Vaping Saves lives – Vaping is a less harmful alternative to cigarettes. A conventional cigarette contains more than 6,000 ingredients and, when burned, releases more than 7,000 chemicals, including arsenic, formaldehyde, lead, and tar. Traditional cigarette use is associated with cancer, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses. E-cigarettes and vaping products release nicotine without these harmful effects. The World Health Organization has estimated that tobacco use is responsible for 16 percent of all deaths in adults over 30 in Europe. Vaping can reduce the number of deaths as it is proven to be 95 percent less harmful than traditional smoking.
Nicotine is relatively harmless – Nicotine is a mild stimulant and poses negligible risks in healthy people. It enhances the performance of some tasks, especially those involving vigilance and rapid visual cue processing. It can also sharpen memory, concentration and attention in the short term.
Also, because nicotine receptors appear to regulate other receptor systems, its effect can vary according to one’s mood and level of arousal. A smoker who feels anxious or stressed can be calmed with nicotine, and a smoker who is tired will perk up with nicotine.
When nicotine binds to receptors in the brain, it releases dopamine, a primary neurotransmitter. Dopamine plays an important role in modulating attention, concentration, appetite suppression, and movement. Dopamine’s effects on movement could explain why nicotine has shown some promise in ameliorating a disorder like Parkinson’s disease in primates. In humans, in fact, large epidemiological series have found lower levels of the Parkinson’s in older smokers.
Despite contradicting reports E-cigarettes users are ex-smokers – Use of e-cigarettes is largely confined to current and ex-smokers and use amongst never smokers remains
low. Of the 3.6 million current vapers, just fewer than 2.4 million are ex-smokers; 1.1 million are current smokers; and just fewer than 200,000 are never smokers. Over time, the proportion of current electronic cigarette users who smoke tobacco has fallen, while the proportion who are ex-smokers has risen. (Figure 1) In 2021, 64.6% of current vapers were ex-smokers, while 30.5% also smoked (dual users).
This means that, in every year since 2017, most e-cigarette users have been ex-smokers, rather than dual users or never smokers. However, there are more ex-smokers (34%) than current smokers (13%) in the adult population. As a result, only 13.5% of ex-smokers vape compared to 16.9% of current smokers.
https://ash.org.uk/uploads/Use-of-e-cigarettes-vapes-among-adults-in-Great-Britain-2021.pdf
E-Cigarettes have reduced symptoms in COPD – E-Cigarette users had a marked reduction in COPD exacerbations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7549158/#:~:text=COPD%20EC%20users%20had%20a,observed%20in%20the%20control%20group.
E-Cigarettes are beneficial to people suffering mental illness – People with mental illness have higher smoking rates, smoke more heavily, are more nicotine dependent and have lower quit rates than the general population. As a result, smoking prevalence is declining more slowly than in the wider community, especially among people with serious mental illness (SMI).
Smoking cessation is an integral component of the management of patients with mental illness. Smokers with mental illness are more likely to die from a smoking-related disease than from their primary psychiatric diagnosis.
As well as the substantial improvements in physical health, quitting smoking leads to improved long-term mental health, better quality of life and reduced suicide risk. There are also huge financial savings, which are particularly relevant for many people with mental illness.
For smokers who are unable to quit with first line treatments and would otherwise continue to smoke tobacco, long-term substitution with a safer nicotine product could reduce tobacco-related harm.
Complete cessation of all tobacco and nicotine consumption is always the ideal goal. However, a large proportion of smokers living with mental illness are unable or unwilling to quit, therefore remaining at high risk of smoking-related death and illness.
In practice, tobacco harm reduction involves encouraging smokers to switch from high-risk combustible cigarettes to a lower-risk nicotine alternative such as vaping. The main purpose of tobacco harm reduction (THR) is to reduce (not necessarily eliminate) the harm from smoking. The aim is not to stop nicotine as nicotine in low doses causes little harm.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1039856221989096
Second-hand vapour is not as dangerous as second-hand smoke – Smoking e-cigarettes, also known as vaping, doesn’t produce tobacco smoke so the risks of passive smoking with conventional cigarettes don’t apply to e-cigs.
Research into this area is ongoing, but it seems that e-cigs release negligible amounts of nicotine into the atmosphere and the limited evidence available suggests that any risk from passive vaping to bystanders is small relative to tobacco cigarettes.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/passive-smoking-protect-your-family-and-friends/
Vapour doesn’t linger like cigarette smoke – Vape clouds produced indoors by e-cigarettes break down within SECONDS to allow air quality to return to normal levels (while it takes over 30 minutes for a traditional cigarette)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5983961/Vape-clouds-produced-e-cigarettes-break-seconds-takes-30-minutes-cigarette.html
Vaping is easier to cut down on over time – Most e-liquid ranges will give you a few different strength options to let you control your nicotine intake regularly. This means that you can gradually reduce your nicotine intake in a way that works for you, something that isn’t often possible with tobacco cigarettes. By taking your preferred nicotine concentration down bit by bit, you can more easily satisfy your cravings and start to reduce your intake overall, even vaping a 0mg nicotine kit, then eventually quit for good.
E-cigarettes are available in a variety of flavours – There are many different flavours of e-cigarettes, and the variety is one of the things that attract some people to switching to e-cigarettes.
E-cigarette toxicity tests have looked at flavoured e-liquids, and demonstrated relative safety compared to smoking.
Smokers who switch to e-cigarettes may adopt other healthy routines – Adult smokers who shift to using to e-cigarettes may have more chances to improve health and well-being, according to new research from the University of Washington.
The study monitored changes in health and social functioning among smokers at two stages in adulthood, age 30 and again at 39. Approximately one-third of smokers shifted to vaping some or all the time by age 39. This group reported better physical health, exercised more and had more active social engagement, the study found.
Very informative, and a very good read.