You are breathing in and out a vapor of vegetable oil smoke, albeit at a bit higher temp than the e-cigarette puts out, minus the artificial oil flavorings, (some natural, some made with alcohol), and minus the Nicotine that some, maybe many, e-cig users use, but certainly not all.
I am thinking about this because I see "e-cigs" being conflated with cigarettes, and they are not nearly the same thing, yet regulation is being discussed without considering what function they serve. They act as cessation devices like the patch, or gum for the vast majority of people. (But you don't snort those, I hope). And some people start with vaping pipes. Beats the living hell out of them picking up a cigarette. Vaping pipes should be given away by the health department and the vaping junkies could buy our own liquid.
This is working for a lot of people, on their own, cost borne by themselves, and they aren't shared like needles. If someone breaks this enterprise up by "regulating" it wrongly, people might decide it's not worth the trouble and just buy cigarettes. There are places that are banning e-cigs, who don't seem to make much distinction. If they screw this up, it's on them, and people might die that wouldn't have.
Then you wind up like North Idaho with their dental problem, cause by the little Republican cost-cutters, if I read that article correctly.
Vaping is not smoking. I use a "vaping pipe", yet they advertise it as an "e-cigarette" (sigh). It isn't. My vaping pipe is, like many others, an electronic device that heats with a wire and battery to create a vapor from a variety of ingredients. From honey to Stevia, to vegetable oil, to propylene glycol (that stuff your doctor gave you to drink before the colonoscopy. Note: If you haven't yet, and are lucky enough to make to 50 or so, you probably will get yours), perhaps distilled water, and many times nicotine. The ones you buy off the shelf at the convenience store have 0 to some percent nicotine, usually not refillable.
This stops the tars and other substances added on top of the nicotine that you get from commercial tobacco immediately. You wind up with a vapor you inhale and exhale made up of vegetable oil, scents of some kind, many times propylene glycol, and nicotine, the active drug. Somewhat like a pothead (Kinda but not really since nicotine will make you sell your sister, so much more dangerous and insidious. But what does the nicotine do that actually causes any disease, absent ALL the things we know DO know contribute to them, we don't know. They didn't study that, and they state that. Studies are underway).
(I haven't picked up a cigarette since I started this, first with no nicotine, which didn't work, to heavy nicotine. Haven't picked up an cig since I found that secret, and it's already decreasing (you can mix your own, too) . Analog cigarettes have crossed my mind - like now - the force is strong after so many years - but I have a smoking cessation device - my vaping pipe.) No more fags (from "to droop", a colloquialism for cigarettes) for me.
I don't know how many, but I have met a few others, because we form clubs. (No, seriously). More than a few users lower their nicotine level over time (this has been going on for several years). Some vary it, some quit. There are people who "vape" AND smoke. Geez. But most in my limited experience lower what they started with, some to just vegetable oil and chemical extracts like you buy at the perfume shop or cake place. (Though you probably don't snort them from a heated wire). A lot of women do this, though many more of them seem to progress away from the nicotine and just do it for the aroma, than guys do.
It's somewhat the same thing as making a grilled cheese, assuming you don't wear a breathing apparatus or mask. Especially if you just use white bread. You don't know where that's been.
Now that you know this, where we might differ is that my pipe has nicotine minus everything but the vegetable oil (like you may breath in while cooking) and most times a small percentage of pet safe anti-freeze (the propylene glycol), like what you were smelling from the cars around you at the light the other day. Or from a passing '89 Ford with a leaky hose (lots of those), or distilled water. Or honey.
If we need to regulate smoking harm-mitigation devices, should we consider not allowing people to walk without making them wear a mask within a hundred feet of cars that drive around you and your kids, since anti-freeze vapor could be, and probably is being released, but in larger droplets and not as hot a vapor? You walk through clouds of it, through puddles of it (that's the green stuff) in parking lots sprayed by vehicles who most likely use the more harmful anti-freeze, ethylene glycol (mostly in used cars) - my vapor is nothin' compared to what they are blowing around you and your baby, or baby to be.
This is grave stuff. Serious health consequences. I think we are at far greater risk from the cars spewing out heated anti-freeze than (I'm guessing) 6 million "vapers" spread throughout our population of 316 million people. From the automotive vapor you have to walk through to go anywhere at all, or the vapor from the guy sitting on the bench outside. (Or even inside - if you don't see me, you won't smell what I am doing. Well, maybe Mango. Like the office candle, except you don't, usually, snort the office candle, I hope. It's barely that smelly, if at all).
On top of this is a small industry that has cropped up, with whole families being supported by a store selling relatively innocuous stuff. If regulated wrongly, this could cost a few hundred thousand people their jobs, between all the retail stores, the mixing (e-juice) stores, ebay. (Just be sold in the pharmacy at Walmart - who wins that one?).
Don't equate this with smoking, please. Equate it with the patch, with gum, with eating food that's really bad for you, like McDonalds. (All these ingredients are labeled safe for this use by the FDA in different contexts, not always heated). Don't beat up on people trying to walk away from a highly addictive substance, many of whom have tried and failed more than once, but have now found something that immediately removes a great deal of the harm from what they were doing to themselves and others. You regulate it like cigarettes you might find more people just think it's easier to smoke.
Kids might start. Uh huh. That's what they said about pot, but that $2 billion in projected sales in Colorado is coming from the crowd outside the pot stores. They look like they are attending a reunion concert, and were at the first one decades ago, (and I bet they ALL didn't start last Tuesday when it opened).
If regulation means you don't sell to kids with out a prescription (better than a cig at any cost, remember) and leave the adults alone with this fairly benign thing, that would work.
Story about "e-cigarettes", an unfortunate term, in the LA Times.
...
The battery-operated devices heat nicotine, propylene glycol and glycerin into a vapor, which is inhaled by the user. Unlike conventional tobacco-burning cigarettes, e-cigarettes do not deliver poisonous tars or carbon monoxide.
Currently, the devices are regulated only by a smattering of local governments who have passed laws concerning their sale and use. The Food and Drug Administration has the legal authority to regulate e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, but has not yet done so. In the meantime, e-cigarettes have grown to become a $2-billion industry with no federal oversight.
Though the FDA says propylene glycol and glycerin food additives are "generally regarded as safe," the long-term effects of inhaling the substances are unknown. The FDA's Center for Tobacco Products has begun collecting reports of adverse effects from e-cigarettes, and those complaints include claims of eye irritation, headaches and coughing.
Here.
...
"...claims of eye irritation, headaches and coughing.".
I used to have the same symptoms at the milk packaging plant I worked at from leaking ammonia. It was part of the job, and may go on for an entire shit. Maybe we should shut down all the dairies?
Anyway, I thought the information might prove useful. Another computer is calling.
- - seriously, this place can't spell colonoscopy? - Can't spell Obama's either. (both underlined in Red, an epic and horrible error...).
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