I have a friend who has been using an e-cigarette for 10+ years. He doesn’t seem any less addicted to smoking as back when he was using old-fashioned cigarettes.
I understand e-cigarettes are supposed to help you quit… but has anyone actually had success with them? Or, is it more like trading one vice for another?
It helps most in the sense that it’s not at all as unhealthy. Anything you hear to the contrary is simply scaremongering and terrible advice. Almost half of smokers die from smoking related illness where I live. The negative health effects and oxidative damage from pyrolysis and from vapourizing a liquid are simply not comparable.
Current e-cig user here.
Honestly, as a smoker, it’s a godsend. The smoke goes away so quickly, it has higher nicotine than cigarettes when purchased the RIGHT way, and since I can now smoke inside, I can puff on it all day every day as I work from home!
In all seriousness, it’s worse imo. It sets the precedent from the 50s of smoking EVERYWHERE and now without any of the negative outward effects like smell or yellowing of the teeth/walls.
It’s honestly made my addiction worse. To each their own for sure, but in my experience it just made my bad habit SLIGHTLY healthier, but much more accessible.
It requires a significant amount of willpower to break the addiction, but for those of us that do not, definitely do not pick this up. It will not help. If you have that willpower, it is useful.
There are tons of harmful chemicals and tar you aren’t inhaling by vaping, instead of by combustion with traditional cigarettes. Not sure if they’re worse.
Depends - it can be used to quit by controlling and lowering the nicotine content, but it could just be used as a harm reduction method.
While certainly not healthy, it’s significantly much less bad for you than smoking.
I actually did quit using them. But it wasn’t a case of switching from cigs to vapes and then just quitting a few weeks later.
I smoked for over 30 years and then moved over to vaping. I then vaped for about 7 years before finally managing to quit. That was 557 days ago now.
I will say coming off the vapes did seem easier than coming off cigarettes which I’d never managed to do previously,
Whether the vapes actually helped me quit I can’t say for sure but when I was on them I didn’t stink of smoke and I’m sure they are probably more healthy than actual cigarettes and they’re much cheaper so I look at the time vaping as a positive comparatively speaking.
As someone who smoked a pack a day until last year and switched to an e-cigarette yeah, they can definitely be helpful in quitting. I have a few friends who switched over and slowly lowered the nicotine levels until they had non nicotine and kept it for the oral fixation. Personally I switched just because it’s a lot cheaper, and I don’t have plans to lower nicotine anytime soon, but I’ve even felt better using just the ecig compared to normal smokes.
He’s not smoking.
Pure nicotine is about as harmful as caffeine. Some people will want to quit it altogether, others find it useful. It’s all good.
According to my cardiologist, nicotine is the part of cigarette smoke that has a detrimental effect on the heart and arteries. Way more harmful than caffeine.
Make him give you the evidence. Here’s a systematic review of nicotine side effects and heres the RCP report on vaping.
Physicians who spread fear about vaping are killing people. They should go back to medical school and pay more attention in their epidemiology classes.
Physicians who spread fear about vaping are killing people.
A major point of that article is that the
health draftsdeaths from vaping in the US are caused by substances that are banned from the UK. So maybe doctors in the UK might be spreading false info, but it sounds like doctors in the US might have a point!That’s not true at all. There was one US cannabis outlet using vitamin E acetate as a diluent in error. It’s lethal when heated and not a standard component of any e-cigarette anywhere at all.
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It can help, yes. But if you don’t want to quit, it will just be trading one for the other.
What I can say is that vaping is at the very least, less harmful than cigarettes. You don’t get a lot of the combustion by-products you do with cigarettes.
It’s not less addictive, and I’m not going to claim it’s healthier, just less harmful. Addiction to nicotine in any form is still an addition. Vaping doesn’t do anything different than cigarettes when it comes to nicotine. Its still an addictive substance, and the only real benefit you get from vaping (in terms of quitting) is detailed control over the concentration of nicotine in what you’re ingesting. This won’t matter if instead of vaping for 5 minutes per hour at 6mg, you’re vaping 10 minutes per hour at 3mg.
In the end, it’s entirely up to you. Vaping is a tool that can give you the control to accomplish the task of quitting, if that’s what you’re intending to do. If you’re just looking for something less harmful, but don’t have the drive to actually try to quit, it’s just going to substitute one for the other.
My gf quit cigarettes for me. switched from cigs to vapes overnight.
she still vapes and refuses to reduce the nicotine levels but it’s almost certainly much better for both of us than cigs
