where it acknowledges that people are addicted to nicotine and the goal is to reduce the side effects of maintaining that addiction. It falls into the same universe of strategies as needle exchange for heroin.
If this is successfully implemented, it is a massive public health win with significant impact on Medicare finances down the road. It would lead to a healthier population entering Medicare but that population would most likely stay on Medicare longer. This is good news as a starting point and it would be excellent news if it can actually be implemented.
Gin & Tonic
This could be interesting, as the populations of “cigarette smokers” and “Trump voters” overlap pretty significantly.
Cermet
How ironic that it takes a tRump appointee’ to submit this revolutionary regulation.
Matt McIrvin
What are the chances this lasts five seconds in this administration?
O. Felix Culpa
Not to rain on the parade, but I’m wondering if people will just smoke more cigarettes to get the same nicotine levels in their system.
Cermet
@O. Felix Culpa: The primary idea is that fewer people who try cigarette’s will get much of the “high” since nicotine levels will be low – more important still, far less likely to get addicted; another plus is that those who are addicted will pay far more to reach their desired levels making the habit more costly which will encourage more people to quit. win/win if the nicotine levels are forced to be lowered. Aside: there is no down side to this if it goes through.
MaryL
I feel like this is something that cigarette companies could get behind because it could potentially cause people to buy more cigarettes in order to maintain their nicotine levels. In fact, I’m surprised they didn’t think of it first. Although I suppose it could make it harder to hook new smokers.
T S
@O. Felix Culpa: I haven’t looked at the evidence personally, but I heard a public health advocate on NPR say there was significant scientific evidence that there was an optimal nicotine level to target that actually reduces total nicotine intake in a population, even taking into account the possibility people will smoke more to get more nicotine. Hitting this “sweet spot” is the goal. Now, take that with a grain of salt unless one of us looks at the actual data. “Advocates,” even progressive ones, aren’t necessarily reliable as sources of scientific accuracy.
Major Major Major Major
So obviously the cigarette lobby is huge but it’s not nearly as strong as it once was. I wonder how much the electronic cigarette industry is throwing around, since bundled in here is great news for them. I saw a piece of total pro-vape Reasonoid hackery on Slate yesterday.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Great idea – harm reduction is the rational approach to addiction policy
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
What about vapeing? Is this only going to affect cigarettes? I know in vapeing it’s almost all nicotine.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: Um, shouldn’t we be encouraging the overlapping group to mainline cancer sticks?
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: as far as I understand: currently vapor products are in a weird legal limbo under the 2009 (2010?) tobacco regulation law. The law requires all smoking products after its passage to be some degree of similar to products that existed prior to its passage, and the new regs classify them so as to be not subject to that. Or something.
@Villago Delenda Est: too slow.
O. Felix Culpa
@Cermet: @T S: Thanks. Your explanations are helpful, as would be this policy.
Boatboy_srq
@Cermet: So, less weaning the already addicted and more inhibiting the casual sampler’s potential addiction.
James Powell
@Gin & Tonic:
Is there data to support that? I’ve made the same argument with respect to cigar smokers and assholes.
Boatboy_srq
@Major Major Major Major: Big Tobacco has either shrunk or diversified. Kraft Foods is an Atria property now, for example.
Jacel
I don’t suppose this proposal includes a tradeoff of lifting current restrictions on cigarette sales and advertising? That would seem more like a Trumpish deal.
kindness
I wonder if this new rule will be in effect with roll your own tobacco? Because if the addicts can’t quite get their fix from Marlboros then I can see smokers going back to rolling from a pouch themselves. Most the smokers I know don’t smoke for the glamour. They smoke for the nicotine.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
I had a friend — the rarest of breeds, a thoughtful libertarian — who had a years-long personal project to try every psychoactive substance he could get his hands on: pot, stimulants, depressants, psychedelics, the whole alphabet soup of fancy-ass chemicals you only read about on Erowid. He said, bar none, the only one that he ever had difficulty stopping was nicotine (meth was easy compared to terbacky); in fact, he was still an Obamaesque occasional smoker a decade after trying cigarettes (you know, for science).
