yobnoc

bahahaha

Interesting tidbit for all you conspiracy-minded people out there: Trump's July 25th call to Zelensky that prompted a whistleblower complaint from an Intel official was followed 3 days later by the resignation of... Dan Coats, DNI It's just the kind of blockbuster reality-tv moment that would be so ironic if it ended up being him!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the rats know the ship is sinking. Only a matter of time before the first R decides they don't want to be on the wrong side of this and then it's all over.

I think that the Republican Party base that would have potentially elected Romney is splintered and no longer exists. My grandmother proudly had a McCain/Palin sticker on her car right up until 45 started occupying the white house. Now she swears McCain was a traitor and a RINO. Romney has no base large enough to elect him. I think tRump swung the pendulum faster than the usual cycle, and now we'll see a Democrat again for the next 8 years.

I concur with your astute assessment, good sir.

Looks like Nancy is finally putting on the big girl britches tonight at 5PM EST. About damn time.

Yeah I just read up on it a little bit last night. Turns out he's another corporocrat who also hasn't released his tax returns for review by his constituents. Ahhh, the good ol' boys club.

Neal who?

You're right in the specific analogy you gave. The problem is that it isn't analogous to e-cigs. There is zero (really - zero) evidence that there is any adverse pulmonary or general health effects from e-cigarettes. In fact, the UK is allowing vape shops to operate in their hospitals because of how effective it has been shown to get people off of smoking cigarettes. Nicotine addiction is no more harmful than a caffeine addiction. Plain and simple. And there is no other harm that is linked to vaping. I can confidently say that when I am vaping, I am being safe.

I'm with you there, and there are already laws in effect that prohibit the sale of tobacco or vaping products to minors. We all know that guy who had a full beard at 17 who would buy beer for his friends because he didn't get carded though. If the problem is with enforcing the law, then work on enforcement. I'm all for more regulation in the vaping industry. Indeed: I'd like to see an ingredient list on every bottle (or the box it comes in) or at least have it available in some sort of MSDS type book that you can look at in the store when you're buying it. But the "save the children" chant is the rallying cry for people who are trying to get rid of flavored e-liquid. And it's bullshit.

Vaping has been around since the early 2000's. It just wasn't huge back then. One thing they figured out very quickly when it was just people experimenting around was that oils caused harmful health outcomes. So it quickly became an industry standard to only use neutral, non-oil-non-lipid ingredients in vaporizers. The back-alley THC cartridge market wants to make the most bang for their buck, so it was an extremely attractive financial prospect to use those fillers. Had there been consultation with the existent industry when they started hocking their product, maybe this could have been avoided. Instead, because they chose to go their own route and disregard user safety, the entire vaping industry is suffering as a result. There is no evidence whatsoever that vaping freebase or salt nicotine products is harmful to the user. The whole "save the children" thing rings hollow. Teen smoking rates have been cut in half in the past 8 years. I'd say harm reduction has been a huge success. Watch those rates skyrocket again if/when this ban actually goes into effect.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/09/13/vaping_scare_unhealthy_actions_from_health_officials_141254.html A better-written article than I'm capable of producing, and more eloquent.

Bill, there is a concerted push to keep certain information out of these articles, and the CDC would rather not make a concrete statement at this point because there is still information to be gathered. Of course the CDC is going to say vaping is dangerous; can you imagine the lawsuit if they put out an official statement prior to gathering all the evidence and they missed something? Vaping in and of itself isn't what's causing the illnesses and the handful of deaths. What's in the specific liquid that people are falling ill due to is to blame: namely lipids and Vitamin E acetate (they are used as emulsifiers to allow THC oil to be evenly distributed in the e-liquid, otherwise it would separate out). This is not an issue with over-the-counter free-base or salt nicotine derivations. Everything in traditional nicotine vapor is water-soluble. THC oil is not. So a cheap, quick, and dirty way to synthesize THC into vaporizers is to use those lipids, which the lungs cannot absorb like they can with particulate water. Instead they cool and return back to their molecular state and coat the inside of the lungs, restricting oxygen absorption. It's a safer bet to sound the alarm and get into specifics later than it is to parse out and positively confirm the problematic source and then issue a warning for one specific product. Science is so much farther along than it was in the early days of combustible tobacco, it's a bad strawman argument to say "See, science took a long time to figure this thing out 60-70 years ago!" We've been to the moon since then, man. Everyone has a high-powered computer in their pocket and is connected to the entire world through their fingertips. Scientific analysis has become exponentially faster and more accurate in 70 years.

