I'm sitting here wondering where this is all coming from... I have been vaping for years and never had any major problems. Smoking, I knew was killing me every time I lit up. I could feel it. And then throughout my day there were big reminders of what I was doing to myself. When you can't breathe well enough to sleep on your back and some point in your day is going to involve hacking up crap like you have a chest cold, that's a major problem. People don't like to talk about this stuff because it's gross and embarrassing, but it's worth saying because when I switched my breathing got markedly better and that all went away. I had more energy, too. I'm really underselling it, here - the difference was night and day. I would say it was about a one month turn around from feeling like a smoker to feeling like a new person. The last time I had my lungs checked I was told they resemble those of a non-smoker. As someone who once smoked 2 packs a day, I find that pretty remarkable. Understand, this was a voluntary thing. I felt fine. At the time I was riding my bike 5-10 miles a day and honestly, feeling unstoppable when doing so, just putting all of my energy into it almost every day. And then feeling good when I got home, instead of like I wanted to puke. I went on my dime to see what the doctors would think, and whether or not they would see fit to mark me down as a non-smoker. Which they did!
I understand that it's not the healthiest thing to do - does anybody really think otherwise? I've never heard a single vaper actually try to make that claim outside of deep pockets of the net. Maybe initially some did, but at this point you really look dumb saying that, and even your fellow vapers will shut you down on that. We're past the point where everyone knows there are going to be risks. The implications are a different story and will take much longer to hash-out.
What is putting these people in the hospital in short order that I and pretty much every vaper I've encountered over the years have seemingly evaded for years? What the hell is in their vapes? I'm telling you... I've been doing this a long time. I know and have met plenty of long-time vapers. I have never encountered anyone who has been hospitalized with this terrible mystery lung illness, or even showing signs of a problem growing. Something is really fishy there.
I can think of a couple factors... I run rebuildables... as in I prepare my own coils. I clean them with an ultrasonic cleaner. I also mix my own juice, typically with minimal flavoring and nicotine. The way I set things up eliminates a lot of the unknowns in pre-rigged BTC vapes. Quite often, I vape no-nic, which I think is more common than people realize. There's a hobby side to the whole vaping thing. It starts with just wanting to get off smoking. Then you wean yourself off of the nicotine and discover that the whole draw for you was the ritual. And with vaping, there are all of these different interests revolving around the ritual. By this point, it's a completely different animal from smoking. Some of the reasons for doing it are the same, but just as many are unique to vaping. That's where long-time vapers reside, for the most part. But then, our habits and methods are distinctly different from kids buying Stigs and other pod systems and abusing or dismantling them. I suspect there are things going on that many vapers would not condone and probably have never done themselves, hence why it hasn't happened to them.
I'd like to know what particular vapes each of these people are using and how they are designed and set up, as well as how they were used in these instances. Like, hard, detailed info. Why not at least take those exact devices and really asses and analyze them? Maybe there are meaningful observations there. That side of it always gets glossed over. You never see that follow-up where they identify the exact cause of the exact incident. The narrative is always "These people vaped and were hurt. Nobody knows why this happened to this relatively small, insular group, but we
can say that vaping may be harmful in this and that way." Not what I would call balanced. Too many claims with major implications are followed up by "We're looking into it." You never hear what actually became of it or what actually caused it... only what
might've. There are no actual connections being made... no way of repeating these anomalies. Doesn't mean there's nothing to em, but it does make it highly likely to be something other than what anyone thinks it is. Because if it was what we thought it was, we could then easily define and replicate the parameters and outcomes. I'm still waiting for that missing link.
And you can be sure that if it's there, I want to know everything I can about it, for my own sake more than anything. That's why I still read all of these articles, studies, and editorials, even if brings me to things I find objectionable from where I stand with my own choices. That is my dog in the fight. Not "Vaping is good and this is all bullshit!" but rather "Is vaping bad and if so in what ways are the risks applicable to me?" I want to better understand the implications of my choices and thus far most of the press I've seen has not been helpful.
Even a lot of the studies do it, messing with parameters without demonstrating relevance to real-world usage, leaving less informed and less invested onlookers to run wild with it. The very first FDA study found astonishing numbers of toxins and carcinogens in cig-style cartridges, but they also pumped more than double the voltage you'd ever get to one in order to produce that result. If you tried to vape it, you would choke violently on all of the burning material... yes, burning. Not vaporizing. The heat alone would make you reflexively pull back - we're approaching welding temperatures here. Who vapes like that? It'd be like putting your face up to a fire and taking a breath. And somehow people believed this was what vapers were doing. We must've been dropping like flies back then! I can't remember how many times people told me I was going to die back when that was everywhere. But that was what... 7 years ago now? At least... and still waiting on the verdict. There is good literature that poses some very important questions and concerns. But there is also some really, really egregious stuff that still misleads people to this day.
