this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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The idea of disposable vapes is crazy to me. Like if you had a phone and when the battery ran out you couldn't charge it you just threw it away. So much e-waste.
It's also a bit sad that many age groups now vape more than they were smoking before, which you can see in some the graphs and info here.
I hope the long term effects of vaping do turn out to be as low as claimed.
We don't yet have good longitudinal studies, and the short term effects are already pretty bad, so in my opinion there's no reason to believe claims that vaping will not have serious long-term effects.
I guess the question is "how bad?"
If smoking rates dropped to zero but vaping rates are as high as smoking rates were previously, are we better off? What about if vaping rates are 50% higher? Where is the break even point that we have undone all the benefits?
I don't think we can answer this yet. Initially (some years ago now) the Ministry of Health was pushing vaping as a smoking alternative, citing 95% less harm. My gut feel is we will find this to be quite wrong.
I have a feeling they won't be.
Legalization of Marijuana has largely meant weed has gone from very few studies showing it to be a miracle drug to not an abundance of work much more measured, showing the harms to daily smokers.
Marijuana users were pushed onto oil pens because we were told it was healthier than flower. Now we are being told it may have been leaching metal into our lungs.