FDA To Regulate E-Cigarettes Like Tobacco (cnn.com) 342
An anonymous reader writes: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have been all the rage lately, as many claim they are healthier than traditional tobacco cigarettes. Since they are so relatively new to the market, the government hasn't been able to effectively study them and determine whether or not they should be regulated like traditional cigarettes and smokeless tobacco -- until now. The FDA has released their final rule Thursday, broadening the definition of tobacco products to include e-cigarettes, hookahs, pipe tobacco, premium cigars, little cigars and other products. "Going forward, the FDA will be able to review new tobacco products not yet on the market, help prevent misleading claims by tobacco product manufacturers, evaluate the ingredients of tobacco products and how they are made, and communicate the potential risks of tobacco products," the agency said. The new rule will go into effect immediately. According to CDC data from 2014, e-cigarette use among adults has gone up about 12.6%. People under the age of 18 will no longer be able to buy these products with the new regulations, and the products will be required to be sold in child-resistant packaging. In addition, the government will now be able to have a say in what goes into the products. Previously, there was no law mandating that manufacturers tell you what you are inhaling when trying their products.
The feds have zero authority to do this... (Score:4, Insightful)
The federal government has ZERO authority to do this. Nowhere in the US Constitution are "substances" allowed to be regulated at the federal level. And because of that, the 9th and 10th Amendment prohibit such regulation.
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I quite like my paint being lead free.
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wonder where the Fed is on water and lead
“That represents nearly 20% of the water systems nationally testing above the agency’s ‘action level’ of 15 parts per billion,” according to the story"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/03/17/its-not-just-flint-lead-taints-water-across-the-u-s-the-epa-says/
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Then buy only certified lead free paint. But then again, importing Paint from China you might be getting lead in it again, but that's okay, since RACISM! (or profit, free trade or ....)
BTW, when you moved into your older home, you did test the paint for lead, right? If not, you really don't care about being lead free (lots of older homes have lead paint in them, legacy) I tested my home, not so newer one, and it had lead in it. Made the cleanup part of the escrow. The realtor was shocked, and the house beca
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My current home was built in 2009 so I haven't thought about getting it tested.
And the one before that was more or less a prefab. I was told it was lead free but I never had it tested.
Re:The feds have zero authority to do this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Um.... not all laws are in the constitution. There is nothing in the constitution about murder or manufacturing pipe bombs in your garage either but yet somehow the federal government found the authority to create laws about those.
Re:The feds have zero authority to do this... (Score:5)
Federal Government shouldn't be trying people for murder, since that is a local jurisdiction thing. IMHO. I could see exceptions for Federal land in rare occasions.
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The federal government has ZERO authority to do this
Would you care to place a wager on that?
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You might have a case if this substance was not sold or sold only within one state. As it stands the Commerce Clause [wikipedia.org] applies.
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Ahh, yes, the "We didn't mean any of these other words, let the Federal government run amok" clause.
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e-cigarettes come in the no nicotine variety also being mainly just flavored and scented water vapor. It's still stupid to inhale it over and over but does not necessarily mean that it's drugs.
Water? (Score:2)
Not exactly water vapor...
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glycerol and other stuff used for scent and flavor also and I seriously doubt it's any better for you than a cigarette if not actually worse nicotine added or not or even if it was only water.
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I vape in my living room. I assure you, it is not a public space. How do you justify regulating something I use in my own home? Something, BTW that has never been shown to be harmful.
And as for addictive, nicotine without the MAOIs found in cigarettes is a lot less addictive (closer to caffeine). Did you know that just walking past a coffee pot exposes you to a tiny amount of a mildly addictive substance?
Re:The feds have zero authority to do this... (Score:4, Informative)
No, nicotine has never been shown to cause cancer. If you actually read the reports that say otherwise, you'll invariably find them talking about nicotine consumed by smoking or chewing tobacco directly. NOT studies where purified nicotine was consumed.
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You can't get more American than that.
Unless you add "We're fat and shit at geography".
Forcing out smaller players? (Score:2, Interesting)
E-cigarettes should be regulated, but I've read that the new regulations require that manufacturers go through a testing procedure that will cost over one million dollars. Right now, there's a lot of competition by smaller companies. This may force out all of the smaller players.
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Sounds like standard practice to me.