It's not a matter of if there is potential to cause harm. Undoubtedly there is. But whether or not and how that harm would manifest has not been seen, or this would not even be a conversation. If you heat anything enough, it burns and becomes toxic. But that was never the question. The question is whether that applies within the context of vaping habits, the devices used, and the typical usage scenarios. And then the question becomes, how do we stay outside of the range where it becomes significantly more toxic. Given what we DO know, it's reasonable to assume that it ought to be possible for people to vape without causing undue harm to themselves, though that's not the same as saying there will never be risks. It's not so black and white as toxic or not. Everything is toxic. We need context that still to this day hasn't fully manifested. That is what determines the difference between "direly hazardous" and "reasonably unharmful" but unfortunately, safety data is still in the abstract, generalized realm. The foundation for all of the mechanisms has just been built. It will be a few years more, at least, before that translates to more detailed and applicable answers to the questions we all have about the safety of vaping. I really do think anybody saying otherwise at this point is either ignorant, dishonest, or knows something that very few people know. Trying to argue for/against this stuff right now can only ever be a sideways conversation.
What I mean is, we understand some of the potential vectors for toxicity but we don't know how this pertains to each and every possible usage scenario, so it's possible some are wildly more harmful than others, while others might not be so bad at all. People thinking otherwise ought to stop looking at studies and articles and start educating themselves on all of the different types of vapes and juices out there, as they vary drastically. Really examine how exactly they work. That matters just as much as the general base toxicity. Think of the device and usage method as your multiplier. What you will then realize is how inadequate the current literature on this stuff is... just how much has not been accounted for when it comes to how people actually use these devices. The ones focusing on the irritant angle with control groups are interesting and relevant, but a lot of the other stuff isn't anywhere near there yet. And that aside, I'm not even convinced the irritant hypothesis is applicable in this case, as that mostly pertains to carcinogenic potential and immediate-short-term inhibition, not acute, permanent lung damage - the causes are unlikely to be related in my estimation as a decently-read layman. We'd be looking elsewhere and some things do come to mind, particularly studies on toxic compounds and metal oxides given off in large quantities when temperature is poorly managed and things begin to burn. What I'm suggesting is that we might simply be looking at bad batches of pre-made coils. There are some flaws that would make it easy to produce highly toxic compounds very quickly, though it's far from normal. I personally have encountered cartridges that had I continued to vape on, might have actually put me in the hospital. I can elaborate on this idea if anybody who's not aware is actually reading this ridiculous post
Those of us who follow these issues closely wish not to put it all under the same blanket and inadvertently take out the good alongside the bad. Vaping is not all bad and in fact a lot of it is good. So it'd be nice to be able to isolate those things from eachother without all of the FUD, so that we as people can get the most good out of it for the best societal price, rather than demonizing it and pushing it to the fringes, where you can be sure everyone involved will be hurt in some way. You will never stop people from doing that. I'd rather see more people pick it apart on a deeper level, instead of making assumptions based only on existing knowledge, which there still aren't sufficient amounts of.
So to me it's simple. We handle it like everything else. Clearly and consicely identify the true risks, inform the populace, put reasonable countermeasures in place, and leave people to their choices. This is the only way forward... not banning it outright or giving it total free reign. Neither of those outcomes will do anyone any good in the end. Society will have to learn how to vape properly, just as we once had to learn to drink properly. Interestingly, you can see how that works now in the recently 'modernized' eskimo populations. They as a people never had alcohol before then - for countless generations it was not in their world, so all of the worst attributes of a society that drinks are in full bloom. But as time goes by they are learning how to put it in a proper place and it is reducing the harm little by little. A case of what is true for individuals also scaling up to people as a whole. We need time to sort out and integrate new vices as they arise. It takes generations for these things to fall into place. And if history has taught us anything, it's that once a society is exposed to a vice, there is no going back. You can't spit out the apple of chaos. All you can do is try to make sense of this new world of sin and folly.
