Reg man inhales the smooth, non-cancerous, taste of USB nicotine Electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigs or vapes, sound like a great idea because they deliver a nicotine hit in a familiar form factor, but without the nasty stuff you'll find in conventional smokes. The jury's out on whether they're safe, with a University of Queensland study attracting criticism almost before it began, …
"your eCig might get snapped in half if you sit next to the wrong person...me for instance."
You might get punched in the face for doing that to the wrong person... me for instance.
There is no rational reason to lash out at someone smoking one of these things any more than there is for a tee-total person to lash out at someone drinking a pint near them.
"There is no rational reason to lash out at someone smoking one of these things any more than there is for a tee-total person to lash out at someone drinking a pint near them."
Actually it's more like an alcoholic pouring vodka down my throat. If you think all of the nicotine is removed by your lungs then you're obviously less bright than we all thought. Given you're a smoker, that's a pretty low bar...
You truly are thick, arent you?
The tee-totaller would absorb as much alcohol through evaporation, as you would inhale unabsorbed nicotine from a vaper's e-cig. Given that the main problem with smoking isnt so much the nicotine, its the rest of the nasties that you breathe in either through active, or passive smoking, your complaint about being "forced" to suck in the nico being exhaled is dwarfed by the amount of volatile chemicals you would inhale putting on your deodorant and after-shave in the morning.
Even those chemicals would dwarf in comparison to the daily lungful you willingly expose yourself to from traffic fumes, and particulate matter from the tube or subway.
So go ahead and snap my e-cig. I guarantee the last words you'll hear would be "Pick a window, you're leaving".
"The tee-totaller would absorb as much alcohol through evaporation, as you would inhale unabsorbed nicotine from a vaper's e-cig"
This was a concern, and I looked it up and ran some estimations. There's that little nicotine left over, I couldn't realistically be worried about it.
My major concern was the particulate matter of regular tobacco. My sinuses react quite aversely to it, so much so, the smell of tobacco instinctively sets me off as a "precautionary" measure. If the vaporiser is using tobacco flavoured juice, I'm going to react. If it's indoors, you're going to get hurt.
To show this is purely a phsycological reaction, I've been near fruity vapors, and actively sought it out to sniff some more.
But since tobacco isn't going to go away any time soon, I don't see my stance changing. I didn't choose to have a screwed up body, deal with it.
"Actually it's more like an alcoholic pouring vodka down my throat. If you think all of the nicotine is removed by your lungs then you're obviously less bright than we all thought."
How about you bother to read up on them, instead of being perfectly ok with vandalising people' property and assaulting them for no rational reason and resorting to throwing insults at someone you've never met to back up your argument, instead of a few facts.
"Given you're a smoker, that's a pretty low bar..."
Given that you're trolling a load of rubbish anonymously on forums, yours is lower.
That pesky steam!
In seriousness, there is a trace of glycerin/glycol vapour (same stuff as club smoke machine use, but staggeringly less) plus some of the 'flavours' are untested/unproven. The nicotine levels are again negligible (and contrary to the article you don't need nicotine at all, the bulk of the habit is hand to mouth). Nicotine is very similar to caffeine.
So don't worry about them polluting the office, opening the window or wearing cheap deodorant is probably more actually polluting. Cigarettes were banned on the basis of the tar and chemicals in secondhand smoke harming others and making their clothes smell. E-fags don't have tar, steam is just steam, there are no combustion products, so on material grounds there is not a compelling argument against them in the workplace TBH. Now that's out of the way, are we actually really upset about the smoke, or just that we want to point out faults in others when we may crack knuckles/clip nails/keep a messy workspace/be less confident/whatever?
What's the real reason for the complaint? I initially objected as a gut feel based on the visual similarity with the great taboo of indoor smoking, then thought it through as an engineer, and now frankly who cares?
Yeah, and you've probably got a cold and any number of other viruses.