No way should the barriers actually be that high however i don't like the idea of them being able to sell just anything they mixed up in their basement either.
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There's a huge gap between "selling something that's mixed up in their basement" and "mandatory testing which costs 1 million dollars".
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Yes proper regulation would be somewhere in between.
But still pretty far away from million dollar testing.
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The industry has been entirely unregulated for years. In spite of that, there have been very few incidents and none of them because of bad ejuice vendors. The reputable vendors have never been willing to sell to minors. There have been a very few potentially dangerous designs that have been fixed through customer feedback and voluntary recalls.
Even the Chinese e-juice has proven reasonably safe.
The ecigs teens have gotten their hands on have been mostly the couple of brands sold in gas stations (made by (dr
I wonder.... (Score:3)
Who has a lot to gain from making a prohibitively costly barrier to entry for small vendors?
Maybe the same ones who benefited form the outlawing of "flavored" type cigarettes that were sold by niche retailers.
Big tobacco is alive and well, the pitiful thing is that now they are doing their bidding with full public support.
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I've read that the new regulations require that manufacturers go through...
Citation please. They may only need to list the ingredients in order of content to comply.
Better Link (Score:4, Informative)
Vox has a better rundown [vox.com] of the FDA's announced regulations.
The good news is that it's not armageddon for vapers and sellers:
the FDA is allowing companies to continue to sell their products for up to two years while they submit their applications to the agency — and for another year during the approval process.
When I smoke, I still smoke cigs. But I have lots of friends who vape. Personally, I find the propylene glycol vapor more irritating than tobacco smoke.
Re: Better Link (Score:2)
You can use a pure vegetable glycerin base instead. It's not as popular as it's a little thicker and doesn't create great clouds of visible smoke but, it's a lot easier on the lungs.
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Posting anon because mod.
Sorry, you're wrong. It's the other way around. VG makes much more vapor, and it is preety much popular nowadays. Three years ago liquids were mainly PG or 50/50 mix, nowadays most liquids are much higher VG.
So, VG: more vapor, softer; PG: better flavouring, more ''throat-hit''
There is only one reason they are doing this (Score:3)
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death fixes all taxes (for you atleast)
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That's strange, they can tax the fuck out of it without forcing the companies to prove that their mix doesn't make formaldehyde when vaporized.
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So they can tax the fuck out of it. Can't have something stealing tax dollars from uncle sugar now can we?
What makes you think they couldn't do that before? The FDA has nothing to do with that. Hell the feds or any state could tax butternut squash 10000% tomorrow with the passing of a single law, no FDA required.
Net effect (Score:3)
Thus does the FDA demonstrate with the occasional bad rule the ability to cost more lives than it saves.
Go after charlatans, sure. But this needing permission to move slows thing down, which means more deaths as alternatives are delayed.
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the FDA is allowing companies to continue to sell their products for up to two years while they submit their applications to the agency — and for another year during the approval process.
They [vox.com] are not slowing down anything.
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I don't vape (or smoke, for that matter), but you're crazy if you don't think this will negatively impact alternatives to smoking.
From the very article you're citing:
What about non-"tobacco product" vapes? (Score:3)
Re:What about non-"tobacco product" vapes? (Score:4, Insightful)
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My vape uses medical grade nicotine in the liquid, I wouldn't call that a tobacco product. Even then the nicotine is completely optional, I've been decreasing how much is added to my liquid slowly and expect to completely wean myself off nicotine eventually. Vaping is how I quit smoking tobacco products (cigarettes) and thanks to a locally owned vape shop chain I now spend hundreds less on my nicotine addiction with much less danger to my health. (yes there is still the danger of the flavor additives and nicotine itself) So are they now going to regulate vapes and liquids? It sure looks like it...
Well then they could just regulate it as a drug then I guess, since it's not a product of naturally grown tobacco. That's what they do with a lot of other drugs that have natural as well as synthetic sources.
I agree with the FDA there needs to be regulation so that the public knows what they are buying and that it's safe (particularly when it comes to the flavor ingredients which, while GRAS for ingestion does not mean they are safe to inhale). But they really need to not make it so financially burdensome
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I pay the FDA to make sure the food and drugs I consume are safe. I pay them to do periodic inspections on that "medical grade" nicotine, PG, VG and flavors to make
Re:What about non-"tobacco product" vapes? (Score:4, Informative)
The flavorings are already food grade and are made primarily as food additives. That should cover the whole cyanide thing. Plenty of food, BTW is imported from China and the FDA hasn't seen fit to get involved there.