Is that really a stretch to say that we might be jumping the gun on this whole vaping thing? Is it really that crazy in a world where drinking and smoking are legal? A world where addictive drugs are prescribed as medicine? What exactly is so special about vaping to demand all of this attention? Maybe I'm just not qualified to interpret these scientific papers and it's far better or worse than I realize. But then, neither are the majority of people who speak on them, least of all the journalists that write about them. And it seems like most of the people writing the papers are more interested in further research... as in, a more thorough conclusion than the ones we're presently debating. If the safety were really as established as some people (on BOTH sides) often like to argue we wouldn't still be talking about it and looking into it scientifically.
I mean, nobody argues that smoking will kill you. But that's because we actually do know that to be an indisputable fact. All of the nuance has been dragged out and pinned up already. The nuances of the risks associated with vaping are nowhere near that far along. Yet everyone thinks they know because of this or that. How long did it take the world to fully recognize the dangers of smoking tobacco? When you look at that, it seems implausible that we could know the dangers of vaping one way or the other in such a comparatively short time. I don't buy either side, frankly. For now I trust my intuition, but at least I can admit that about myself. I can say that I don't really know and start from there.
To me, without knowing the particulars of the usage, none of this seems all that meaningful. A bad thing has happened with a group of people vaping. Great. That could mean anything. Maybe it is inherent to all vaping on some level. Or it could be a freak thing. Knowing the hows and whats may tell us more than anything else could. Quite often it completely alters the implications. I don't want to see previous studies tied into this, as though somehow that implies an indisputable conclusion. That's not enough rigor for good science. All you really have there is a tidy and nice-sounding but un-vetted conclusion. We don't know the true connection there. It's a fallacious presupposition to assume they are related simply because logic supports it. For all we know the real reasons are entirely unrelated, in which we fail to identify the real danger. I want this specifically examined in a critical way. Really... I'm betting there's something funny there.
I'm not denying it's happening, but for a long time stuff like this didn't really happen and now suddenly it seems to be happening everywhere. You'd think if they had always been this bad it would have been open-and-shut years ago. Perhaps it is not vaping as a whole but specific products that this subset of people are using? Otherwise, given the acuteness of these events, the numbers would be orders of magnitude larger. So what changed? Anybody who truly cares for the safety of his neighbors ought to want to know that. Why stop at the conclusion that this happened and therefor vaping is dangerous.
Why is it dangerous? What exactly caused this? Obviously the vapes were involved somehow. That's not good enough to prevent this sort of thing, though. All it really does is scare people, which ain't the same as making them safer!
On a personal note, I really enjoy vaping. As mentioned before, it's a hobby for me... tinkering with different gear, trying different builds, different combinations of flavorings... I get a whole lot more out of it than I ever did from smoking, and my overall health seems to be much better. My doctor seems to agree. I have read so many studies on it and have yet to see the proof that it will be my cause of death. Plenty to suggest it is not at all harmless, but certainly enough for me to think it is far less harmful than smoking, which is all I personally care about. I just want one vice that's not killing me outright. Most people have at least one of those, whether they want to admit it or not. Sue me. I'm human and not everything I do for pleasure is in my best interest. I don't think that's ever completely avoidable, though! We all must pick our poisons. Desire flows like water downhill. Better to identify and integrate your desires in a less destructive manner than try to eliminate them and either implode or just be miserable and not even know why. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a staunch harm-reductionist... I believe there are things a person should never do, for everyone's sake. But I struggle to see vaping as one of them, nor drinking, nor smoking. Some people can't keep themselves in check with these things, but that doesn't mean nobody should do them. It just means that as adults we all have a responsibility to know who we are and act in accordance with our ideal balance of happiness, responsibility, and productivity.
That's just a part of life. You can't mandate it out. Nor can one will away the need to integrate these things. It's not enough to just stop. It's a constant battle we all face. And not everybody fights it from the same position. But regardless it's like plugging a geyser. The water just pops up through the next shortest route through the weakest ground. People are not capable of eliminating every weakness from within, so whether or not you're successful in merely stifling/ignoring a vice comes down to whether or not anything ever happens to you that draws out another weakness. Depends on how life goes for ya and what your susceptibilities are. That's why you can't force a person to quit. The change has to be within you. And call me cynical but it isn't always... and that's just real. For those of us who know themselves to be that way in spite of our best will and effort, vaping is a wonderful thing. Looking at myself and the things I have been through and gotten past in my life, it's hard for me to see it any other way. To me, it's one less specter looming over me, freeing up more of my energies for focusing on other equally important problems. Whether or not it will catch-up one day, nobody knows. But do you ever? I'm not convinced that anyone is in enough control to say for sure, for me or anyone else.
