I used to smoke 3+ packs of cigarettes a day. When I turned 40, I finally quit for good. It was sheer torture, and it left a permanent, gaping hole in my life.
For me, overcoming addiction is generally a good thing. When I gave up drugs and alcohol, the fog lifted and I was able to function.
But when I quit smoking, it was as though a permanent fog rolled in.
I chewed nicotine gum for years, and it helped, but it did not really satisfy me the way smoking did.
Then, about three years ago, I picked up a disposable e-cig in a convenience store. Immediately I realized: this works. Pretty soon I was ordering supplies off the Internet, and now e-cigs are as central to my life as smoking ever was.
The key difference is that I don't think e-cigs will kill me. I'll turn 56 in a couple of weeks, and I have never felt healthier in my life. I get lots of physical exercise, and most days I ride my mountain bike over a steep, strenuous course for about 50 minutes. My lungs and my heart are doing their job. It feels good.
My brain gets the nicotine it craves, and my body doesn't get the toxins that cause all the health problems.
E-cigs are outlawed in public places in Washington, but the catch is that someone has to notice before they can complain. I have discovered that people don't notice. I puff away in restaurants, on the ferry, wherever I go. Nobody pays attention.
For the past several years, e-cigs have been slowly catching on with the public, and bureaucrats have been freaking out about it. They're in an awkward position. They want people to quit smoking because smoking is bad, but they don't really want people to stop buying cigarettes because revenue is money, and it pays their salaries.
Cigarettes cost $10 per pack, and most of it is tax. The whole basis for imposing such an onerous tax is to discourage a harmful practice. Otherwise, it would make no more sense than putting a tax on coffee such that it costs $100 per pound.
So, the stewards of public health are hell-bent to prove that e-cigs are as bad as tobacco cigarettes. But research suggests what I intuitively know after smoking heavily and now using e-cigs heavily: smoking is highly toxic, whereas e-cigs are not. E-cigs deliver nicotine in a cloud of glycerin and water vapor that will kill no one and bother no one.
http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteD...0e603/ms08.pdf
What to do in that situation? The answer is trite and familiar: invoke the interests of children. That is what the CDC has done in a study they published last week.
The new study -- released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- is based on a questionnaire filled out by nearly 19,000 students in grades 6 through 12 in 2011 and another 25,000 in 2012.
In 2011, about 3 percent said they'd tried an e-cigarette at least once. That rose to 7 percent last year and translates to nearly 1.8 million students.
In contrast, 6 percent of adults have tried e-cigarettes, according to a different CDC survey done in 2011.
Children still are more likely to light up regular cigarettes, though teen smoking rates have dropped in the past decade. More teens now smoke marijuana than tobacco, surveys have found.
But health officials worry e-cigarettes could re-ignite teen cigarette use. They point to a finding in the study that 20 percent of middle school e-cigarette users had never tried conventional cigarettes. When the same question was asked of high school students, only 7 percent had never tried regular smokes.
That suggests many kids experiment with the electronic devices and move on to cigarettes by high school, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
"In effect, this is condemning many kids to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine," he said.
http://www.orovillemr.com/ci_2403346...garettes-rises
Haven't we been down this path too many times? Isn't the "gateway" inference, the staple of every over-funded redneck cop in Texas, beneath the dignity of the CDC?
Apparently it's not, when money is at stake. This report is the latest ploy in a cynical campaign to extend punitive taxation to a product that does not warrant it.
For me, overcoming addiction is generally a good thing. When I gave up drugs and alcohol, the fog lifted and I was able to function.
But when I quit smoking, it was as though a permanent fog rolled in.
I chewed nicotine gum for years, and it helped, but it did not really satisfy me the way smoking did.
Then, about three years ago, I picked up a disposable e-cig in a convenience store. Immediately I realized: this works. Pretty soon I was ordering supplies off the Internet, and now e-cigs are as central to my life as smoking ever was.
The key difference is that I don't think e-cigs will kill me. I'll turn 56 in a couple of weeks, and I have never felt healthier in my life. I get lots of physical exercise, and most days I ride my mountain bike over a steep, strenuous course for about 50 minutes. My lungs and my heart are doing their job. It feels good.
My brain gets the nicotine it craves, and my body doesn't get the toxins that cause all the health problems.
E-cigs are outlawed in public places in Washington, but the catch is that someone has to notice before they can complain. I have discovered that people don't notice. I puff away in restaurants, on the ferry, wherever I go. Nobody pays attention.
For the past several years, e-cigs have been slowly catching on with the public, and bureaucrats have been freaking out about it. They're in an awkward position. They want people to quit smoking because smoking is bad, but they don't really want people to stop buying cigarettes because revenue is money, and it pays their salaries.
Cigarettes cost $10 per pack, and most of it is tax. The whole basis for imposing such an onerous tax is to discourage a harmful practice. Otherwise, it would make no more sense than putting a tax on coffee such that it costs $100 per pound.
So, the stewards of public health are hell-bent to prove that e-cigs are as bad as tobacco cigarettes. But research suggests what I intuitively know after smoking heavily and now using e-cigs heavily: smoking is highly toxic, whereas e-cigs are not. E-cigs deliver nicotine in a cloud of glycerin and water vapor that will kill no one and bother no one.
http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteD...0e603/ms08.pdf
What to do in that situation? The answer is trite and familiar: invoke the interests of children. That is what the CDC has done in a study they published last week.
The new study -- released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- is based on a questionnaire filled out by nearly 19,000 students in grades 6 through 12 in 2011 and another 25,000 in 2012.
In 2011, about 3 percent said they'd tried an e-cigarette at least once. That rose to 7 percent last year and translates to nearly 1.8 million students.
In contrast, 6 percent of adults have tried e-cigarettes, according to a different CDC survey done in 2011.
Children still are more likely to light up regular cigarettes, though teen smoking rates have dropped in the past decade. More teens now smoke marijuana than tobacco, surveys have found.
But health officials worry e-cigarettes could re-ignite teen cigarette use. They point to a finding in the study that 20 percent of middle school e-cigarette users had never tried conventional cigarettes. When the same question was asked of high school students, only 7 percent had never tried regular smokes.
That suggests many kids experiment with the electronic devices and move on to cigarettes by high school, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
"In effect, this is condemning many kids to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine," he said.
http://www.orovillemr.com/ci_2403346...garettes-rises
Haven't we been down this path too many times? Isn't the "gateway" inference, the staple of every over-funded redneck cop in Texas, beneath the dignity of the CDC?
Apparently it's not, when money is at stake. This report is the latest ploy in a cynical campaign to extend punitive taxation to a product that does not warrant it.
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=265059&goto=newpost
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