Reply to post: Re: Look out

Re: Look out

Imagine for a moment.

Someone makes a biscuit. It's fat-free, sugar-free, non-damaging.

People start to buy it and eat it a lot.

Now you discover that the people eating it LITERALLY refuse to go without the biscuit. A huge portion of the population are buying the biscuits and refusing to stop ever doing so. When they try, they have to take biscuit supplements that have the addiction of the biscuit without having to pay for the biscuit itself. The government starts funding these supplements because the problem of people spending their pay packet on the biscuits is all-too-common, and despite a tax of many times the actual value of the product, people are still buying the biscuits.

People get cranky when you suggest they give up the biscuits. They can't go more than a few days without the biscuits. Over Christmas they all vow to give up the biscuits but by new year they are all back on them.

The problem with this stuff isn't the health effects (though they are horrendous, devastating, expensive, and both self-inflicted and inflicted on others against their will). It's the addiction.

Caffeine addiction isn't anywhere near as bad. Nor is sugar addiction (sugar tax has ONLY just been considered, and that's because of obesity and availability, not because people spend most of their pay packets on sugar).

Nicotine literally turns you into a mindless child who can't do without a substance that they would never have been exposed to in natural life. I regularly make bets with friends or co-workers who are smokers (or vapers) who claim they can "give it up any time". The longest one lasted a handful of weeks and was so cranky in between that I had to take them to one side and tell them to do something about it - they had an arm-ful of nicotine patches. The shortest one literally latest 24 hours, and lied about it, until I demonstrated that not only had they smoked but that they'd done it directly in my field of vision.

Nicotine turns grown-adults into addicted children about something which has zero health benefits, nutrition or anything else for them - it doesn't even provide a "high"... research shows that "nicotine highs" are really just a return to normal levels of hormones because nicotine withdrawal makes you hormonally substandard.

That smokers are moving to vapes is a start to keeping them alive, and honestly their health is the last thing on my mind. It doesn't stop the expense, or the "skills" of rolling / coils / whatever which they are so proud of. I've witnessed an hour-long conversation over wattage and coils and batteries between two people who previously wouldn't have known a AA from a C cell.

It's also not "friendly" as a habit to others. Your stuff STILL stinks. Ever walked past a Lush? That's what you smell like, constantly. Sure, better than stinking of smoke (my ex could smell if I'd been in my parent's house that day, even without them ever lighting up when I was there), but still obnoxious. I once was in a beer garden eating a meal with 20-30 other people and one guy on a distant table had a vape so obnoxious and sickly everyone complained, moved tables and stopped ordering food because it tainted everything. At one point, a guy LITERALLY disappeared in the cloud of vape in the outside beer garden - walking through it just as the guy exhaled - and he couldn't be seen in the ensuing cloud.

Vaping is still a bad habit, and still can be obnoxious to others. From the smoker's view, it's still a waste of money, addictive, causes mood swings, and is unproven (sorry but inhaling some shite that's going into your lungs, is viscous enough to produce a visible cloud, congeal into a fluid, and that may have been bought from China and mixed with lead paint for all you know is never going to be healthy for you!). Those are your concerns as a smoker, though. From a society part of view, you're still substance-addicted with extreme difficulty to quit, to an expensive habit, that's unnecessary and doesn't actually do anything positive for you above "just not smoking anything".

I didn't think I'd ever say it, but I have more respect for cannabis smokers than vapers. At least they are getting something out of it that's not available elsewhere - and rarely do it in your face in a public restaurant.