At the end of the day, I just want to vape in peace. Why that is so complicated for people to understand is beyond me. I've tried everything. I even went cold turkey for a few months. Not a day goes by that you don't yearn for that morning smoke. It's tantalizing. Didn't matter what I did or what was going on. It's always there, like a bad breakup. Later on I would have a breakup that was legitimately about as damaging as they come, and to cope I rationalized that it wasn't as bad as the time I went CT. Hard as that may be to grasp, it really tore me down. Things started to really fall apart with my attitude and my ability to stay motivated towards the right things. I saw myself entering a dark path. I've been through too much of that shit to think that would end well if I just worked at it. No way, man. Something was wrong, something much bigger than the person I was at the time. You can think what you will, but it takes a lot of humility and self-honesty to admit that to yourself. And not the wholesome, rewarding kind. In order to be able to see that, you have to pull away big parts of yourself, which for most people feels kind of like dying. Not your body, but your mind. You have to weigh your options and accept that where you pull back might not be where you want to, just as you may not be as good to yourself as you wish you were. It's not every day you fight Goliath. And as nice as that story is, he may very well crush you, as he does others like you all of the time.
Going up against addiction is a series of conquests and setbacks. You don't ever know how things are gonna be or where you'll wind up when you actively decided to go to war with yourself. You're attempting to alter pretty major stuff. And it's not always for the better. You could win today and fall back twice as hard as you ever did 3 years later because of something you missed when you thought you understood. A lot of things that sound perfectly rational kind of go out the window. And unless the people, especially those who have never smoked and are against vaping can explain how to deal with that in a practical way, I'm not buying the suggestions to change what I'm doing. It's not helpful to take away something that's helpful to me and offer me something that I already know is far less effective for me, or worse, some lofty suggestions of willpower and determination... just because you're looking at your concerns and thinking it's better that way. Addiction is not an A-to-B affair. You jump around the whole alphabet just hoping to get closer to the letter B. It takes a lot of will and effort just to manage that when you're really hooked. I usually try to be nice, but it's so insulting to hear that from people who've never been through it with something that is really, truly gripping onto your soul. The reason it is an addiction is because finding the will to stop is hard, and often involves terminating parts of yourself or your life that you like and make everything worthwhile for you. It's something that's as psychologically dangerous to remove as it is to acquire! You live in mourning of the loss of yourself. If you don't know about it, don't mess with it!
But I digress. I was healthier, but not happy. Not happy at all. What's the point of being healthy if you have to make yourself miserable to stay there? By sheer will I quit as people always say to do, but willing yourself to be happy and satisfied is about as effective as a starving Ethiopian daydreaming about eating steak. Life was pretty good to me at the time, hence why I gave it a try. It would be then, if ever... right? But filling that hole isn't always so easy. Cold turkey is easy advice. And it works for a lot of people, but the real challenge comes after. Nobody ever has applicable advice for that. It's not just a matter of will or inner strength, but temperament, too. Another person's temperament is the hardest thing for a person to emulate internally, but it has great precedence over how you perceive and react to what you're experiencing. Steering into that effectively isn't so easy - you can't always see it in yourself. Sometimes it is best not to mess with other people's ways of coping with things. If you find you're not getting it, chances are that their control panel is at least little different from the only one you've ever seen, which is your own. Some people make it with gum, others with the meds (godawful experience for me,) others cold turkey, others with the patch, while others still never succeed with any of it... and then they vape and never look back.
This is part of why vaping is important and why we need to actually get to the bottom of this and figure out what is actually best for everyone. The more methods you have for trying to quit something, the better the chance is that one will stick and you'll make it work for you. If it's not harmful, people need to know so they can try in earnest to help themselves. And if it is unacceptably harmful, might there be a way to mitigate it so that it's still better than smoking? Is it even worse than smoking to begin with? Does anybody know? With vaping in the mix, we wind up with another good chunk of non-smokers in the world. People can say whatever derogatory things they want, but that's what it is really about. I think sometimes everyone else forgets that for a lot of us it's not just a hip thing to do, but actually a tool that helped us improve our lives in a big way. To ignore or discount that is to ignore the well-being of those very people, as well as the reasons for their choices. All that is left for rational people to do is look at the drawbacks to a world with vaping in it and find as many ways to circumvent them as possible. Everything else... is a misdirection to me, if I'm putting it nicely.
