Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

Is it the fins that use snuss that is showing to be much less dangerous? Basically nicotine by itself doesn't appear to be showing anywhere near the health issue that smoking does. But idk in this world of corporate sponsored studies maybe I've been lied to.

I'd actually be happy to, but it requires some deep diving into studies. Most studies will have a headline that says something like "using nicotine is just as bad as vaping!!!" but the data almost never actually supports the conclusion. It's terrible, terrible science and it's one of the worst examples of systemic problems with bad science. There's a clear cultural push to villify nicotine.

Then those conclusions are reported by other meta studies etc etc

I'm not saying to get your data from sketchy YouTube videos or anything, just do a critical peer analysis of the actual data from various studies. I'll do it for you. I've dived into it before and I'll be glad to do so again, but I won't have time until the weekend. It'll take a couple of hours. I'm gonna favorite your comment so I can get back to it.

Ok let me just lead with, how the FUCK is there no way to sort inbox replies by saved? Isn't that the whole damn point?

Alright, here we go. Gonna have to split this into multiple posts. Here's the first.

Let's start, like any good research, with the wikipedia article on nicotine. The intro specifically notes how it's NOT a carcinogen, and mentions a few extremely mild or disputed adverse effects, but doesn't go too much into it.

Later in the article, it says

Nicotine is classified as a poison. However, at doses used by consumers, it presents little if any immediate hazard to the user.

Which should be a good indicator that the common ideas about nicotine being harmful are wrong. But, fair enough wikipedia is not a stringent source and shouldn't be taken at face value, so let's dive deeper.

Here's a search for "nicotine harmful effects". Let's separate them into broadly 3 categories of results. There's stuff like this heart.org result, which exclusively talk about "smoking and nicotine". These types of articles are dangerous in and of themselves because they require a level of critical thinking to separate out "smoking" and "nicotine". A lot of anti-vaping hit pieces have a top-level title talking about nicotine, but then the body of the article references negative effects that are exclusive to smoking. Here's one such hit piece, run by a dystopian-sounding group called the "Truth Initiative" which should immediately make anyone suspicious of their goals. Note the article is under topic "harmful effects of tobacco", subtopic "nicotine addiction".

Second, we have government pages like the CDC which very clearly state

No tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, are safe.

I'll spend the next few paragraphs pointing out how this is simply declared to be so by governments, with no sources whatsoever to back it up. It's a self-referential kind of contagion of an idea being spread from government office to government office, officially by policy and unofficially by encouragement, peer pressure, and referencing other authoritative offices.

Many government pages actually have no sources listed at all; their pages are literally just political opinion dressed up in an authoritative government voice. I gave the example of the CDC because it actually does have sources: this one which just links to the home page of a different CDC department, and this one which links to an office that works on tobacco, not e-cigarette, dangers.

If you dig a bit deeper on the first page, you find this factsheet for states. Let's take California as an example. Under the section "Public Health Response to Tobacco Use in California", it proudly lists these accomplishments:

Secondhand smoke causes stroke, lung cancer, and coronary heart disease in adults; in addition, it increases risks for sudden infant death syndrome, middle-ear disease, respiratory symptoms, and slows lung growth in children. In 2016, California enacted multiple tobacco control laws as part of a special legislative session in the state. The new laws: closed loopholes in the state's smoke-free law making hotel lobbies, small businesses, and break rooms smoke-free; defined e-cigarettes as a tobacco product; prohibited vaping wherever smoking is also not allowed; required all K-12 public schools to be tobacco free; raised tobacco retail licensure fees; and increased the legal age of sale of tobacco from 18 to 21. These policies will further protect youth and adults in California from secondhand smoke exposure and e-cigarette vapor in public places. Increasing the age of sales for tobacco to 21 and requiring all public schools to be tobacco-free will protect youth from exposure to these products and further change social norms in California about the acceptability of smoking. The Institute of Medicine projects that if the age of sale were raised now to 21 nationwide, then there would be approximately 223,000 fewer premature deaths, 50,000 fewer deaths from lung cancer, and 4.2 million fewer years of life lost for those born between 2000 and 2019.

Emphasis mine. Note the lumping together. Again, vaping is just declared, by fiat, to be equally bad as smoking. DEFINED e-cigarettes as a tobacco product.