Given the statistically non-significant amount of nicotine in e-cigarette exhaled vapour, overall human health would probably be improved far more if we banned you. Or any other human being. Or diesel fuel.
But we don't. And it helps smokers not to produce something that can definitely kill you.
This whole thing is like building a footbridge over a busy road to keep pedestrians safe only to find some prick with a placard bitching about the fact that very, very occasionally, people jump off bridges.
@jake
No, i'm trying to stop. I tried patches. I tried cold turkey. I tried pretty much everything. And I still smoke because it's a fucking addiction. I tried hypnosis, they told me I can't be hypnotised. I tried acupuncture, they told me I was perfectly aligned, whatever that means. Basically, nothing works.
This has cut my cigarette intake in half in three weeks. I'm hoping that in three months, it will have cut it to none. And then I can move away from the e-fag because why not?
I want out, Jake. Stop trying to set fire to my ropeladder.
"I want out, Jake. Stop trying to set fire to my ropeladder."
Do you actually want to stop, or do you feel like you should want to, due to peer pressure?
I found that when I actually wanted to, for myself, that it became a lot easier. I was fed up with the fact that it makes you smell like a tramp and cough like a WWI gas victim in the morning, and so decided to stop. Because it was me that was the motivating factor, I didn't feel like "cheating", as I'd always know. The difference was night and day.
Anyway, it's established that there are two separate issues- the chemical addiction and the habituation. I feel that anything too cigarette-like is just a crutch, and leaves them too associated. Thus, I went for a "divide and conquer" approach, tackling them separately.
For the chemical addiction, I went for patches. Holy hell, you get a bit wrecked at first, though. Beware around machinery, driving etc.. I found myself zoning out a bit. Following the instructions and stepping the size down over time let me get rid of the chemical addiction.
The habituation was actually a bit harder- the times you normally light up.. Killers are often after a meal, when you get out of work, etc.. The way around that was to have other things to do- even if it's horribly boring like doing the washing up (bleh). Hell, little reward activities can work too, like a a quick game of $mobilegame or whatever. Just don't leave yourself unoccupied at those key times, when you're weak and can fall under the spell of the Dark Side.
The funny thing is that I was always very discrete, not on of those horrible, lairy militant smokers who clumps in doorways and hurls abuse at people, and always tended to do it outside to avoid my clothes smelling.. So, after I warned a colleague that I might be cranky because I was a couple of weeks into giving up smoking, she was shocked- having never suspected that I even did.
Anyway, maybe it's an alternative approach, if simulating the oral fixation of a cigarette and associating it with the chemical hit in such an obvious way continues to prove transparently counter-productive :)
Good luck.
> Do you actually want to stop, or do you feel like you should want to, due to peer pressure?
No, I don't want to but my son is seven months old. I've kept it to "at work only - may include commute" since he was born which is hard enough but there's no way I'm risking his health.
So I have to stop.
"No, I don't want to but my son is seven months old. I've kept it to "at work only - may include commute" since he was born which is hard enough but there's no way I'm risking his health."
Yeah, far better to smoke on your own and orphan him when he's 7 years...
Having been there and done that I can categorically state that all you need to do is stop. Never take another puff. No one makes you buy cigarettes. If you truly want to stop then you will. The crutch of cutting down or nicotine replacement products does not work well because the only way of removing the addiction is to stop ingesting the chemicals that cause and feed the addiction. Yes, it's stressful. Yes, it's difficult.
Grow some cahones, man up and take responsibility for your own actions.
This has cut my cigarette intake in half in three weeks. I'm hoping that in three months, it will have cut it to none. And then I can move away from the e-fag because why not?
I want out, Jake. Stop trying to set fire to my ropeladder.
If this is working for you, then go for it. That said, because the devices look and behave a lot like cigarettes, probably best to treat them as such — go outside to have one. If you're outside or in somewhere well ventilated, it won't be a problem, but in enclosed, less ventilated spaces, it could be seen as a problem (even if it is only steam).
