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European girls aged 13-15 have worldβs highest rate of tobacco use for age group
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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Calling vaping tobacco use is like likening a painkiller to eating tree bark.
Yes the nicotine comes from tobacco, but hundreds of other compounds are removed, and smoking or chewing tobacco is cancerous, AFAIK vaping is not or more precisely less than 1% the toxicity of tobacco.
According to a metastudy I found, vaping is rather a health risk reduction of 84% to 97%, not beyond 99%.
Vaping would be a great alternative to smoking cigarettes. As a substitute, it can aid in the process of trying to quit smoking altogether.
The goal, however, is always to remain or become smoke free.
Vaping feels cleaner than cigarettes and tastes better when you haven't smoked before. It makes it easier to start smoking. Once you are vaping, you have a higher chance of picking up cigarettes than if you haven't vaped before.
Also, I'd argue that putting nicotine in the growing bodies of kids and youngsters isn't the best idea to begin with, no matter the form of presentation..
Yes I used it myself, where I had failed with several attempts before, I finally succeeded getting rid of tobacco with vaping, and then step the vaping down by mixing ever less nicotine in may vape juice.
I agree, and even as a heavy smoker, when you have vaped for 14 days, a cigarette taste horrible.
I know what you mean, but I have to correct you there. Vaping is NOT smoking. There's a HUGE difference between inhaling a vapor that has been proven safe, to a degree that it was used to prevent infections in kindergartens in the 50's in USA. The nicotine itself has few detrimental health effects, apart from creating dependency.
Smoke from tobacco on the other hand, contains hundreds of carcinogens, and it is pretty obvious that inhaling smoke is dangerous. While vaping is more like smelling the fragrance of a pot of tea.
I absolutely agree, the fact that it creates a dependency, is IMO a good argument for making it illegal for under 18's.
You are not fit to make that decision as a minor. However, it is also my impression that many young people actually do vape without the nicotine.
Also regarding the nicotine in vapes, there are allegedly similar problems with energy drinks, that can also create dependencies. Those should be restricted too IMO. Preferably completely outlawed, or rather limited to be no stronger than a cup of tea.
The problem is however, that there's no studies on the effect yet that can tell anything about long-term effects.
The better smell and taste, espescially the sweetness and renewed coolness factor has however had quite the impact on early smoking among adolescents. Regarding addiction and effects of energy drinks, yes they are bad. In fact, IFAIC there was a study posted on lemmy recently that showed how bad hightened coffeine intake is for teens. And I'd for one very much support a ban on energy drinks before the age of 16 or even 18 for all I care.
It depends on what you mean by long term. Studies that observe patients for over ten years already exist.
As I mentioned earlier, the bases of the juice have been used since the 50's. And is also used in asthma inhalers. So it is false to claim the long term effect is unknown.
The nicotine is also pretty well known, and is not a major carcinogen. All that remain is the flavor, where there may be minimal risk, but they too are known enough to be good grade, and we'll enough to mass produce and workers working with that every day.
So that part is mostly an argument from ignorance, which is unfortunately what we see regarding vaping about 99% of the time.
Again you call it early smoking, which is false. Vaping is not smoking. And there is no evidence that vaping leads to smoking. The whole gateway drug is a huge mistake that is often repeated but has zero evidence.
Vaping is not smoking. Smoke comes from fire, fire also produces toxic stuff when burning that is inhaled when smoking tobacco. Vaping evaporates the oil, nothing is burning or smoking.
Complete bullshit. Zero evidence.
Absolutely. But one is his hundreds of times more harmful than the other. It's like comparing smoking crack cocaine to smoking weed (btw weed is healthier than any tobacco or vapes).
The probabilty is on par with alchool
Which makes sense since the base is relatively close to a sugar-alcohol. But that would probably be per gram.
So if you vape 2 ml per day (moderate use), and compare that to drinking 1 beer per day (also moderate use). The beer is 33cl of 4.5% alcohol (vol) = 15ml alcohol in one beer, or 10.5 grams, where 10 grams is 1 standard drink.