There are things in human history that our descendants will look at and say, “What the feck were they thinking?” Internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels is one; tobacco smoking is another.
ETA: To quote the Beatles:
“I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset
Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git.”
Major Major Major Major
@kindness: Rolling your own is annoying. Anything that you do to make smoking more annoying will likely reduce smoking.
@Mom Says I*m Handsome: You’re friends with Alexander Shulgin?
Marci Kiser
My first thought on reading this is “won’t current addicts have to smoke more cigarettes to get the nicotine fix they’re used to? And therefore they inhale even more carcinogens?” But obviously I assume that the FDA knows far more about the subject than I do and has considered this. Anyone who’s got a better grasp on the subject that could explain it to me?
Mom Says I*m Handsome
@Major Major Major Major: I’ve never met him, but I’ve spent a decent amount of time exploring my own Cave of the Unknown…
Brachiator
What’s the point? Aren’t there e-cigarettes?
Haven’t cigarette smokers in the US declined? Isn’t the problem now more cigarette sales in other countries, the last attempt by tobacco companies to keep their industry going?
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: The point is e-cigarettes.
Nicole
As a researcher friend of my brother’s once told him, nicotine is a pretty useful drug, that unfortunately has an absolutely terrible delivery system.
Miss Bianca
@Mom Says I*m Handsome: strangely, nicotine has been one of the only addictive chemicals I have had *no* problem quitting cold turkey. I was more of a “social smoker” anyway, but I was kidding myself that it wasn’t really an addiction till a friend of mine – one of my social smoker buddies – teased me about it. I got mad and on the spot I just decided, “that’s it, nope, never again”, and never again it has remained. Even the smell of tobacco is enough to nauseate me now.
I have no idea what that’s about. I’m just thankful I dodged the nicotine addiction bullet so easily.
randy khan
It will be interesting to see if this proposal survives the comment process. It’s worth noting that the current FDA Commissioner was, in fact, appointed by Trump, which makes it even more interesting that this has come out.
(FDA trivia: Clinton appointed the first female FDA Commissioner, and Obama appointed the second one. George W. Bush appointed the only veterinarian who’s ever been the head of the FDA. Go figure.)
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Mom Says I*m Handsome: I’ve read that for most hard drugs – excluding nicotine & alcohol – the percentage of people who stay addicted is in the lower tens of percentages (re: the drugs absent environmental factors aren’t usually that dangerous). Note that cocaine’s teratogenic effects, in isolation, are mostly interchangeable with ADHD.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Nicole: Anything conclusive on its effectiveness for treating schizophrenic?
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Just had an opportunity to read the entire article. It is about both regular cigarettes and e-cigarettes. I still don’t see this as a huge deal compared to other health issues.
I found this tidbit in the article to be very interesting.
I wonder why this is, and what else could be done in this area.
wuzzat
@Marci Kiser: I can see two lines of thought for answering your question. The first is that this would be aimed more towards preventing new smokers/preventing “social” smokers from becoming chain smokers. The second is that this would push people away from smoking towards the theoretically healthier vaping to get their nic fix. The main things keeping a lot of folks from switching to vaping now are cost and custom. This would target both by increasing the cost to maintain current nicotine levels and making the custom less satisfying.
satby
My FB feed is blowing up with unhappy pop drinkers getting hit with the new “soda tax” in Cook County. Using taxes to discourage unhealthy addiction works, I know. This one looks like a huge hammer though. Anyone have any info on it? I don’t drink the stuff, so no dog in this race.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Brachiator: Self-medication.
Major Major Major Major
@satby: (Liberal) public health people generally like soda taxes, but unfortunately they’re also regressive.
@Brachiator: Addiction is comorbid with many mental illnesses. Also, when I said ‘the point is e-cigarettes’ I didn’t mean that it deals solely with e-cigarettes but that, as Anderson says in the post, “Lowering the nicotine level on cigarettes where the harm is from the combustion by products while allowing the addictive buzz to be delivered by vapor systems makes sense.”–the idea is that if they want the buzz they can always switch to e-cigarettes.
T S
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, but they’ll be mad about gov’t intrusion into their freedom to be self-destructive. Well, ideally…but really, if Trump does it, the RW noise machine will ignore that aspect of things, and make the rubes love it or just not know about it.