My big objection to regular cigarettes is the smell of them … they stink, and some smokers generate quite thick clouds with them. If there's a good breeze though, this gets dispersed quickly, and so is less of a problem. I'm not sure how much the e-cigarettes produce relative to their analogue cousins, maybe less, in which case this is a step in the right direction.
Stuart Longland - compared to ciggies, the smell is nothing and it dissipates in seconds. I've asked people around me this question before and it's always the same issue, it's just not an issue.
I've just done a straw poll with my colleague, and other than the sound of inhalation, he can't tell my smell that I've been using it. And he's six feet away from me. I'm chugging on menthol at the moment from a dual coil atty.
Certainly I can now smell people smoking in other cars in traffic - when I'm hammering my own one in the car.
It's really a non-issue, I'm happy to report.
Steven R
Yeah - so does alcohol - lets ban that too. Now what shall we call the campaign - oh yeah lets call it Prohibition 2.0 coz it worked out so well first time round.
Can't you nazis get it through your heads - it's my human system and if I want to fuck it up that's my choice.
"Can't you nazis get it through your heads - it's my human system and if I want to fuck it up that's my choice."
Do it in a cupboard and we'll leave you alone. Do it next to us and we will bother you about it. That doesn't make us Nazis, that just means we don't like what you're doing. I wouldn't like you sitting next to me if you shit your pants so why would I like you blowing your crap in my face?
Drinking alcohol sensibly is not the same as this since none of the alcohol ends up near other people. A drunk pissing on your desk is more like what;s happening here. There may not be alcohol in it but I still don't want it anywhere near me...
No matter how you you look at it, these narcotic drug delivery systems are evil.
No, that's how you look at it because "evil" is an ethical position, not a material scientific fact.
Provable harm is required before banning something. The e-cigarettes may annoy you, but they cause you no harm. Therefore you have no reasonable to stop other people enjoying them, any more than you can ban people for being left-handed.
Now take your nasty intolerant Puritan little self off and go and cry in the corner.
"but they cause you no harm"
Yes, and no. Yes, they cause me no harm because I stopped smoking a quarter century ago and see no need for a surrogate. No, because when they are used in my vicinity, I can feel the affects of the nicotine.
Nasty & intolerant? Pardon me while I fart in your general direction.
"No, because when they are used in my vicinity, I can feel the affects of the nicotine"
You might feel something, Jake - more likely a placebo/nocebo effect, or just impotent rage that someone else can enjoy their habit without, to the best of our knowledge from *reputable* research that has been done, seriously harming themselves or those around them - but I can tell you now, if you can detect the remnant nicotine in exhaled vapour (somewhere between 5-15% of the original inhalation dose), then smoking a cigarette would make you vomit/faint, by volume of nicotine.
Hope that helps.
I'd love to see a double-blind test where two people take turns to sit next to you, one smoking an e-cig and the other a non-nicotine containing water vapour emitter and see if you can actually tell the difference or whether it's actually just all in your head.
A point that I *do* remember is that I and my friends used to meet in a pub and even though we sat in the "non-smoking" area, I would always leave there with my clothes *reeking* of cigarette smoke. Now, with e-cigs, there's no such problem and also no "excuse me, just got to nip out for a fag..." hassles.
If people want to indulge in this sort of thing and it's not affecting me, why should they not be allowed to do it?
Entirely possible, you can buy or even mix your own nicotine-free eliquid. You can also get flavourless nicotine (and nic-free) liquid if you want to eliminate flavours from such an experiment. Two identical ecigs, one with VG+PG+nic and one with just VG+PG, indistinguishable by eye, the vaper may notice the difference in taste or "throat hit" but bystanders would be none the wiser. Seems like a simple test to perform to me.
@Steven Raith
@Graham Marsden
You'll never convince Jake. Ever.
He'll also conveniently ignore the fact that in all juices the easiest to absorb ingredient is (by design) the nicotine. This means the overwhelming majority of nicotine is absorbed when inhaled.
