#e-cigarettes

[artcollectorninja]

[tomorrowusa]

Belgium will ban sales of disposable e-cigarettes in a first for the EU

The ban, which will take effect on Jan. 1, is based on health and environmental grounds and is a groundbreaking move for European Union nati

Belgium is banning sales of e-cigarettes or vapes starting with the new year. Good for the Belgians!

Big tobacco is in a tailspin because of the decline of cigarette smoking. So they are trying to promote e-cigarettes which are being painted as a more trendy alternative. Getting teens hooked is a priority.

Though in addition to the health risks, disposable e-cigarettes have an environmental cost.

Health minister Frank Vandenbroucke said the inexpensive e-cigarettes had turned into a health threat since they are an easy way for teenagers to be drawn into smoking and get hooked on nicotine. "Disposable e-cigarettes is a new product simply designed to attract new consumers," he said in an interview. "E-cigarettes often contain nicotine. Nicotine makes you addicted to nicotine. Nicotine is bad for your health. These are fact," Vandenbroucke added. Because they are disposable, the plastic, battery and circuits are a burden on the environment. On top of that, "they create hazardous waste chemicals still present in what people throw away," Vandenbroucke said. The health minister said he also targeted the disposable e-cigarettes because reusable ones could be a tool to help people quit smoking if they cannot find another way.

So people in Belgium can still use reusable ones – particularly if it helps them quit regular cigarettes.

Anecdotally, a day hardly goes by without seeing used disposable vapes tossed on sidewalks or streets in US cities. US states need to observe how the ban plays out in Belgium.

[indizombie]

Tobacco already kills eight million people every year, and, irrespective of any impact of newer products like e-cigarettes, the huge global burden of tobacco mortality and morbidity can be expected to remain for decades to come. Tobacco growing, manufacturing, distribution, and use, all contribute to global warming through the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, the tobacco product life cycle releases an estimated 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every single year. The tobacco industry’s emissions are larger than those for entire countries, including Denmark, Croatia and Afghanistan, and are comparable to emissions from the oil, fast fashion and meat industries.

‘Plastics, the Environment and the Tobacco Industry’, Tobacco Tactics

[forgottenbones]

Where's My Juul?? feat. Lil Mariko

[puttingherinhistory]

E-cigarettes, especially Juul, may be doing something odd to kids

Doctors fear e-cigarettes are delivering far too much nicotine to teenagers.

“Luka Kinard knew his vaping habit was out of control when it started costing him $150 a week.“I was selling my clothes,” Kinard, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, said. “I would get shoes, sell them, go out get cheap shoes, sell them. I was doing anything and everything to get money.”His parents noticed when his grades started plummeting.

“He went from being a straight-A student to an F student,” Luka’s mother, Kelly Kinard, said. “(It was) a very rapid decline in grades. His behavior became explosive. He was very angry and it just wasn’t him.” Luka stopped his boy scouting activities, stopped fishing and spent all his time locked away in his room. He was vaping. 

Luka is part of what the Food and Drug Administration and the Surgeon General call an epidemic of e-cigarette use. And, as with most teens who are taking up the habit, it was the slender, easy-to-conceal Juul device that really got him hooked. 

Luka was hooked in a way that doctors never noticed before with regular cigarettes. “The flavor was better than the taste of a cigarette. Also the buzz was a lot better,” he said. But it was a pricey habit. 

“When I started spending $17 every four days or every day it was getting to a problem,” he said. “I realized (I was spending) $150 on pods in a week, and I noticed like this was getting out of control.” 

What brought matters to a head was when he had a seizure. “He was at his girlfriend's house and an ambulance was called and he ended up in at the emergency room,” Kelly Kinard said. She knew it was the Juuling that had done it. 

“We followed up with the pediatrician, cardiologist and neurologist, and we couldn't get anyone to listen to us when we told them the seizure was preceded by Juuling,” she said. “I found on the internet that it should be treated like a substance abuse issue. That helped when I called the insurance company and told them we need a referral for a substance abuse treatment.” 

The High Point, N.C. teen ended up spending 40 days in an addiction rehabilitation program before he was able to kick his habit. 

This makes sense to Dr. Sharon Levy, director of the Adolescent Substance Use and Addiction Program at Harvard Medical School. 

“We've seen a real influx in the number of phone calls that we're getting for kids who need substance use evaluations and, remarkably, we're seeing a big increase in the number of kids who are coming in specifically to be evaluated for nicotine and Juuling problems,” Levy told NBC News. 

“We're seeing kids that seem to be getting a much higher nicotine level in their blood and that’s causing a completely different picture when they come in.” 

Other teams have found this, also, and the FDA is trying to crack down on sales of e-cigarettes to teens and young adults because they do deliver a much higher dose of nicotine than traditional burned cigarettes, Juul products, in particular, don’t offer a way to dial down the dose of nicotine-bearing vape fluid n the same way that other devices do. 

The extra hit of nicotine can have especially strong effects on young bodies, Levy said. 

“Kids are coming in with problems like difficulty in focusing, common symptoms of withdrawal, things like headaches, sometimes fatigue, stomach aches — which might be a symptom of nicotine toxicity or poisoning in some of them,” she said. 

“We've had kids who come in and say that they can’t concentrate in school, that they need to leave the classroom, they need to sneak out to the bathroom so that they can hit their Juul, or that they need to go to the nurse's office because they just need to lie down,” Levy added. 

“That's something we didn't see in use of cigarettes. This is very concerning. This is really uncharted territory and we don't know what use of nicotine in this way is doing to the developing adolescent brain.””

Continued in Link

TL;DR, vaping and juul’s really aren’t as harmless as a lot of people seem to think they are, in a lot of ways they can be more dangerous than traditional cigarettes. This article doesn’t even go into the way a lot of e-cigarette companies have been preying on vulnerable minority groups  that face higher levels of stress like the LGBT+ community and Native American reservations in their marketing. Like, taking advantage of stressed out vulnerable minority groups to sell them a toxic and dangerous way to temporarily relieve stress, but will eventually cause serious health problems for them, is actually pretty evil. 

[sugatangbear]

Using E-cigarettes to Stop Smoking Nicotine

Sponsored Post: In recent years, e-cigarettes have become a very popular stop smoking aid in these other countries. Also known as vapes or e-cigs, they're far less harmful than cigarettes and could potentially help you quit smoking for good. This could potentially help our air pollution and health risk right? Be smart, love vapor cigs, and avoid inhale nicotine now! 

Many thousands of people in these other countries have already stopped smoking with the help of an e-cigarette. There's developing evidence that they could be effective. Using an e-cigarette could potentially help you manage your nicotine cravings. To get the best out of it, make sure you're using it as much as you need to and with the right strength of nicotine in your e-liquid.

Additionally, a major UK clinical trial published in 2019 found that, when combined with expert face-to-face support, people who used e-cigarettes to quit smoking were twice as likely to succeed as people who used other nicotine replacement products, such as patches or gum. Check disclaimer on profile and landing page.

[npr]

The Vaping Illness Outbreak: What We Know So Far

Hundreds of people have been hospitalized with severe lung disease linked to vaping. Public health agencies are investigating what's behind the alarming symptoms.