this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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It's literally not smoke, that's what I'm saying. It's fucking water vapor. There's no harm, and it's literally undetectable aside from a brief smell of whatever it's flavored with.
Equating vapes with tobacco is so stupid. There is zero (0) tobacco in a vape.
Are you in middle school?
It’s not water vapor.
The other stuff in vape clouds is such an infinitesimally small amount, it's really not worth considering. On the order of like <400 migrograms per gram of vape cloud, with the average vape cloud mass being <100mg
Wikipedia
Study that I was able to access through my university
The scientific failings of nearly all research into e-cigs is a big pet peeve of mine. So, so many studies with abstracts and titles shouting VAPES WILL LITERALLY KILL YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN IF YOU LOOK AT THEM and then when you dig into the results it's less harmful than ambient air in a Walmart.
Only up to 100 mg? Such a tiny amount of substance could never have an impact on a human body! That’s why when I take a 50 mg edible absolutely nothing happens.
You are delusional, and completely misinterpreting that study and Wikipedia. Like, reading your other comment you did a “lot of work” on - I’m kind of amazed - it reminds me of the kind of stuff that I’d see to back up Ivermectin being a miracle cure.
Since you seem very concerned with dosage:
Secondhand smoke is also harmful:
You have an addiction and are doing something that is harmful to your body. There is not an evil conspiracy by the government and research scientists to convince you that nicotine is bad for you, nicotine is bad for you.
Oh Christ on a cracker, I don't have time to explain how math works
The entire cloud, water vapor and all, is up to 100mg, dumbass. It's like 0.04mg of chemicals in the biggest vape clouds. That's nothing.
Can you read that middle study for me friendo?
I know you don’t have time to explain how math works, but can you explain the concepts of p-value and statistical significance for me?
Also, do things existing at less than 0.04 mg have no effect on the human body?
Literally irrelevant to the point I'm making.
In almost every case, that's correct.
Keep in mind that's also the strongest measured concentration of the biggest clouds in the whole study, and that assumes instead of passively breathing in someone else's vape cloud, they're just breathing the whole thing right into your mouth. Realistic amounts of chemicals would be an order or two magnitude lower.
You are right but you still will be stoned for saying the truth. Those ppl probably breathe in much more harmful shit daily without second thoughts
This comment section makes me want to start to vape again
Dude I'm talking about smoke from vapes as in vape cloud, mist, whatever you wanna call it. It's still secondhand, and it still lingers in the air long enough for other people to breathe it in. I can tell when someone took a hit even if I didn't see them puff it because it doesn't just straight up disappear immediately and like 99% is like cotton candy or some other sweet flavor that is super distinctive in smell. If you ever lived in cali you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. Obviously it doesn't stay for years or anything, hell it usually clears up after like a couple of minutes at worst, but to say it's undetectable is just false.
I'm obviously not talking about the same smoke as tobacco, that shit is like tar and reeks for years. I'm also not saying there's tobacco in vapes, I just said the reason why we don't allow smoking inside is because of tobacco, and for good reason.
And my point is that vaping isn't smoking and shouldn't be subject to the same ban. Vaping doesn't leave residue or discolor walls or any of the other nasty shit that tobacco does. The vape cloud doesn't linger like smoke. And secondhand vaping isn't even a thing, it's like secondhand breathing. It's just flavored water vapor, there's no other chemicals or stuff in the cloud.
Edit: no other chemicals at harmful levels, technically there's an almost imperceptibly small amount of stuff in there but it's roughly equivalent to ambient air in a city
Yes but there IS nicotine in most vapes, which is the harmful part
That crazy myth needs to die. Nicotine is approximately as harmful as caffeine. Highly addictive but not particularly harmful itself. Tobacco and all the chemicals they put in cigarettes are the stuff that gives you cancer.
[…]
Ooh boy, it's time to link to my favorite "I did a lot of work and no one responded" pair of posts, with a deep dive into how the NIH and other offices' claims about nicotine are utter bullshit and a great example of the failures of the modern scientific apparatus: https://lemmy.world/post/16434400/10677530
My favorite parts:
Yes my sweet child - that is called a meta-analysis.
Yeah no fucking shit, Sherlock
I think we see the real problem here - you are addicted and aggressive because you are going through withdrawal. Also a bit of Dunning-Krueger - guess you are an undergraduate engineering student with no training in medicine or statistics.
No withdawal - I'm vaping right now.
Vapes saved me from an early death due to smoking and it bothers me on a personal level when people spout falsehoods about them. And on a civic level when those people are government officials.
People are not “spouting falsehoods.” Read the studies I linked. You weren’t impressed with meta-analysis you found, the studies I show described their methodologies in detail.
Vaping may be better than smoking, but it is not good for you. Nicotine is harmful. Aerosols in your lungs are harmful. These are not really things you can argue with.
Sure, I agree. But it's SO MUCH LESS than tobacco that we should not view them as in the same ballpark.
You can argue that it is less harmful (which I would agree that the lower temperature and lack of burning plant matter is probably a good thing), but arguing that it is not harmful at all is solidly pseudoscience.