#ThugLife

Ok, but on a less serious note, I've never smelled a fart in the plane that reminded me of strawberry shortcake

I'm not here to shame; I just really want people to educate themselves on this as much as possible. I just don't want to end up in a situation where I end up back smoking cigarettes again, and I'm afraid of that. No other cessation method worked for me.

I'd be interested to see the actual testing methodology and products used before accepting a blanket statement on it. There was a study done in Britain years back that made headlines because they claimed that formaldehyde was found to be a byproduct of vaping. Turns out when you read the study, they heated dry kanthal (the metal commonly used in e-cigarettes when they first hit the market almost 2 decades ago) to 1000F (2-3 times the functioning temperature of an e-cigarette) and after 100 consecutive seconds at that temperature, they were able to cause the kanthal to break down chemically and release a trace amount of formaldehyde. It didn't matter that the study was literally engineered to produce the outcome they wanted rather than an objective experiment; the damage was already done. Millions of people read the headline and didn't bother to look any further into it, just as people are doing yet again. So, forgive me for not trusting these statements without backing them up with the actual peer-reviewed scientific studies. And that diacetyl? When you enjoy one bag of microwave popcorn, you inhale more aerosolyzed diacetyl than you would in a full year of regular e-cigarette use.

Caffeine too https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/285194.php

You still haven't made one convincing argument that it is harmful. It is pretty clear that you are content with just believing what you want without actually doing any research on it. Which is odd, because I am pretty sure you're more intellectual than that. My defense of it is a survival instinct. I was able to quit smoking cigarettes by utilizing e-cigarettes. I enjoyed smoking, but I also knew it was bad for me and would likely cause me to die prematurely. I am also heavily addicted to nicotine and without getting into specifics, I struggle with addiction problems in other facets of life too. So since I wanted to be around for my kids as long as possible, I kicked cigarettes and switched to vapor. And there is zero science that bears out that it is bad for my health or the people around me. So, the therapeutic value of e-cigarettes for me is that it allowed me to quit smoking combustible nicotine products, which are indeed proven to have first and second-hand adverse health risks. And if someone has a contact allergy to propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, they're jolly well fucked anyway, because those ingredients are found in a ton of everyday consumables. Please do the barest amount of actual research on the subject, instead of relying on media hype and politicians who are influenced by big tobacco money.

That's not how that works. Your allegation is it's dangerous. Therefore the burden of proof is on you. Propylene glycol is the main ingredient (there are only 3 ingredients in nicotine e-liquid; it's not "countless unknown chemicals" as many people clumsily describe it), which is also the delivery agent used in asthma inhalers. So...are asthma inhalers dangerous? Should we ban use of asthma inhalers in public places?

What do you base your opinion on that it's absolutely bad whether inhaled first or secondhand? Gut feeling? Intuition? It can't be based on actual evidence

YES! And it's already against the law to sell this stuff to minors, just the same as alcohol and tobacco. Let's not let the government take too many civil liberties from us, eh?

OK, but...like we all jump out of planes. Lots of people think that's stupid too.

The specific study that showed formaldehyde as a byproduct was maximally flawed. They heated dry kanthal to 1000F and after 100 consecutive seconds they found trace amounts of formaldehyde as the kanthal broke down chemically. Mose vapes don't even hit 500F, and I don't think it's possible to inhale for 100 seconds straight. My larger devices log all that stuff. I inhale for about 2.4 seconds and control the temperature at roughly 400F.

Some businesses don't allow the huge cloud producing devices, but I've never had a bar tell me I can't use my little mini. You can barely even see the exhale, so people don't even notice. I understand people getting annoyed by plumes of vapor dusting past them, but there is no science behind it being medically harmful. I have no problem with businesses setting their own rules. I'm very laissez-faire when it comes to that. I don't support blanket bans on smoking cigarettes indoors; if a business chooses to allow it, and it's not free-market viable, then the business will ultimately fail due to lack of customers. If you don't want to breathe in second hand smoke, I totally get it. Go get drunk at applebees or chili's, not Moe's pub across the street from the auto plant.