Fair Economist
@O. Felix Culpa: The linked news article quotes a researcher who studied the effect of lowering nicotine in cigarettes. He found with gradual reduction people mostly just smoked more but with abrupt reductions they frequently quit.
I do suspect there would be an additional benefit in helping quitters stay away, because the hit from giving in and having just one cigarette would be less. Said article also has a typical backsliding anecdote – an ex-smoker was having a really bad day, bummed one cigarette from a friend and, bam, they were hooked again. I’m confident current nicotine levels are set to *maximize* addiction – you know the companies have done a lot of research on optimal “customer retention”.
Nicole
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Conclusive, I don’t know, but there have been some recent studies about nicotine’s effectiveness in improving cognition and mood. A huge percentage of people with schizophrenia smoke, and part of the exploration of that is whether it’s a form of self-medication.
There are also some hypotheses about potential uses as a treatment for Alzheimer’s symptoms and even depression (people with depression are also much, much more likely to be smokers than those without).
Note: none of this should be construed to be a positive spin on smoking. Having lost both maternal grandparents at 65, my only maternal aunt at age 64 and my dad at age 69, I am not a fan of smoking.
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: OT, but Slate was good for a few months after the election and they’ve gone right back to sucking. They’re more annoying than ever.
Fair Economist
Whoops, linked the wrong article there, and I can’t edit. Use the link in the OP.
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: When I saw that piece yesterday is when I realized they were back to their old ways. I also don’t like Jim Newell any more.
InternetDragons
It’s a good harm reduction intervention for new smokers and probably for people trying to quit – so yes, it’s a good thing. But it’s not a perfect intervention. A lot of folks with mental health disorders or addictions to other substances use tobacco as a moderating influence.
And I’m sure an active and lucrative black market will be created in response to this, as well.
While I think this is worth celebrating in terms of its impact on a specific population of smokers, it’s not The Very Best Thing.
Yutsano
@Miss Bianca:
I started smoking because it’s literally the only way to get any kind of a break in the restaurant industry. Once I stopped doing that work I walked away. Not that I ever really smoked except for work as it was.
japa21
@satby: It is pretty hefty. a penny per ounce. A 12 pack costs $1.44 more than before. And it is not just soda pop. It is any drinks with a certain amount of sugar added, so can include tea, energy drinks, etc. It is a boom for those stores just across the county lines but will be a killer for those stores in the county, specially those just inside the county line.
JPL
Not sure where to post this, but a judge just ruled that the mayor of Roswell, GA was ineligible for office and he should vacate immediately. He ignored a law about term limits, and said it didn’t apply to him. He was the same mayor who gave the New Yorker opinions about Ossoff that showed his ignorance and bigotry.
I’m sure he’ll appeal the ruling, but wow!
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
In the short-term nicotine definitely helps with concentration and focus and it’s easy to see why schizophrenics might want to use it. Long-term, I doubt it helps much because the habituation is so strong – most likely they have to smoke just to focus as well as they would have if they never smoked.
Although it’s *possible* it’s a long-term net benefit, it’s probably not and there are much safer delivery options anyway. Anybody citing self-medicating schizophrenics as an excuse to not regulate cigarettes is probably just blowing a smokescreen.
Mnemosyne
@Nicole:
I’ve seen theories that one of the reasons for the apparent rise of ADHD in adults is that it used to be that ADHD adolescents would start smoking and have a daily, self-administered dose of a powerful stimulant drug, so it looked like ADHD was something that went away in adulthood.
Now that fewer people smoke, it’s become apparent that ADHD is a lifelong issue because fewer adults self-medicate for it.
ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
I used to roll my own. It was good practice, if you know what I mean. And I think you do. It also allowed me to smoke other types of tobacco like pipe.
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: seems like they dedicate like half of their stories to how wrong and/or uncool liberals are. I don’t know who their target audience is.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
I remember there was a commenter here who had a daughter with severe ADHD who insisted on smoking to relieve it because no other stimulant worked nearly as well. IANAD, but I suspect that was because she could self-administer it pretty precisely and not have to rely on waiting for a pill to take effect.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
@japa21: Boulder County, where I work, just implemented a 2-cents-per-ounce sugary bev tax, or a quarter per can. Signs went up on the vending machines explaining the tax hike, its purpose, and where the revenue is going; I’ve been adding my own little “Good. Serves you right.” notations. Because I’m a tool of the nanny state.