The nicotine I buy comes from the U.S. and includes the analysis sheet for the batch.
Meanwhile, god only knows what's in an air freshener, even the ones that are misted into the air.
I'm not sure I'm ok (Score:2)
most states where doing this. (Score:2)
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Re: most states where doing this. (Score:2)
Nicotine gum and patches are 18+ in almost every state.
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Nicotine gum and patches are 18+ in almost every state.
Which is weird in itself. As stimulants go, nicotine is somewhere around caffeine. But coffee and caffeinated drinks are not regulated... well, at least not for caffeine content (some are for sugar content).
BIG Vape (Score:2)
well (Score:2)
Lies and Damn Lies (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically big corporations are using this legislation to take over the e-cig market. If you have to pay the FDA $2 million to approve a device, then that's the end of everyone but a few big players. And that's how our government works. This has absolutely nothing to do with the actual health of people. It's all lies.
Tobacco user for 30 years switching to vaping (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been on one form of tobacco or another since I was 14 years old, and am now 49. I gave vaping a try about two months ago because even knowing no science, one can deduce that inhaling water (glycerine) vapor must be healthier than inhaling the fumes produced by the combustion of once-living dried plant matter. Upon further research, I could find NO evidence proving that any of the chemicals in (most brands of) vape e-liquids are harmful. Glycerine/glycol, nicotine and flavor, and that's it. So it started to seem, hypothetically, that I need not give up the chemical I have been addicted to and have enjoyed since my teens, but I can give up ALL of the bad crap in tobacco (I used chewing tobacco for 10 years as well), and all of the carcinogens and smoke and ashtrays and constant burns and lighters and coughing and smell and ash etc,, and then even save a butt-ton of money as well?? Too good to be true!! I thought if this were truly the case it would be all over the news and immediately show the potential to curb, if not eliminate, the two leading causes of death in the US, right?? Weird...
So I before I switched to vaping about two months ago I smoked 2-4 full-size premium cigars a day. Since I switched I have not had a single cigar or even a hit off of one. My lungs definitely feel better and I can breathe deeper, I have more energy, and have lost weight. No kidding. In every aspect I feel as though I have quit smoking. No more smell at home or ashes all over the car. Yes, I'm still getting the addictive chemical, but I feel as though my end-of-life clock is jumping ahead by days and months since I switched to vaping. But guess what, I'm still a smoker according to this ruling. My e-liquid nicotine levels have been reduced to 1/3 what they were when I started, and I'm about ready to go down another notch. Eventually I may be just be inhaling flavored steam. Still a smoker?
I agree about restricting access to anything with nicotine, and even the hardware (just like head-shops), but I think it will need to change soon enough once the science comes out about the difference in health risk data when comparing the two. Otherwise I have a feeling big insurance will twist this in a way to maximize profits while reducing claims, just like Uncle Sam. Just a hunch.
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Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple question (Score:4, Informative)
How about personal freedom. How about you have a right to your own body. If you can abort a fetus certainly you can decide whether or not to smoke a cigarette.
Its not like they are going to ban them, so you will be able to exercise that right. They simply will put in a age limit, which makes sense, and require warning labels.
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally this further likens e-cig vaporizers to tobacco use. There is no smoke, nothing is combusted so there are no dangerous oxides as found in smoke, most of the flavorings have no odor. Even the nicotine (which has health benefits as well as negatives including mental function and concentration) is only found in parts per million in exhaled vapor directly captured from the mouth of a user. If you spread that into the volume of a small half bathroom and hang out in the room chain vaping for hours it is still not even enough to be able to measure it and there are higher concentrations in safe drinking water. Unlike tar from tobacco vegetable glycerin is readily absorbed by the lungs and leaves no lasting damage. The only way you'll build it up faster than you absorb it is to chain vape one of the new sub ohm rigs popularized by vendors because they go through the liquid faster and simply stopping for a day or two would allow the body to catch up.
The VG/PG used for the bases for the liquid are substances approved by the FDA to treat people with severe lung conditions and in asthma inhalers by the FDA. The devices themselves operate in the same manner as the FDA approved vaporizers used to deliver those drugs (although they are far superior with modern electronics since they don't have a FDA granted monopoly with FDA approval costs barring entry to competition).
