this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 146 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Forgot how Pro-drug the fediverse is as well; vapes should be regulated as heavily as cigarettes and other tobacco products. Just because it's less harmful doesn't mean it's not harmful.

[–] iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world 70 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The laws around vapes are nonsense and pseudoscience. That's what really pisses people off.

Flat prohibitions aren't saving any lives or ending any health crisis. Meanwhile cigarettes are widely available with a dozen flavors.

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The laws around vapes are nonsense and pseudoscience.

Recognising that there are health issues, without fully understanding them yet due to there having not been enough time to form complete and solid conclusions, doesn't make it pseudoscience. It means we should be cautious and continue to study, and certainly not widely adopt their use in the mean time assuming everything will be fine. Especially as it directly interacts with such a sensitive part of our inner bodies, and especially as the largest group taking up their use are teenagers.

Flat prohibitions aren't saving any lives or ending any health crisis. Meanwhile cigarettes are widely available with a dozen flavors.

I disagree, to blanket suggest prohibitions don't save lives is not based in fact. Even the misguided alcohol prohibition over in the USA saved lives, reducing the number of deaths that would have otherwise been caused by intoxication (dangerous driving being an obvious example, domestic abuse, etc).

And take this example from literally only yesterday, where a child almost died due to electronic cigarettes and the complications therein (often when people discuss the danger of X and Y, they assume a completely healthy person to begin with, and ignore that a large percentage of the population has at least one illness or environmental factor that it can complicate).

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-67081855

Also, yes cigarettes are available, but their use in public is heavily restricted, and they aren't attractive to young people any more thanks to decades of hard work in education. Electronic cigarettes however are targeted directly at teenagers in a very predatory way, suggested to be safe and clean, and thus we have these new issues.

In the end, I suspect electronic cigarettes are less dangerous than breathing in smoke from tobacco, which is insanely dangerous, but that will not make them safe, either, and the cumulative effects of electronic cigarette use over decades simply isn't fully known yet.

We're working on it, and where our health is concerned, especially that of our impressionable youth, an abundance of caution is always the best course of action.

[–] moistclump@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Thank you for taking the time to develop a well thought response. I learned some things and it got me thinking in a new way!

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was under the impression that prohibition of alcohol did not reduce any harm, because people flocked to speakeasys, and the quality of the homemade alcohol was not good. A good chunk of the alcohol beverages people drank during prohibition would give them poisoning of some kind.

People didn't stop drinking, they just started drinking homemade alcohol made with industrial alcohol. The US government also made sure that the only kind of alcohol people could aquire to make drinks was not good for human consumption.

Your comment is the first time I've ever heard anybody say anything good about prohibition. Maybe it saved a few people, like you said, but overall alcohol related deaths probably stayed around the same, or even went up thanks to all the poisoning. It's hard to tell, because the US didn't keep track of these numbers at the time.

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I'm more worried about the shit in the air around me than what is in my vape juice. At least I know what's in that

[–] kttnpunk@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

you're very wrong. Prohibition ONLY means lower quality, more dangerous products on the streets and it's another excuse to criminalize poverty/mental illness.

[–] iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yawn. Prohibition is not about protecting youths, its about protecting income. Your conclusions regarding the supposed benefits of prohibition are largely opinion, a generally refuted by historians. Flat bans produce unregulated markets, which lead to excess death and injury.

[–] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Maybe both should have restrictions?

[–] mwguy@infosec.pub 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Vaping should be limited to 18+ consumers just like "standard" nicotine products. But we shouldn't pretend, like the WHO and other organizations do, that Vaping hasn't been used by many (myself included) to effectively quit nicotine. Personally I kicked a 2 pack a day habit because of vaping and today I use no nicotine products (including vaping) because of it.

[–] scottywh@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed.

More restrictions is uncalled for.

I quit smoking cigarettes using a "box mod" in 2016 and gradually tapered down from a very high nicotine blend to 0 nicotine using 100% vegetable glycerin and peppermint flavoring and then I finally literally lost my vape and just never bothered to replace it...

So anyways, I started smoking over 30 years ago and I don't vape or smoke anymore.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We need stricter regulations on the production of disposables or ingredients. Like, using diacetyl which is known to cause popcorn lung. Or the whole vitamin E oil causing lung disease in black market vapes...

Maybe something similar to the regulations around alcohol. We know alcohol is bad, but the long term effects are much different than going blind from methanol.

Smoking or vaping isn't good long term, but it shouldn't be able to kill your lungs after a few uses.

[–] scottywh@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

While the popcorn lung and vitamin e oil shit were both real they were not truly widespread problems and they were already regulated /legislated against.

Those people broke the fucking law.

More regulations don't prevent lawbreakers.

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That was a problem with black market and unregulated Vape production, especially in the early days. It was never widespread, it just happened in a few places where people were buying vape products off of some random guy on the street. This was mostly a problem when this stuff first came out, because there wasn't a lot of legitimate companies making the vape juice and cartridges at first.

I do agree that we need regulation on the disposable vapes just for the amount of trash that they create. Disposables are so much worse for the environment than refillable vapes.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Shouldn't that be an argument to regulate it less, not "as heavily"?

Many mundane things are less harmful than cigarettes and shouldn't be regulated as heavily.

Edit: typo

[–] DrGunjah@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yup zero logic in his comment, still has 30 upvotes right now.

[–] clearleaf@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What's too heavy about how cigarettes are regulated in your country? I'm in Canada and when I smoked cigarettes I never felt like I was obstructed in making my own choices.

Many mundane things are less harmful than cigarettes and shouldn't be regulated as heavily

Why not? We regulate the shit out of food and medicine and those are the exact opposite of harmful when everything goes as planned.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

vapes should be regulated as heavily as cigarettes

My comment referred to this quote. It's a comparison between how heavy two things are regulated. Neither needs to be heavily regulated for this comparison to work.

What’s too heavy about how cigarettes are regulated in your country? I’m in Canada and when I smoked cigarettes I never felt like I was obstructed in making my own choices.

I'm fine with how cigarretes are regulated in Germany. Could be still heavier. I'm not fine with regulating vapes as heavy. Especially taxes.

It's ridiculous when vaping becomes more expensive than smoking. This creates incentive to quit vaping and smoke. Should be reversed.

Many mundane things are less harmful than cigarettes and shouldn’t be regulated as heavily

Why not? We regulate the shit out of food and medicine and those are the exact opposite of harmful when everything goes as planned.

That's two different kinds of regulation. You're referring to regulations to make things safer. These are great.

I was talking about regulations to make things less accessible. These are great if the things are dangerous.

It makes sense to make things less accessible which are more dangerous.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

I'd ban cigarettes and legalise heroin

[–] Fades@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

fuck vapes and drug abuse in general, but the fedi isn't pro fucking anything. Just because you see a pattern doesn't mean it's there.