I'm sorry that so many of you have encountered some douchebag vapers! I'll never understand that stigma, though. Most I've met are not what you'd call "chain vapers" and tend not to think enough of what they're doing to run around proselytizing and waving it around in people's faces as the best, most healthiest thing ever. You don't immediately know them to be vapers by looking at them. We have setups specifically for going out that are far less obvious and intrusive to others, because nobody wants to be that guy. I've seen the stereotype, but that's really all it is, as far as I can tell. Mostly the younger crowd... which is like, no news at all. Young people are annoying! You don't say?
But to me that's a few obnoxious types that get put under the microscope. Believe me, we all look and cringe at it with the rest of you. The rest of
us are about as discreet as someone sipping their coffee, not running around taking huge rips off of their 200w+ box mods all of the time. We're almost trying not to draw attention to it. Like anybody else, we mostly want to be let be out in the world. It's not a full-on lifestyle for most of us, yanno? It's simply a minor lifestyle choice, like choosing not to eat at such and such fast food joint. But do you then point to that person and say "Oh, they're one of those people who only eats at Taco Bell... douchbags. Look at him with his Baja Blast. The greasy, smug bastard. I bet he treats his mother badly. Why can't they just get their lives together and stop eating at Taco Bell?" It just... it goes right over my head, this whole "vaper" thing that exists in people's heads.
It seems completely arbitrary to me, like this and that are not implicitly related. As if somehow picking up a vape either turns you into a different person, or vaping is only appealing to people with the oddly specific subset of negative attributes that certain people against vaping love to bring up. It's almost like they enjoy speaking ill of all of these people, whom they do not know. It seems out of place. These 'vapers' are caricatures. What really happened? Did a vaper do something to you? The wide-reaching inferences that people toss out about other aspects of people who vape don't make sense otherwise. That's just not how people work, you know? Obviously I'm exaggerating here, but it's not really as far off from the attitudes you often see as I wish it was! Sometimes I really get the vibe that some people out to bring vaping down aren't really looking out for anyone's well being so much as they are on a vendetta against a demographic that they dislike for their own personal reasons. Like how so many people who hate and speak out against the rich actually don't like the poor either, but saying they act on the poor's behalf is a convenient way to legitimize what is actually a jealous crusade. It's merely a platform, a stepping stone to a position of power that they somehow think is going to magically give them what they want. It is amazing, the shit people will say about their fellow humans when they have become overly convinced that they fully understand the other side and are themselves on the right side of something. I mean, it's really something! And nobody is immune. I see otherwise reasonable people succumb to it. I've even caught myself doing it.
Still, it's patronizing when I see people talk about vaping as though they are concerned for other people's safety and then in same breath talk down to those same people! It's just shitty. According to some people I am less of a person just because I vape, and need help looking after myself and reaching my own conclusions. Good luck with that one, buddy. That's really only ever gonna be a point of conflict. But then, it's hard to imagine those types speaking that way for any other reason... just looking for something that's easy to stand against. What is anybody supposed to think of you doing that? I'd be very cautious of the people you score points with...
Point is... vapers are mostly normal people, of all ages (ADULT ages lol) and backgrounds... people who vape typically think of themselves as being vapers far less often than people pointing the finger tend to. But it sure does draw a lot of stigma and ire these days. Do people think vaping is a cult? These strange dogmatic narratives always seem to creep up when bad press makes it out. And then, suddenly not only is vaping the worst thing you could do for your health, but most vapers are bad, stupid people too. Odd, considering the rest of the time, nobody cares and these people are nowhere to be found. What ever happened to live and let live? Oh, right... that went out the window when we all took to tribalism and picked our camps. It definitely makes things simpler, but you've got to wonder what the net outcome of any pro/anti issue is really going to be. It inevitably devolves into self-interest and the erection of echo chambers. It goes from well-intended question/idea to vitriolic crusade like that. * snap* It becomes a power struggle. People then look after viewpoints more than they do each other. It gets hard to see where that difference is. And then at that point people on both sides start saying equally ridiculous things. And that is where we are now at with vaping, as we are with so much of societies vast minutia. Really now... have we ever really resolved one of these things by blowing it up and going at eachother?