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: Liberals who want to feel better than other liberals.
ETA: Jim Newell writes the sort of snarking-at-uncool-democrats-from-the-left pieces that you might be talking about, I can’t stand them. And they’ve started publishing Reihan Salam again. Blech.
I still like the advice column.
ruckus
@Brachiator:
You live in a state that highly restricts public smoking. Not everywhere does that. That effects smoking rates significantly.
Mnemosyne
@Nicole:
One more thing: IIRC, erroneous schizophrenia diagnoses are not uncommon because major depression with psychotic features can be very, very difficult to tease out from true schizophrenia. If you have people who have major depression with psychotic features, or schizophrenics with comorbid depression, it makes sense that they would be self-medicating with a powerful stimulant, because it helps relieve the depression.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Were you really smoking, though, or mostly standing around with a burning cigarette?
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
The article said people with mental illness. I took this to include more than just schizophrenics. Otherwise, your points are well taken.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Isn’t heavy caffeine consumption also often a form of self-medication for ADHD?
Gelfling 545
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Apparently it isn’t the nicotine that does harm, beyond addiction, to health. It is the combustion of the various other products in the cigarette. Nicotine, I have read, is a very useful drug in certain mental health issues & other disorders . It is it’s delivery via burning cigarette that causes the cancers, breathing disorders, etc.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Like I said above, people with major depression probably benefit from nicotine, too. And I wouldn’t be surprised if people with bipolar disorder smoke at a high rate.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne: Nicotine chews and vaping will still be available for over-the-counter unrestricted self-dosed treatment, so if somebody really does need nicotine they’ll still have easy access to it.
I’m still very suspicious that it helps much long-term, because of the habituation, although it certainly could be useful to control when concentration is relatively high and relatively low.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Also very common, but apparently it’s not nearly as effective as nicotine. From what I’ve read (and, again, IANAD), nicotine can be as effective as a prescription stimulant, while caffeine is a poor substitute.
I weaned myself off caffeine when I was taking Wellbutrin 15 years ago and never got back on. Now it makes me jittery.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
Since I have ADHD myself, it’s an interesting question why there hasn’t been much of an attempt to adapt nicotine to a prescription drug. All of the available stimulants are potentially addictive (which is why I have to see an MD every three months to get a new prescription) so I’m not sure why nicotine is verboten.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@SatanicPanic: How so?
Roger Moore
@Gelfling 545:
It’s not just smoking that causes problems, though. Smokeless tobacco is also associated with increased cancer risk, especially in the mouth and throat. This is notable among baseball players, who are well known for high rates of smokeless tobacco use, and has led professional baseball to clamp down hard on it. It’s also worth noting that the carcinogens in tobacco have systemic effects, so that tobacco users have increased rates of all kinds of cancer, not just the organs directly exposed.
Laura
My dad is slowly dying from smoking. It is painful to witness. I’m sure that there are millions of families who will benefit from this change though it comes way too late for my dad. I smoked because it was a way to feel less akward and I quit when I realized I wanted to be old and healthy in that old age.
I lived across the street from a group home for several years that served as a community based mental health center and rain or shine, searing heat or freezing cold, all the residents stood around or Sat outside smoking and had many large coffee can ashtrays that filled up fast. The self-medication angle makes sense . . .
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne: A quick check of publicly available literature indicates nicotine might well be useful for ADHD. I would guess the problem is that since it’s not under patent, nobody has incentives to put it through an FDA study.
Naturally we can’t have the government do FDA studies on such drugs because it would interfere with the market and besides the government can’t do anything useful /sarcasm.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve gone on and off caffeine a few times myself, and I like to think that I’ve given it up for good this time. [knocks on wood] I definitely notice that I’m much more susceptible when I accidentally get some now.
Brachiator
@ruckus:
Smoking is down, period. A companion WaPo article notes that teen smoking is down significantly.