I would be fine with independent consumer safety testing being required as in automobiles and toys. After all, who is to say we can trust the Chinese companies producing the atomizers and heating elements used in these devices not to be deviating from the specifications and using dangerous chemicals that aren't properly cleaned in the their manufacture. But this kind of regulation is going to make the irrational and uninformed fear mongering being spread now a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Additionally, I'd also point out that you could say the same about local restaurants. Food is not just consumed orally but also exposed to heat and inhaled. Not just the food you ordered but all the food being prepared in the space of the restaurant. We certainly do have
Re:Simple question (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely! I'm all about personal freedom.
I'd love the freedom to walk down the street without some douchebag walking in front of me and creating chemical clouds in my path. I'd love the freedom to enjoy the outdoors seating area at a cafe without having cigarette smoke mingling with my coffee. And I'd love the freedom to take a break every hour at work to do nothing.
I'm all for one's personal freedom to ravage one's own body with 7000 chemicals condensed into a single, burning stick. But I'd like the freedom from that being inflicted on me in public spaces, too.
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Actually no. You're not about personal freedom - you're about the exact opposite.
You're talking about taking away freedoms. You're talking about prohibiting people from doing what they want. You're wording it backwards to make it sound like it's your freedom, but it's not the case at all.
What you really mean is you want to control everything that happens in your surrounding environment to suit you, personally, at the expense of others.
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Some idiot's driving 200 km/h down a residential street? Then get out of the way!
Junkies are dropping syringes all over the beach? Then don't go to the beach!
All the grocers in your city block are importing contaminated food? Then grow your own!
Arguments like that are always quite stupid, and as a fellow Slashdotter (despite your ACing), I hope you don't need further explanation as to why.
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Junkies are dropping syringes all over the beach? Then don't go to the beach!
Where else am I going to find FREE syringes?
I harvest them, clean them up, and then re-sell them as "like-new" to the junkies on Venice Beach.
NOTE: Sarcasm lies above.
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Then go smoke in a hermetically sealed room.
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Your freedom ends where mine starts. I should have the ability to go about my life without having people blowing clouds of smoke in my face while I eat, work, or walk down the street.
Having recently moved from a country that very nearly to abolished smoking to Europe, all I can say is this place stinks. Literally. And thats before I look at the mountain of butts smokers leave behind.
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Your freedom ends where mine starts.
That works the other way around too you know. By the way the exaggeration police are on their way.
It's a bit more complicated than that (Score:2)
Go read Fred Pohl's "The Space Merchants" and learn about "The Cycle of Consumption" and then think a little about
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Anyone who is pro-choice on abortion but not on cigarettes, weed, cocaine and heroin are hypocrites.
I think I own my own body. Therefore I can smoke if I so chose. (And I did as a teenager because I was so fu&&ing cool.)
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Now you know why I'm against universal health care. (and yes there's a problem with private health care as well). It means that people like you will use this stop whatever behavior you find distasteful.
Let's ban an@l sex as it leads to more diseases and will raise health insurance rates.
Let's ban eating meat, or drinking coffee or whatever crosses your mind as you enhance
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I know someone who died of Emphysema who enjoyed every last cigarette they smoked, to their dying day. It is a matter of perception, and why should you push your perception on other people who do not share it? If you're able to do that with cigarettes, can I do it with something you might like, like porn or bacon or ...??
Basically, who "perception" (aka Opinion) counts more, yours or mine?
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That means that other people, who partially pay your health care cost, can prohibit you from having a soldering iron in your house, and can prohibit you from skiing, rock climbing, or riding a bicycle.
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
Mine. Because I am partially paying the health care costs of the guy who died of emphysema.
And he's probably partially payed the health care costs of whatever you'll die from. Probably more than you too because of the massive tax on cigarettes.
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I hope your mom also enjoyed every dollar of taxpayer money it took for her end of life medical care as she sucked down those cigarettes.
And my original comment didn't mention smokers, did it? All I did was compare the perceptions of the benefits of smoking to a tobacco industry executive as opposed to the loved one of someone who choked to death from emphysema.
Re:Simple question (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope your mom also enjoyed every dollar of taxpayer money it took for her end of life medical care as she sucked down those cigarettes.