Arguing that there is a conspiracy between the government and scientific researchers to pretend that nicotine is harmful is getting into Qanon territory.
I worked in a middle school, and this kind of “vape is harmless” rhetoric is literally killing children. And yes - middle schoolers are probably getting sketchy carts from China - but a lot of them are hurt by the idea that vape is perfectly safe. (Friend helped on a school district lawsuit against Juul)
CDC data from 2020:
Remember how desperately the cigarette industry attacked the science behind the harm caused by smoking - the lies, the paying off doctors? I know you said you won’t click on YouTube links, but Knowing Better has a great video on that history. Do you think the people manufacturing vapes have your best interest at heart, and wouldn’t do the same?
So far, the only sketchy science I've seen has been people trying to claim vapes are killing our children. It's a classic moral hysteria. Every. Single. Case. Of kids being harmed by vapes has been sketchy Chinese shit, which they wouldn't try to get if you people weren't so insistent on banning vapes in the US!
I'm arguing that vapes are less harmful than alcohol, fast food, or car exhaust. Less harmful than sitting at a desk all day. Less harmful than any of a thousand things people do daily. This absolute hysteria around vaping needs to end.
And it's less a conspiracy than a social movement - if you want funding, find vapes to be harmful. If you want your career destroyed, tell the truth. I don't think there's a cabal of evil moustache-twirling scientists; I think there's a very powerful social and financial incentive to come to certain conclusions.
I don’t think the science is sketchy - I’ve linked 4 or 5 studies so far which seem to indicate that nicotine has cancer promoting effects and seem to be in mostly decent journals. (I’m not an oncologist ofc, if you’d like to make some arguments about the impact factors of those journals, that’s usually the last refuge of “the science clearly shows something I don’t like.”) Here’s another:
And yes - we are surrounded by carcinogens. The harm of nicotine is that it facilitates those carcinogenic effects. If you’ll read that article, or the others I’ve linked - that’s what the problem is. Carcinogen + nicotine = increased risk of cancer.
What is more financially incentivized here? Let’s “qui bono” our conspiracy theory.
Do you think that Juul or Phillip Morris or whatever wouldn’t fund studies that said vape is harmless? When we think, who has the money for funding, who makes money from the conception of vape as harmless…
Why exactly do scientists and the government have a “party line” against vapes? Do you not realize that the same arguments you are making now were made about cigarettes?
Edit: diving into that study more:
Absolutely! Cigarettes are the money makers. Vapes have been eating into their profits. When vapes are restricted, cigarette usage goes way up.
The problem as I've mentioned is these studies will have titles and abstracts that say vapes are more dangerous than fentanyl, but the actual science doesn't support that conclusion. Typically the study will show that vapes can cause cancer in some way, but completely fail to give any context for how dangerous it is in comparison with other environmental factors. In the worst case, they'll actually cook the books with insane concentrations of nicotine or outrageous assumptions about vape use. Well I guess the worst case was that one study which literally fabricated data, but that's an outlier.
Phillip Morris sells vapes. Cigarette companies have been pivoting, because of the false conception that vapes are safe.
Is this true of any of the six or so studies I’ve linked so far? Most of what I’m pulling isn’t from the abstracts btw.
Can you give specific examples of this happening? Name of study, institution?
Is this coming from Joe Rogan or something? Nicotine denialism is wild.
They hated him because he spoke the truth
be me, sneaking outside at work to vape while my coworker brings a literal gallon of coffee everyday.
nicotine certainly has been demonized in the last few decades.
I saw a great long-form article with a theory that I don't completely buy into but is very interesting.
In 1998, a MASSIVE lawsuit against the tobacco companies was settled. The result was the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). Due to the harmful public health effects of tobacco, cigarette companies were required to pay huge sums to the state governments, in perpetuity, based on the level of sales of cigarettes. To be clear, this was a great and reasonable idea, given the public health costs associated with smoking (funny enough, since then, costs have lowered on average as people live longer but smokers don't).
Several states then "securitized" their future payments and sold them off to get short-term injections of cash. If the term "securitization" seems familiar, it's the craze that led to the financial collapse in 2008, when people were securitizing junk mortgages. As part of these tobacco bond securitization agreements, states have to pay their business partners a certain dollar amount every year going forward, NOT based on the level of sales of cigarettes.
Then, for a variety of reasons including vaping, cigarette sales started to tank. Meaning states were getting less money from the MSA, but they still owed the same amount to their debtors. Many of these bonds are in junk status, and some states are realistically looking at bankruptcy due to that stupid decision 20 years ago. There's $97 billion they owe in total, and most states have no way to pay it.
So now we have a large number of state governments with an extremely powerful financial incentive to suppress vaping and encourage cigarette smoking.
This is a conspiracy theory.
This is no different from being an anti-vaxxer or Ivermectin nut. You are selectively reading bits of studies that you are not understanding, and do not have basic knowledge of how statistics or the human body work.
Like I said, I don't fully buy into it, but the facts are incontrovertible and it's a fairly compelling argument.