Worth saying, kids shouldn't be anywhere near this stuff. But good luck keeping it out of their hands. They buy everything from weed to dilaudid at school. Society has been fighting the problem of dumb kids doing dumb things from the very beginning. Don't seem to have made much headway, though I think we should continue to do everything we can to minimize the damage it causes. I think we could do more. I wish there was an easy answer there. I really do. I don't want to discount the implications for the affected... I just wonder what exactly caused it, and where some people get their ideas from. From where I stand, it seems like a bunch of reaching for answers that just aren't there yet, though of course we all want them to be right there when terrible things happen. And we want them to be what we want them to be so as to remain ourselves in light of it. Doesn't make the first piece of evidence in favor the only truth in it anymore than a lack of evidence demonstrates the truth you have derided for yourself. Goes both ways peeps. Regardless of what happened, it's going to be very particular and multifaceted.
I guess I had a lot to say here... this is a dialogue I've been following and participating in for many years - I needed this commentary on it lol. I know all of the tropes, beats, and narratives. I see the cycles. It's been the same crap over and over again with people looming over scraps of info like vultures, just taking it and using it to their own conflicting ends... fighting over it like it is one's job to completely obliterate the other. Given this, I think the whole thing is flawed in a big way. I think we're all being taken advantage of, by parties on both sides of the issue. Big time. I'm tired of it. We aren't any closer to figuring this shit out than we were almost a decade ago. In some ways, we're all further away. I sometimes wonder if we'll ever figure out where to place vaping in this world. There are too many factors involved. The pot has been so irreversibly stirred that one can no longer distinguish between who is doing good and who simply serves an ideological agenda.
No matter which side you're on, what's important to note is that if we are wrong, millions and millions of people will suffer. This isn't something to be taken for sport. It's not a friendly debate. It's not a grinding wheel. Which ideas we go with and how well we inform ourselves determines the outcome. How many millions of people die terrible deaths from smoking-related illness each year? What is the likelihood that vaping will not prevent many of those deaths? I vape and I support it, but even I don't know the answer to that one. I have my resentment towards certain factions (some of them vapers, even!) but the reality is that we don't know what we are playing with. I'm not just talking vaping here, but vice itself. Vaping is bringing us to questions many have never considered and so we struggle to sort it out.
There's a lot at stake and compromises that must be made. It's important that we get this right. Judging by how a lot of people broach the subject, I'm not convinced that they all share this attitude... not because they're opposed to vaping, but the why and the means by which they do so. A lot of it just is questionable, and I'm betting I would still think so if I didn't have passion tossed in. It's almost like some people want vaping to be bad. They want others to see how it leads to suffering, so that they can be right. They revel in these stories, as though it is somehow good, because it reinforces how they see things. When the reality is that people got really hurt and you are profiting off of that emotionally... maybe even monetarily. Same goes for people in favor who like to brush aside everything not in favor of vaping being safe, viciously attack those who oppose them, and set a bad example with how they integrate as vapers. They see it as an ideological war and will resort to any tactics they can, eschewing ethical integrity almost as often as the other side. None of that shit helps! An honest middle-ground is a better place for all of us. One where the fewest amount of people have to suffer and die from illness or bodily harm. That's what it's all about. And yet so many dance around that without ever seeing both sides of the problems at hand.
Everybody has their opinions on things... I've got my bullshit, too. But all too often when it comes to vaping, everyone just gets so far ahead of themselves and it's not helping anything. The basis of every argument is "reason to assume." You take this fact and say it's reasonable to assume that it's harmless based on that. Others take that fact and claim the opposite. And there's merit to both sides. It's a conversation worth having. I just wish people kept their finger on why that is a conversation worth having. It's a major public health issue that not only deals with all of these un-quantified physical/biological variables but questions of how individuals work and where we place addiction with regards to both individuals and entire groups of people.
There's a lot to talk about, but simultaneously nothing to really get down into, you know? That's all I see. A lot of people talking... far less repeatable, real-world information.
It's still a rabbit hole to the whole world. It's all gone too far, in so many ways. And both ways, too! I think it's all crazy... treating this stuff as harmless and proliferating it out like there's no risk as well as people just shutting it down and not even trying to see how we might figure out a way to make vaping a true force for good in a world of unhealthy lifestyles. We are just scratching the surface of what all this stuff is and what it means for all people. Much of what we know now will change drastically in the coming years. Right now all we have is some maybe very good, and maybe very bad things. We have to keep pressing forward before drawing conclusions and instituting them broadly. Some things are common-sense to implement, but the rest is just people talking afaic. And as long as everyone realizes that's all it is at this point, we'll get to where we ought to be with it.
