vaping's vibes problem is killing people

You might believe in misinformation!

this is the fruity one they have (couldn’t find the original sadly, have the shitty edited version)

Because of the rule of “if you had to explain it 3 times you should write it down”, I am forced to write this blogpost.

The misinformation problem

I have had 3 conversations now where I’ve asked people out of the blue: “do you think smoking is less bad for you than vaping” and all of them responded with some form of “I’m not sure“. They’re not alone, apparently nearly half of the UK population (44.8%) don’t realize e-cigarettes are much less harmful than smoking.

So, you should know: the scientific consensus on vaping being healthier than smoking is incredibly strong. Vaping has basically zero deaths associated with it.¹ Since you’ve started reading this post, about 10 people passed away due to smoking.

If you are a smoker reading this and you think vaping might help you quit: you should seriously consider it.

Notice what I’m NOT saying:

• Vaping is not bad for you

  • It might be! You know what we do know? How bad smoking is for you, it’s really really really bad for you. Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year. They reduce your life expectancy by 10 years.

• The long-term health effects of vaping are 100% known.

  • They’re not, but if they were even 10% as bad as smoking, we would unequivocally know by now, obviously. People have been vaping for about 2 decades now. Our current best guess is it’s about 5% as bad.

• Millions of high schoolers vaping is not a problem

  • It obviously is! We almost won the war on nicotine but now vapes and zyns has shifted the tide in nicotine’s favor. Nicotine addiction is super bad for developing brains and is linked to all sorts of bad stuff! We should make sure these kids do not move to smoking and try to stop the next generation from getting hooked on nicotine in the first place.

• Vaping is the best way to quit smoking

  • I also don’t know! I’ve read studies saying that it’s very promising, I’ve read stuff that it’s not as or just about as effective as other forms of nicotine replacement. Frankly I don’t care! I know people personally for who it works wonders and I am glad they have access to it.

• <insert thing that is bad about vaping that is not relevant to my claims here>

  • yeah! I didn’t say that!!!!!!

The vibes problem

Otherwise reasonable people tend to (quite aggressively) believe that “vaping is cringe”. These are good friends that otherwise have very reasonable beliefs. But when vaping comes up they all of a sudden pretend like making fun of people because their addiction smells of lollipops has no downsides.

This attitude is not harmless! The set of people who were vaping and started smoking because vaping is “cringe” is non-zero. If I were to guess a number, it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands. That is a public health tragedy!!!

That’s it. That’s the blogpost.

1. There was the whole vitamin E in counterfeit THC vape debacle. That’s different, none of that was ever in regulated nicotine products. I’m also not counting batteries exploding