IT's PG/VG vapour being exhaled, not nicotine. He's never been one to let inconvenient truths and facts get in the way of his opinion though.
Anyone who says they 'feel the effects" of nicotine in exhaled vapour is delusional or suffering from psychosomatic symptoms.
Nicotine is absorbed extremely fast and E-cigs deliver it less efficiently than cigarettes (something to do with particle size) so the quantity of Nicotine in exhaled vapour is effectively nil.
Hey Jake, how do you know there was nicotine in the vapour?
When I used one to give up (13 years ago now) I ended up making my own refills from glycerol because the cartridges were so damned expensive (even the ones without nicotine).
I don't think I was mixing it right either coz I got a couple of wicked headaches from it - it was all a bit trial and error back then.
"No matter how you you look at it, these narcotic drug delivery systems are evil."
I can look at it in plenty of ways that aren't evil.
What you are saying though is that your drugs of choice are fine, and everyone else's are evil. If you do happen to be tee-total and don't consume other mind-altering drugs like caffeine and chocolate then I might consider retracting my statement, but until then you're just being a massive hypocrite.
Cliff, I understand your point of view, but as an ex smoker I feel that allowing people to smoke them in the office is akin to holding company meetings in a bar when you know that half the staff were once alcoholics.......
I have given up for a few years so they dont bother me too much but anyone that is trying to give up will constantly see someone holding a cigarette and that can become a real problem ( OK, I know that they are not real cigarettes but you know what I mean)
Personally I feel that everyone should be encouraged to give up smoking and that cigarettes should be completely forbidden. Removing cigarettes from Society will do nothing worse than making Philip Morris less rich.... ( The ex-smopers money will always be spent, just on different things)
the highly addictive nature of nicotine
Don't forget the highly addictive nature of coffee. Or doughnuts. Perhaps those should be banned too?
No doubt some twitchy Puritan is already working on the campaign. They won't be happy until it looks like Utah.
I've had comments from ex-smokers before about my e-cig, and without exception, they've either been highly positive about it, or if they're currently a bit raw from stopped recently, they've been fine with me doing it out of sight/around a corner/in the kitchen/etc.
If they're ex-smokers, they'll appreciate that getting off the tabs isn't easy, and that anything that helps you, me, or any other smoker who wants to stop is a good thing.
If they don't, they're puritan fucks and should have that pointed out to them.
I tried e-cigs one weekend about two years ago, never looked back - I have a ciggy every few months to remind myself why I stopped, they're fucking awful.
Menthol and strawberry at 18mg through a dual-wick clearomiser for me, ta!
Steven R
Banning cigarettes & tobacco will NOT stop its consumption. People that want to smoke, will buy them on the black market. Which would drive an already dangerous product underground, into the hands of criminals. Not to mention the Tax revenue taken away from the Government.
So, how exactly would banning tobacco be of any benefit? A couple of examples...
1. Alcohol prohibition in 1920s USA. Government lost tax revenue, clubs and bars went underground, and criminal cartels such as the Mafia illegally imported booze & reaped all the rewards. The ban funded organised crime & expanded their operations. Smart move, eh?
2. Banning cannabis has been a tremendous success, hasn't it? The amount of money & Police resources wasted due to this "war on drugs" is outstanding, and yet weed is grown on a large scale, by criminal gangs employing illegal immigrants in rented properties, in every town and city in the UK. Yet the evidence suggests that, as long as it's not abused, weed is no more dangerous than alcohol.
Therefore, I am suggesting that you seriously think about the implications of banning tobacco products, which have been available, legally, in the UK for over 4 centuries. If you want yet another potentially dangerous product falling into the hands & control of organised crime, great :) But common sense will dictate that an outright ban will NEVER happen.
If having your car windows down while stopped in traffic for 10 minutes is on a par with having a smoke, I really don’t think the water vapour is something to worry about, unless you are the type of person who holds their breath when near a boiling kettle.
It’s like complaining about the amount of sugar in blue smarties while drinking cans of Redbull …
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