this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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That's like shooting up heroin to stop taking ibuprofen.
Vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking. Basically every study on vaping out of the US that produced negative findings either had their results grossly misrepresented by scientific news sources (heavy metal study), or the methodology was designed to produce harmful results (formaldehyde and glycerin studies).
The reporting on the heavy metal study conveniently left out that A) all of the levels were orders of magnitude lower than cigarettes, B) all of them were well below OSHA thresholds, C) some of them were even lower than atmospheric levels.
The formaldehyde study fired one of the old CE4 carts (the old pen style) at almost twice the recommended voltage for 90 seconds without adequate airflow.
The Glycerin breakdown study used 2x CE4 carts on different mods, and one semi-modern box mod and tank. For the carts, their starting voltage was at the top of the recommended range (~5v) and increased it by 5v for each subsequent step. The results obviously showed increasing harmful chemical production. The modern one was fired mostly within its normal operating range, and produced quantities so low that they had to dope the samples with 100mg of the harmful chemicals to they their GC/MS to even detect it, and there was no change with increased voltage. They had to create a separate graph just for that mod.
And don't even get me started on the popcorn lung or EVALI bullshit.
Edit: added more context.
You're right about all of that, but cigarettes can still make quitting easier for some people.
When I was quitting nicotine, I switched to vaping and my habit got worse for three reasons that are unique to vaping:
E-liqiuds concentrations let you get a much higher dose of nicotine in a single hit. I forget the exact numbers, but I remember doing the math on the back of an envelope back then and even 8mg/mL (the "standard" dosage) was nearly twice as much nicotine per puff out of my rig, the way I smoked it. I don't think most people go through all that so they probably don't realize what their nicotine intake is while vaping.
You can vape in way more places than you can smoke. Is it too hot, too cold, or too rainy outside? No problem, just hit the vape; you don't even have to get up from the couch. At work and having a craving? Just step into the bathroom and sneak a few quick puffs. Having a craving but don't to stink up your car? Just hit the vape, now it smells like grape.
Finally, once you get into a rhythm, a cigarette eventually ends, but a vape will keep supplying you nicotine until you get sick. By the time you run out of juice or the battery dies, you've consumed several packs worth of nicotine.
With cigarettes, you know there's a consistent amount of nicotine in each one, so you can track how much you've had and control your intake more precisely than with a vape. You can say, "I smoked four cigarettes yesterday, so let's try only three cigarettes today." It'sdifficultto do the same with a vape. Also, the inconvenience of having to smoke outside is helpful in resisting cravings.
Even though they're unquestionably less healthy, I definitely understand why some people find them helpful when trying to wean off nicotine. They were the way I started and, after many, many attempts, finally the way I quit. I'm retired from smoking for about five years now.
You can't directly compare nicotine content like that.
They're not the same substances. The form of nicotine in cigarettes is different than the freebase nicotine or nicotine salts used in vapes. Freebase nicotine is already about 25% as bioavailable as cigarettes, and nicotine salts is even less bioavailable than freebase. Cigarettes also have a lot of other chemicals that increase the bioavailability.
In general, people are pretty good at self-titrating to a certain nicotine level. Even if they go from a cloud chasing rig to a stealth vape, the actual amount of nicotine they consume is pretty consistent.
It's really easy to keep track of how much you're vaping. Many mods even keep track of how many hits you've taken, and disposables often come with a max hit count and display a percentage of liquid left. For me, I keep track by how long it takes before I fill my tank.
I have a coworker who occasionally forgets he is at work and he will legit pull out his vape and hit it at his desk.
There are no windows and the office is like 30 cubicles lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement
I feel the "Securitization" section of this article explains why a lot of the US is banning vaping but leaving tobacco alone.
Yup, the main reason the FDA killed the American vaping industry is because States had already spent the money they were expecting to get from tobacco tax revenue, and vaping was causing a significant drop.
But all it did was ensure the market was flooded with sketchy Chinese products. Before we had small businesses making eliquid in clean rooms and having independent third parties audit them.
You're not even thinking about next quarter, how selfish
Its gotten worse recently with more bans and enforcement driving these companies to now sell "Nixodine" vapes which use some proprietary synthetic nicotine replacement that has absolutely no data or independent testing done, which is very similar to all those knockoff THC products with awful side effects that were being sold before a majority of the nation legalized weed. Since all these regulations are about protecting revenue streams rather than actual improvements to public health, they're just making the problem different and worse rather than solving anything.
We went to a theatre show this week, and during intermission, I saw enough actual cigarettes to rival the 90s.
We speculated that the area had money and so the elite set smoked cigarettes instead of vaping. But you’ve offered new perspective.
There's been an absolutely massive disinformation campaign against vaping in the US. This is because states make a fuck ton of money on tobacco sales, and they often spend their projected earnings ahead of time.
Vaping was starting to make an impact, so they started panicking. A bunch of states tried to add a tax on eliquid, but the rates were always so ludicrous that they got shut down.
Then the FDA got the power to regulate tobacco products. Suddenly, everything related to vaping, including metal wire and batteries, were tobacco products.
They created the Pre-Market Tobacco Application process which required vaping manufacturers to submit every single SKU they had, at a cost of $250k-2m each. This meant that if you had one flavor in 0mg, 3mg, 6mg, and 12mg nicotine strengths, you had to submit 4 separate applications.
This effectively killed an industry run by small businesses who went out of their way to make sure their products were produced safely. Many had their own ISO clean rooms for manufacturing e-liquid. And the open hardware market that let you use refillable tanks.
That's the reason sketchy disposables flooded the market. The legit businesses closed their doors, but the dispo manufacturers knew the FDA wasn't going to go after every gas station.
Little fact - disposables are actually illegal.
However, the law defined disposables as just being nonrechargeable. Which is why every disposable vape you see will have a USB port on them.
I feel like most laws would take like 5 people and an hour of discussion to avoid shit like this
I don’t think you should inhale anything but a prescribed inhaler or nebulizer. That’s why god created gummies. But tax incentives make sense.
It's never been about public health.
LOL.. nicotine addict vapers believe what they want, because the brain says MORE NICOTINE.
https://keck.usc.edu/news/dna-damage-levels-similar-in-vapers-and-smokers-study-finds/
One important point I want to add is that vaping outside of the recommended guidelines does produce harmful chemicals. That is with an old burner unit on refillable vapes or vaping with next to no liquid left in the resevoir. I'm not as well versed in the nuances as you are but I've heard that the taste difference is basically because it's more toxic.
But... it's metal. In ya lungs.
The testing was the equivalent to lighting a Haynes t-shirt on fire and then releasing a study stating that Haynes T-shirts cause lung damage. They literally melted these cartridges by giving them way too much power and no airflow, using them in a way that no person ever would (or could) to get their scary sounding conclusions.
It's a joke from a YouTube advertisement that ran all the time ...
Addicts believe any bullshit to justify the addiction, the brain is reprogrammed for that.
https://keck.usc.edu/news/dna-damage-levels-similar-in-vapers-and-smokers-study-finds/
Regardless of intake studies, vapers and smokers have the same level of DNA damage and it takes decades for this to play out with cancer rates, but the obvious truth that huffing any chemical is dangerous is only a matter of time.
Ah, yes, a blanket statement, followed up with a cherry picked study, followed up with an unsourced claim, followed up with an obvious lack of scientific understanding about breathing in "chemicals."
Great comment.
Its possible your comments cause mental distress, high coritsol levels, high blood pressure, and early death in some individuals therefore I'm going to enact legislation to have you banned from the internet for the good of public health.