Yes. This is exactly the point. Thank you for making it.
PS – I note that you are a foe of a friend and that you have a FIVE-digit /. ID #. None of that matters to me. You made the point that strikes to the heart of the ethical question about which this whole thread revolves. Again, thanks.
Re:Simple question (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope your mom also enjoyed every dollar of taxpayer money it took for her end of life medical care as she sucked down those cigarettes.
In the UK one of the constant complaints about smoking is the cost to the taxpayer via the NHS of care for smoking related illness.
The problem with that is that cigarettes and tobacco are taxed to the hilt, with treasury income through taxation coming in at three to four times that of the typical direct costs to the NHS for treating smoking related illness.
So the government actually make a direct profit - I'm sure they would like the NHS costs to simply go away, but the common argument that smoking related illnesses costs taxpayers is essentially a fallacy.
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Informative)
Also if you have schizophrenia. Nicotine is an anti-psychotic [wikipedia.org], and can reduce the tremors caused by some other anti-psychotic meds. About 80% of people with schizophrenia smoke, compared to about 20% of the rest of the population.
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There are much better delivery systems for nicotine than smoking.
I can't imagine ending up on a ventilator is good for psychosis.
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You bet. Nicotine is actually a pretty cool drug. Smoking is the part that stinks.
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I would have to assume that the millions of people who smoke would also have a perception of the benefits of smoking
That would be a bad assumption. Most smokers start when they are minors, trying to fit in or look cool. By the time they realize that it is stupid, they are addicted. Most smokers do not like smoking and wish they had never started. If we can stop the tobacco industry from preying on shortsighted underage children, their business model will collapse.
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Hey! How do you get "authoritarian" from my comment? I don't want smoking to be illegal. I think cigarettes make a person look cool and sophisticated.
My comment was strictly about the fact that the benefits of smoking vary based upon perception.
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ummm, are you aware of the profits?
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ummm, are you aware of the profits?
Do you mean profits to lung-cancer surgeons, most of whom treat patients who are old enough to be on Medicare?
You really know how to spend those tax dollars effectively, don't you?
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Not really. Sugar plays a vital role in sports drinks, and moderate consumption of some alcoholic beverages has been shown to have a number of health benefits, including lower risk of heart disease.
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Why should tobacco or any form of cigarette be legal at all? There are no redeeming benefits of smoking.
You're asking the wrong question. You should be asking why it should be illegal. And if you find reasons that it should, any laws written should try to address those aspects with minimal interference in the personal choices of individuals.
Banning things just because you don't like them is not okay.
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
Tax it, sure. Regulate it, sure. Especially when it comes down to forcing manufacturers to accurately inform their customers of the contents of the product and any potential risks. Or putting restrictions on where and when people can imbibe the drug in question. (One can argue about what exactly those limits should be, but at least some things like "don't smoke in indoor public spaces" and "don't drink while driving" are perfectly reasonable.)
But outlawing tobacco (or any other popular drug) would just be a disaster for everyone.
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Wasn't this tried before with Alcohol? I think it was called "The Prohibition" or something. I wonder how that turned out...
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You want the government to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body?
How do you feel about pot?
"Redeeming benefits" is your opinion. Some people actually enjoy smoking, just because you don't doesn't make your opinion the only one that counts.
And this is part of the whole "the state can regulate what you do in your private home" thing that I hate about both leftwing and rightwing statists.
Re: Simple question (Score:2)
Yes, because the war on drugs has gone so well and drug use has been eliminated. *eye roll*
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only harmful part of cigarettes is the actual delivery mechanism (the smoke).
You do realize that people who use chewing tobacco get all sorts of oral cancers, right?
Since e-cigarettes don't have tobacco smoke (they use water vapor)
The hell they do. Most e-cig's use propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin as solvents to disolve and deliver the nicotine. Liquid for e-cig's rarely contains water, and even when it does it is still mixed with the other two solvents. Then there are the flavorings. And the artificial sweeteners to make the flavorings taste sweeter. And then you heat all that up and inhale it, and no one really knows for sure if it i
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You do realize that people who use chewing tobacco get all sorts of oral cancers, right?