Fair Economist
@Roger Moore: I think the oral cancer from smokeless tobacco has been linked to preservatives and additives in the tobacco. Nicotine itself is even less dangerous. It does cause substantial changes to blood lipid so a a direct cardiovascular effect is possible. Not much is showing up in studies of vaping, although obviously they’re still early.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Makes sense, I suppose.
Miss Bianca
@Yutsano: and I started smoking when I was working in a smoke-filled bar. (ah, the 80s). I found that the smoke didn’t bother me as much if I was smoking myself.
Mnemosyne
@Laura:
My dad and one of my older brothers have already died from smoking-related causes, and my mom already has COPD. I would ban cigarettes tomorrow if I could.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
FYI, Roger is a scientist at a well-regarded cancer hospital here in So Cal, so he probably has the inside scoop on most of the latest research.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
My guess would be economics. Getting a drug through clinical trials is expensive, even for a drug that’s already out there. Companies aren’t going to be willing to spend the money those trials without an expectation of profit, and that’s not likely for a drug like nicotine that’s already available OTC for smoking cessation. The only way you’re likely to get a clinical trial is through a grant from either a non-profit or the government. That might be possible if ADHD had a big advocacy organization the way diseases like cancer and heart disease do, but without that it’s going to be hard to find the funding for a trial. It’s a huge problem with the way we pay for new drug/new application development.
Uncle Cosmo
@Major Major Major Major:
How long before someone comes out with a small inexpensive cigarette rolling machine? Battery-powered, small enough to fit with papers & terbacky bag in a cargo pocket. Profit!
For that matter, what’s to keep pipes from making a comeback for inhaling? With specially-cultivated extra mild tobacco & detachable/replaceable mouthpiece-filters for the fainter of heart…
Just FTR, speaking as a former packaday smoker, there is an oral fixation that goes hand-to-mouth with cigarettes & it may be harder to deal with over the long term than nicotine withdrawal. Every former smoker has worked out his/her own solution to that (mine was a baggie of toothpick-size pieces of raw spaghetti)
Mom Says I*m Handsome
@Uncle Cosmo:
They’ve been around for ages. This one (minus batteries) doesn’t look much different than what I used back in the ’80’s: Amazon linkie
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Not really. I’m doing more basic research, and most of the clinical stuff we’re doing here is about treatment rather than causes of cancer. That said, I don’t think it’s particularly relevant if the carcinogens in smokeless tobacco are endogenous to tobacco or are a result of additives used in the curing process*. The fact is that there are plenty of carcinogens in the smokeless tobacco products people are actually using, so it is hazardous as it is done in the real world.
It may be possible to create less hazardous tobacco products, but I don’t really see the point. We know how to extract the nicotine and put it into reasonably priced drug products, like patches and gum, that have proper quality control and well regulated doses. That seems like a much more satisfactory solution, especially because patches and gum are much more sanitary than smokeless tobacco.
*My understanding from some quick internet research is that they’re mostly a product of the curing process, where additives react with endogenous chemicals to produce new things that are far nastier than either one alone.
Laura
@Mnemosyne: where can I sign your petition?
artem1s
I wonder how much of this is aimed at the effects of second hand smoke has on family members. Children of smokers are more likely to experiment earlier and become lifelong addicts. They also suffer more from breathing related illnesses than their peers who don’t live in smoking households. Eliminating the other chemical additives that are designed to promote addiction and make cigarettes burn more quickly need to be part of this legislation if they want this to work. But most importantly, they need to be very careful about who gets to define how much nicotine is addictive. Big Tobacco spent decades manipulating scientific data to stay in the business of slowly killing their customers. They are slowly influencing regulations regarding e-cigs so they can addict a whole new generation of kids. And we have no idea if this delivery system is in anyway safer than the old one. And we won’t know until we have 50 years of users to study. I think everyone should be very wary about whether any new proposed legislation regarding nicotine is just another chapter in Big Tobacco’s book of delay, delay, delay, so they can rake in the big bucks.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
What is your opinion on e-cigarettes? Some people seem to like that oral thing. A co-worker was a big e-cigarette smoker.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I don’t know enough about them to know how hazardous they’re likely to be, and I have a nasty suspicion nobody else does either. I personally find them annoying because they seem to be designed to be as blatant as possible and pushing the line of obnoxiousness where we’ll treat them the same way we treat traditional cigarettes.
gratuitous
I worked at a law firm that brought one of the few successful lawsuits against a tobacco company, winning a judgment for a deceased smoker of Marlboros. My part of the litigation was wrangling the exhibits, and sorting through a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t relevant (for example, our client hadn’t started smoking until he was in the military service, so all the juicy evidence about tobacco marketing to kids was excluded).
