Reply to: No Smoking Ever

[vetran]

Nicotine is a poison just like alcohol, the difference between vaping and smoking is all the stuff burning around it that is more carcinogenic.

If you drink vaping fluid you will end up in hospital or worse.

Neither are good but the general opinion is that vaping is less harmful than smoking especially if used as a method to quit smoking.

If someone is vaping near me I am much less likely to start coughing than if they are smoking.

[_V_]

Smoking
Drinking
Meat/Dairy
Fossil Fuels

All need banning for everyone now!

[edison]

People trot out these claims (on both sides) without any proof.
Apart from the obvious difficulty getting accurate figures what the NHS spends on "smoking related illness" (remember how many different ways we had to count Covid deaths), even if tax is more than NHS expenditure, that doesn't mean all that tax take goes to the NHS. Unless it's ring-fenced which seems like it could be a good idea?

But right now the NHS' big problem is not money, it's capacity. Big infrastructure projects - as many of you will know better than me in real life -can't simply be scaled quickly with even infinite cash. Reducing the volume of people needing treatment for smoking illnesses would effectively increase hospital capacity hugely.

It's not true there is no proof.

The government publishes the customs and excise duty figures. It was £10.27bn in 2021/22.

The figures for treating smoking related illnesses are calculated by Public Health England as part of their Tobacco Control Plan. You can argue about the methodology if you want but their figures show it costs the NHS about £2.5bn, about a quarter of the tax raised. Of course, their are other societal costs too, so its not so clear cut.

There are 6-7 million people waiting for NHS hospital treatment so even if you took half a million smokers out of the system, it still wouldn't come close to closing that capacity gap.

[SueEllen]

In the USA they used to sell chewing tobacco however, it caused cancer of the mouth. Nicotine causes cancer.

Tobacco itself has cancer causing chemicals as well as nicotine.

On the nicotine replacement products particularly the ones that are only available on prescription they don't list cancer or an increased risk of cancer as a side effect. However there are plenty of other drugs that have cancer listed as being a direct or indirect side effect.

[Paddy]

How dangerous is tobacco if you don't smoke it?

In the USA they used to sell chewing tobacco however, it caused cancer of the mouth. Nicotine causes cancer.

[d000hg]

I was having a look but all the nicotine replacement products e.g. gum, patches, inhalers, lozenges are contraindicated for non-smokers. So therefore you can't get true data on whether nicotine itself is dangerous.

Those Hookah things are linked to cancer as they use tobacco. Anything that uses tobacco is linked to cancer.

How dangerous is tobacco if you don't smoke it?

[DealorNoDeal]

It hasn't been proven either way but using common sense how can deliberately inhaling anything but air in to your lungs be good for you?

[SueEllen]

I suppose I was thinking lower/upper bounds at least. If it were properly dangerous you'd think we'd have clear data so maybe that in itself is telling us something.
What about those Hookah things?

I was having a look but all the nicotine replacement products e.g. gum, patches, inhalers, lozenges are contraindicated for non-smokers. So therefore you can't get true data on whether nicotine itself is dangerous.

Those Hookah things are linked to cancer as they use tobacco. Anything that uses tobacco is linked to cancer.

[d000hg]

Has it been? I thought this was still something of a grey area, given that there hasn't been enough long term study on people who take nicotine without smoking. I know the general concensus is that nicotine alone is vastly less harmful than smoking, but I think that is largely conjecture at this point. Depending on what you read, some people peg the toxic effects of nicotine somewhere close to caffeine but again I don't think anyone really knows.

I suppose I was thinking lower/upper bounds at least. If it were properly dangerous you'd think we'd have clear data so maybe that in itself is telling us something.
What about those Hookah things?

[mattster]

Are you really saying it's not been proven how dangerous nicotine alone is?

Has it been? I thought this was still something of a grey area, given that there hasn't been enough long term study on people who take nicotine without smoking. I know the general concensus is that nicotine alone is vastly less harmful than smoking, but I think that is largely conjecture at this point. Depending on what you read, some people peg the toxic effects of nicotine somewhere close to caffeine but again I don't think anyone really knows.

[jainnode]

...... and FOG

[Guy At Charnock Richard]

"Common sense" would say ingesting and injecting all kinds of chemicals into your body can't be good for you but doctors routinely prescribe some really quite noxious things which are. Medicine is data driven not by 'common sense'... look at medicine historically if you want to be horrified what even medical 'experts'; of the past thought was "common sense".

Are you really saying it's not been proven how dangerous nicotine alone is?

I don't know if you remember that consumer affairs programme fronted by Esther Rantzen back in the 80s but I remember them campaigning against the targeting of younger age groups by the company who produce Skoal Bandits.

They are basically a sweet or gum containing nicotine which had a track record of causing mouth cancers among adult users so that suggests maybe nicotine alone is harmful. Not sure if those particular sweets are just nicotine based or are actually some kind of chewable tobacco, in which case there'd be a whole load of other compounds at play.

[d000hg]

It hasn't been proven either way but using common sense how can deliberately inhaling anything but air in to your lungs be good for you?

"Common sense" would say ingesting and injecting all kinds of chemicals into your body can't be good for you but doctors routinely prescribe some really quite noxious things which are. Medicine is data driven not by 'common sense'... look at medicine historically if you want to be horrified what even medical 'experts'; of the past thought was "common sense".

Are you really saying it's not been proven how dangerous nicotine alone is?

[Zigenare]

Is nicotine in vaping form still particularly dangerous? As a non-smoker I had always assumed 90% of the problem was the smoking, not the nicotine? Note I didn't say "does it have ANY ill effects" but comparatively.

Check out the following...

[SueEllen]

Is nicotine in vaping form still particularly dangerous? As a non-smoker I had always assumed 90% of the problem was the smoking, not the nicotine? Note I didn't say "does it have ANY ill effects" but comparatively.

It hasn't been proven either way but using common sense how can deliberately inhaling anything but air in to your lungs be good for you? Also outside Europe the vapes themselves can be dangerous - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_in...g-disease.html