So by that measure vaping 2 ml is 1/7th as likely to cause cancer as drinking 1 beer.
I personally stopped vaping a few years ago, after being a heavy smoker for many years. The maximum I ever vaped was less than 5 ml per day as a former heavy smoker.
In EU we have limits on how powerful the vape can be, and how big the tanks can be. So I doubt many of those girls even vape 2ml per day.
Apart from the dependency on nicotine, it is mostly harmless.
Your logic on comparing propyleneglycol with ethanol and it causing cancer is just jank. Also so far there are no studies that say vaping under normal conditions causes cancer. Rather if vapes that are set wrongly, heating the mixture too much that it forms chemical byproducts like formaldehyde, then a risk of cancer may be present, since for example formaldehyde is a proven carcinogen. However such overheating will also cause injury to the user such as throat and lung injury, which is highly unpleasant and will cause a user to exert more caution.
It's unfortunately trivially easy to buy completely unregulated health hazards from china.
I know those are frequently confiscated here, but when I vaped, most the equipment was made in China anyway, and the highest quality brands were also from China.
Puff bars are apparently exceedingly popular, but to me it seems like a giant waste, I personally mixed my own juices from pure pharmaceutical quality PG and nicotine, and buying the best vaporizers and tanks from China. But that is next to impossible today, which I suppose is a part of why puff bars have become so popular.
IMO the EU regulation is a bit heavy handed, but I suppose it does prevent extreme use to some extend, personally I'm happy I could use vaping as a means to get rid of my addiction, where several attempts before vaping had failed.
In fact, the nicotine often comes from tomatoes.
Toooommaaaaaacccoooooo!!!
What are you basing this on? It won't surprise me even slightly if studies show vaping is actually worse because everyone I know who vapes does it constantly, far far more than they ever smoked.
Numerous research papers I have studied. Before I started vaping more than 10 years ago.
The base for the juice was very thoroughly studied all the way back to the 50's, and was used to prevent infectious respiratory diseases in kindergartens, and is still used in asthma inhalers, and is also used as stage "smoke". So there are numerous uses of the vaping juice that are all considered perfectly safe.
The nicotine itself is not a carcinogen, so all that remains is the food grade flavors, that are most likely about as safe as the smell of a pot of tea.
Not that cancer is the only health risk worth mentioning, but I wouldn't count on this.
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4363846/
Further, I wonder how anyone could possibly know for sure that inhaling the base product is safe. You need decades to know that AND to regulate the ingredients to be sure nothing bad is in there. I don't know the specifics on today's laws around the world, but I know this has been mostly unregulated for a while. And it wouldn't surprise me slightly if people are getting known bad ingredients in products shipped in from China or elsewhere.
Vaping is probably safer than cigarettes and I think that's about as far as you can honestly go right now.
The only concern i have is the flavors. Yes, they're "Generally Regarded As Safe" for eating. There's not been sufficient study on the long term effects of inhaling them in the fashion that a vape delivers.
Yeah, this and also, whatever happened to the age old advice "inhaling anything but clean air is bad for your health"? That doesn't vanish because you're replacing something which is worse for your health.
We know that inhaling tobacco smoke is bad for you, and we have a good idea of how bad and why, because science.
That same kind of science hasn't been done on vaping. The handful of studies I'm aware of have all been horribly designed. From a data standpoint, that makes vaping an unknown.
However.
The only major incident that's even vape-adjacent was when some knobs were putting Vit E acetate into bathtub THC cart refills. I'm not saying it's impossible that there are conditions that haven't yet been linked to vaping, but the more time passes, the more people who are vaping, and still no "epidemic" level of disease in relation? I know that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but the people who holler about the dangers of vaping have never been able to demonstrate (to me) what those dangers are.
This is a mischaracterization of the conversations I've seen and been a part of. What people are trying to say is that no one should be assuming that because vaping seems safer that it is harmless.