One of the more interesting sidelines was about the advent of light cigarettes in the late 1960s. The Center for Tobacco Research studied a de-nicotinized cigarette, which had the unfortunate drawback (for the cigarette companies) of being too easy to quit. Without the addictive nicotine, smokers found their habit to be dirty, messy, unhealthful, and undesirable. So they were able to quit. Tobacco companies began messing around with “light” cigarettes, and found that the threshold limit for nicotine was about 1 mg. At that small dose, enough smokers would keep smoking to make cigarettes a profitable commodity.
One of the other gimmicks the tobacco companies used was to dilute the amount of nicotine as measured by government smoking machines by perforating the barrel of the cigarette with small holes. Enough vapor would escape before ever going through the filter so that by government testing, the cigarettes could be labeled as lower nicotine than they actually were. Of course, smokers defeated the perforations by holding their fingers over the holes, which just happened to be at the spot where most smokers held the cigarette. Smokers of light cigarettes were enlisted as accomplices in delivering themselves a bigger hit of nicotine.
If the proposed rule actually goes through, look for the tobacco companies to sabotage it some way, just as they did for light cigarettes. They will then turn around and once again blame smokers for their inability to quit smoking, much as they have for the last half century since the Surgeon General’s report came out in 1964.
RSA
@Brachiator:
This can’t be right, can it? 90%, or 75%, or some other huge proportion of smokers are mentally ill?
jl
@Roger Moore:
” I don’t know how hazardous they’re likely to be, and I have a nasty suspicion nobody else does either. ”
From what I’ve seen in presentations by clinical and toxicological people, no one really knows. Two issues are unregulated flavorings and scents, and heating devices for vaping and e-cigarettes. The flavoring and scent issue is out of control: national industry associations for those products have issued disclaimers saying that their safety research for their products does not apply to heating the stuff and breathing it into your lungs. The vaping and e-cig industries are cheerfully ignoring those disclaimers. Could be big problems down the road. For example the most popular flavorings include synthetic ‘butter’ and ‘cream’ flavor chemicals that were involved in the deadly popcorn lung disease that was in the news when popcorn manufactures got sloppy about exposure to those chemicals in the manufacturing process.
Vapers like to tinker with the heating elements to deliver what they consider a ‘good vape’ or adjust nicotine delivery. So, no one knows much about the chemistry or toxicology of what happens when metal and plastic by products that get created under current and heating get into the vapor and sucked into the respiratory system.
But, I think moving towards safer ways to get nicotine to addicts is a good direction. Nicotine is not a ‘safe’ drug, but separating it our and finding clean was to deliver it, is far far safer than getting it from heating or burning tobacco and breathing the smoke. Recent research indicates that just breathing smoke, any kind of smoke, is a big part of the cardiovascular hazards of smoking, though exactly why has not been pinned down yet. Is it some kind of inflammatory effect of the particle size, or toxins from combustion, or a combo? No one really knows.
ruckus
@Brachiator:
Yes smoking is down. But many states/cities did not restrict as early as CA and smoking didn’t drop in those places as early as CA. Once large areas restricted the rate plummeted. Raising taxes didn’t hurt.
Terry Snyder
@Boatboy_srq: Diversified. Big Tobacco saw the handwriting on the wall with cigarettes. They got the little guy to do all their marketing and they will soon swoop in with their chains and put mom and pop out of business. Big tobacco will make sure the any regulations don’t hurt their cash cow and prevent a new generation for being hooked on something that there is no real proof yet is healthier and in fact might be deadlier. Because really who is jelly bean, cotton candy and sour apple vape juice marketing to?