From the tobacco content. Not from nicotine. Otherwise, nicotine patches and nicotine gum would be just as likely to give you cancer. I am not aware of any study linking nicotine itself to cancer. If you are, I would like to see it. And I don't mean this in the obnoxious "citation-needed" kind of way. It would really give me a perspective. But to be clear, the study has to link nicotine itself, and exclude any link to tobacco or the study would not establish what I am trying to learn.
And the artificial sweeteners to make the flavorings taste sweeter.
Which are presen
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From the tobacco content. Not from nicotine.
You had said cigarettes, so I assumed you had meant tobacco. I've found nothing conclusive one way or another about nicotine being a carcinogen, but it looks like it probably isn't.
Which are present in unregulated soft drinks.
But they aren't heated up, and I don't know what they decompose into.
I very highly doubt it. Given the small market share of e-cig producers, the tobacco companies have the ability to buy them out right if they thought they were a good future market.
They could buy out Blu and everyone else, but unless tobacco companies come up with a competing product, someone else will just make a new product line to fill the void. Nicotine can be sourced from labs. The rest of the market is dominated by product shipped
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Which are present in unregulated soft drinks.
The main health concern with e-cigarettes appears to be, from what I've heard, that we don't know anything about the long-term effects of inhaling the substances that were listed, and in particular after they've been heated to X temperature. While I agree it does appear that e-cigarettes are a lot safer than regular cigarettes, I think it's a good idea to be cautious on things like this.
Given the small market share of e-cig producers, the tobacco companies have the ability to buy them out right if they thought they were a good future market.
Yes, they've been doing so for some time now: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/to... [cbsnews.com]
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I think it's a good idea to be cautious on things like this.
Why? Isn't that the very definition of hypochondria? If all the harmful elements (I am using the word in plain-English sense rather than chemical sense) have been removed from the process and all the present elements have been studied were never shown to be harmful in these small concentrations, what justifies FDA regulation of the product?
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The only reason they are being treated with suspicion is the believe that they will de-stigmatize smoking of actual cigarettes.
I have no problem with regulating them, as they have been shown to be quite habit forming for the under-age. Allowing legal purchase only over a certain age makes complete sense to me. They are not being banned.
Of course, with regulation comes a good excuse to levy new taxes to pay for it.
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Re:Simple question (Score:5, Interesting)
Cigarette smokers are about 30% less likely to develop Parkinson's disease. It hasn't been studied for pure nicotine, but that would be the likely source of the neuroprotection.
This interests me because my father has Parkinson's, his brother had Parkinson's, and a member of my mother's family has Parkinson's. None of them have ever smoked.
I had my whole genome sequenced, and out of 10 or so known markers related to Parkinson's (according to my promethease.com full genome analysis), I have all but one (for early onset familial Parkinson's). So I'm probably screwed. Interestingly, I also have a marker that indicates my chances of developing Parkinson's is lower if I consume caffeine regularly (which I do). This might be the same one as for nicotine, although apparently that hasn't been studied genetically.
In any case, I'm hoping to reduce my chances of Parkinson's or at least delay it, so I have started chewing nicotine gum. I couldn't find any negative consequences of nicotine gum in the literature. As a bonus it seems to help me think better.
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I shouldn't be forced to breath someones secondhand nebulized nicotine patch any more than I should their secondhand cigarette smoke.
Why not? Once again, nicotine in extremely small doses has no harmful effects. In large doses it may overstimulate the heart (just as coffee in large doses can). But in small doses, which you inhale from second-hand vaping, nicotine (without the tobacco) does no more harm to you than let's say people farting. Should farting be illegal? I agree on the point of common courtesy, but is that really what FDA should be regulating?
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While you and I both agree that drugs aren't healthy, trying to micro-manage how other people use plants (tobacco, marijuana, etc.) with their body is just a little too Orwellian for my tastes.
i.e. One could attempt to make the same argument over alcohol ...
This quickly turns into a slippery slope argument. If history teaches us anything,
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So where is this upwind? They have been regulated into standing right outside the door under the drip so everyone gets to walk through a nice smoke wall when entering or leaving the building.
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They have been regulated into standing right outside the door under the drip
In California, smokers are required to stay at least 20 feet from the entrance. The last place I worked had had a yellow line painted on the sidewalk. You smoke inside that line, you got a written warning. On the second offence, you were fired. My current employer avoids the problem by refusing to hire smokers, which is totally legal. Smokers have no employment rights.
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