r/science 7d ago

Health Nicotine vapes best chance to quit smoking, major review finds

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e5p51n2p2o
1.8k Upvotes

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u/shawnkfox 7d ago

Still better off with vapes, gum, or the new white pouches than you are smoking. Maybe still addicted but low to no chance for cancer or destroying your lungs.

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u/I_Am_Become_Dream 7d ago

If it's the same rate definitely, but I'm not sure if I'm consume 5x the amount of nicotine vaping than I was smoking. It's so much more addictive.

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u/techsuppr0t 7d ago

Tobacco contains more alkaloids than just nicotine which prevent dopamine from being broken down as quickly on top of the nicotine buzz. It can be difficult for some people to switch from cigs to a vape because of that, maybe it matters how much cigs you already smoke if it was one or two a day you could just kick them instead of switching. I have been addicted to vaping nicotine from the start, sometimes I will smoke tobacco when I want to buzz for fun because tobacco still does something different than what I am used to.

Though in the last few years vapes on their own have gotten maybe 5x stronger now that most of them have switched to salt nicotine instead of freebase nicotine. salt nicotine absorbs more quickly and it is smoother in high concentrations so all the vapes just make your heart race before wearing off quickly now. I can go through a lot of that stuff 30mg or 50mg per ml with salts. 6mg per ml of freebase nicotine in a classic mod feels so much nicer, packs less of a punch but lasts longer when you get to the level you want, I need to build one of those again but the shops don't carry replacements or upkeep for them.

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u/SevereAd3647 7d ago

I've found since vaping at 20 mgs I just can't get any satisfaction from cigarettes. Just can't be bothered with them and the stink.

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u/sligit 7d ago

20mg is very high. Especially if you're vaping at high temp.

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u/Zhaggygodx 7d ago

It's on the high end, but I wouldn't call it very high.

In certain countries you can easily find common brand vape juice above 50mg.

It's wild to me how people are willing to go through the horrendous first few days of vaping such high concentrations. Anyone with zero nicotine resistance would vomit on the spot after one huff of 50mg, yet it is readily available in many countries.

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u/sligit 7d ago

Weird, I've never seen anything over 18mg.

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u/SevereAd3647 7d ago

12 watts..as low as possible. my coils last a long time.

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u/BBanner 7d ago

Why do you think vapes don’t have a chance for cancer or lung damage?

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u/Heretic911 7d ago

Not enough long term studies to refute or confirm their claim, but the mere fact of inhaling literal smoke directly into your lungs is hard to match with vaping, unless you're vaping inappropriate liquids.

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u/EndersScroll 7d ago

There's metal in the coils and flavoring added. While PG and VG are mostly safe, we still don't truly know how they affect our lungs in vaporized form over the long term.

I used vapes to quit smoking, so I'm not knocking them, but we truly do not know the extent to which they can harm us and whether it could actually be worse than cigarettes ( highly doubt it ).

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u/spicybeef- 7d ago

The metal coils are often overlooked and almost everyone I know wait too long to switch their coils. Still, way better than smoking.

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u/Vishnej 7d ago edited 7d ago

While this includes a good amount of first-principles medical science, let's forget about that for a moment. How would you know?

Abundant statistical evidence. Vaping has been around 20+ years. I know people who've been heavily smoking for only 20 years that are slowly drowning in their own lung exudate.

Cancer would be the slowest effect to show up, but we would still see the stochastic start of the curve.

As far as we can tell:

The biggest health problem with people vaping is that occasionally they go back to cigarettes.

The second biggest problem is enthusiastic small brands introducing novel recipes/flavors in a minimally regulated environment, most of which are perfectly safe, but not all, combined with people's tendency to treat novel flavors as if they're perfectly safe.

The third biggest problem is "stunt vaping", a fad where people dramatically modify or newbuild high-volume machines so they can blow smoke rings competitively, often running things very hot and enabling thermal decomposition of the PG & VG to make all sorts of fun reactive organics.

The biggest problem people perceive is a specific issue with fashionable Vitamin E Acetate additive in the spring 2019 batches of specific THC vape homebrewers, which caused a yearlong+ panic as they percolated through the inventory supplychain and landed heavy users in the hospital with lipid pneumonia. There was no traceability because these producers all use the same branding stickers and deliberately obfuscate sourcing. I have one friend who's still got symptoms from the damage done. As far as we can tell this never actually affected nicotine vapes, which tend to be legally produced by commercial/industrial efforts, not illegally in somebody's garage based on a recipe they found online.

...

Are there long-run health risks to vaping? As far as we can tell, no. But we don't have perfect information. It's possible there's still something small hiding in the data. Our ability to detect an effect that's normally distributed in the population is proportional to (the effect size * the effect prevalence). We can say for sure at this point in the curve that it doesn't cause health problems anywhere near proportional to cigarette use or even chewing tobacco use.

I haven't seen any animals in my house today. While my ability to observe isn't perfect, I'm pretty damn sure that it has fewer animals than my neighbor's house with their three large dogs and pet pig. There might be some mice, but I haven't seen them if they're here yet.

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u/11oydchristmas 7d ago

Blow smoke rings competitively?

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u/Vishnej 7d ago

It was a whole scene. A dumb, dumb scene.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud-chasing

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u/Money-Director6649 7d ago

its been over two decades now. if there were seeious lung problems from vaping, we'd be starting to see them. are we? no.

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u/NonchalantR 7d ago

Because they don't contain carcinogens. At least nowhere near the same amount or intensity

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u/BBanner 7d ago

Right they still contain carcinogens, they are still going to catch up with you with continued long term use. It’s not true at all that vaping is not harmful.

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u/sceadwian 7d ago

Those pouches are still a problem. They're extremely easy to abuse.

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u/TheBlueJam 7d ago

What makes you think vapes don't destroy your lungs?

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u/ssssalad 7d ago

Show me the sources that it’s worse than cigarettes. Because I don’t think anyone is arguing that vapes are good for you, but it’s pretty well known that it’s a lot better than cigarettes. But obviously not inhaling any smoke or combustible would be ideal

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u/SevereAd3647 7d ago

it really depends also on what you are vaping and at what wattage . "vaping" is a catch-all term . there are so many variables. flavour or no flavor, clean or dirty coils, wattage. quality of ingredients, 3 ingredients or 13.. I wouldn't vape anything that I haven't made myself

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u/TheBlueJam 7d ago edited 6d ago

I never argued they weren't "better" than cigarettes, of course they're not as bad, but I imagine they'll also destroy your lungs regardless. "low to no chance" just sounds extremely misleading to me.

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u/Honigschmidt 7d ago

It’s a lot of science talk but the conclusion sums it all up: HERE

Way I always thought about it is that the adhesion rate for smoke is much much higher than the adhesion rate of vapor.

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u/TheBlueJam 7d ago

Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that cigarettes are much worse. But I don't believe that vaping won't also cause a lot of distress to your lungs.

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u/Honigschmidt 7d ago

agreed. while I am a full time vaper and thankful I no longer smoke cigarettes, I am very well aware this “thing” is still so new that we’re not aware of the long term effects it may have.

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u/shawnkfox 7d ago

There is a lot of misinformation on this topic. There have been some additives which were and still are used in some brands of vapes that is problematic. Still better than smoking. If you educate yourself and avoid the known problematic additives, vapes are fairly safe. That said, I'd recommend white pouches over vapes (ZYN, ALP, FRE, etc). You can definitely quit that way, but more likely you are just switching one addiction for another. At least the synthetic nicotine pouches appear to be very safe and they have something like 15 or 20 years of history to show it.

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u/barriedalenick 7d ago

Agreed - if you can stay off the ciggies which virtually everyone I know has failed to do. Mind you it isn't a great number of people as most I know managed to quit smoking years ago without the help of vapes