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Is Vaping Really Bad For You? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, Colorado, the States so nice. We're playing there twice,
0:06
Speaker 1: two days in a row. Chuck, we added a second
0:08
Speaker 1: show to our Gothic Theater tour. That's right, we're gonna
0:11
Speaker 1: be there June seven and June now sold out, but
0:16
Speaker 1: one of those weird cases where you go see the
0:17
Speaker 1: first show you were actually late buying tickets. Right. We're
0:21
Speaker 1: also going to be in Boston April four, d C
0:23
Speaker 1: April five. We're gonna be in St. Louis on May
0:27
Speaker 1: and Cleveland one, and then of course we're gonna wrap
0:31
Speaker 1: this summer up on June at the Gothic Theater in Colorado.
0:36
Speaker 1: So go to s Y s K live dot com
0:38
Speaker 1: for all of your information and ticket needs. Welcome to
0:43
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:52
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:56
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bright, and there's Jerry Smoke and Roland
0:59
Speaker 1: over there. It's just a cloud chaser? Is that everything
1:04
Speaker 1: called smokers? Dude? I looked up terminology vape terminology cloud
1:11
Speaker 1: chaser really because I wanted to punish myself, and that's
1:16
Speaker 1: apparently I don't know. That's what this website says. That
1:19
Speaker 1: sounds like the kind of thing somebody who wears like
1:21
Speaker 1: a flannel shirt tight around their waist would call somebody
1:24
Speaker 1: who vapes. Yeah, oh no, these are vapors who you know,
1:28
Speaker 1: puff fat clouds, you know, seeing those people with just
1:31
Speaker 1: ridiculous amounts of smoke or not even smoke. Whatever it is,
1:36
Speaker 1: whatever it is, is the right the right thing to say,
1:38
Speaker 1: chuck because no one's quite sure. So we're talking electronic
1:44
Speaker 1: cigarettes e cigarettes. If you go to the FDA website,
1:48
Speaker 1: they're called electronic nicotine delivery systems. They don't people don't
1:53
Speaker 1: call them e cigarettes anymore, do they or do they?
1:56
Speaker 1: I don't know. I felt so square researching this because
1:58
Speaker 1: it's such an ever of involving thing. You have to
2:01
Speaker 1: be like right in the thick of it to know.
2:03
Speaker 1: I saw the siggs a lot still today. Well by
2:07
Speaker 1: the media, Yeah, I bet I think they just call
2:11
Speaker 1: it vaping, right, Okay, so vapes babies, right? Um? The
2:20
Speaker 1: you see it more and more these days the kids,
2:24
Speaker 1: which is kind of a problem. The kids seem to
2:27
Speaker 1: be enjoying this. Although I can't say anything because I
2:29
Speaker 1: was thinking about this, I'm like, gosh, teenagers are trying
2:32
Speaker 1: this and I was, like I was fourteen when I
2:34
Speaker 1: started smoking tobacco like every day for twenty years, like
2:39
Speaker 1: probably Marlboro Reds or something. Indeed, although when you're that
2:43
Speaker 1: young and you ride up on your bike to the
2:45
Speaker 1: convenience story to buy cigarettes, you just kind of you'll
2:49
Speaker 1: take whatever you can get. Um, but it does it
2:54
Speaker 1: strikes me as absolutely nuts when now that I don't
2:57
Speaker 1: smoke anymore, the idea of like, teenager are smoking it's
3:01
Speaker 1: just weird. Um. But some people kind of have this
3:05
Speaker 1: idea that it's wrong headed to compare et siggs or
3:12
Speaker 1: vapes who knows what they're called, with our SIGs with
3:16
Speaker 1: with regular SIGs or non vape SIGs, right, um, And
3:21
Speaker 1: that you could make a case that it's possible it's
3:24
Speaker 1: fine that teenagers are doing this. Really, some might say,
3:28
Speaker 1: or at the very least they might say, if you
3:31
Speaker 1: if I had to choose a teenager smoking a cigarette
3:35
Speaker 1: or tobacco, I would always choose the East cigarette. Yeah.
3:39
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the main points that
3:41
Speaker 1: we're going to hammer home throughout this whole thing, is
3:43
Speaker 1: that it is still sort of the wild, wild West,
3:46
Speaker 1: And that's one of the big issues is that no
3:49
Speaker 1: one really knows the deal a lot of times with
3:51
Speaker 1: what's in here, how it's reacting in the body, what
3:56
Speaker 1: the manufacturers, I mean, it's all just all just kind
4:00
Speaker 1: of guessing right now for sure, for a couple of reasons.
4:02
Speaker 1: One they're so new. But two here in the United States,
4:06
Speaker 1: it wasn't until two thousand and sixteen that the f
4:09
Speaker 1: d A gained regulatory control over these things. Before it
4:13
Speaker 1: was like they could put anything into the e juice
4:18
Speaker 1: who knows what it's actually called, um, that you're smoking,
4:22
Speaker 1: and you would have no idea what's in there there
4:24
Speaker 1: There was no regulation whatsoever until two thousand and sixteen.
4:28
Speaker 1: So yeah, it is like you said, the wild blah West.
4:30
Speaker 1: Still they're still figuring this out. And depending on what
4:32
Speaker 1: country you're in. Um, they're either a great way to
4:36
Speaker 1: to quit smoking tobacco or to smoke instead of smoking tobacco,
4:42
Speaker 1: or they're just as bad as cigarettes, if not worse
4:45
Speaker 1: in some respects. Or they're a gateway to a kid
4:49
Speaker 1: who may not have even started smoking cigarettes but tried
4:52
Speaker 1: this because it tastes like peaches and cream, right, and
4:56
Speaker 1: then they get hooked on the nicotine. Remember, I remember,
4:59
Speaker 1: I remember when Joe Cammell came out in the nineties
5:02
Speaker 1: and they were like, Uh, you can't have this cartoon
5:05
Speaker 1: camel hawking cigarettes because you're clearly targeting kids. Well, at
5:10
Speaker 1: least he never had peaches and cream flavor, which, by
5:14
Speaker 1: the way, I was looking at um ingredients in tobacco
5:17
Speaker 1: because now in the United States, cigarette companies have to
5:20
Speaker 1: list the ingredients on their on their websites, at least
5:23
Speaker 1: because that's what all smokers do is go to the
5:26
Speaker 1: website to see what they're smoking. Let me see, um
5:30
Speaker 1: high fruit toast corns are up is in cigarettes. That
5:32
Speaker 1: doesn't surprise me. It doesn't if you stop and think
5:35
Speaker 1: about it. But if you stop one more time to
5:37
Speaker 1: think about you're like, that stuff is everywhere. So yeah,
5:42
Speaker 1: they were invented by a pharmacist in China name Han Lick,
5:46
Speaker 1: who I believe his father died of lung cancer from smoking,
5:50
Speaker 1: and I don't know if that was the impetus to
5:51
Speaker 1: create this or not, but he did pat in the
5:54
Speaker 1: device in two thousand three, and as soon as I
5:57
Speaker 1: read that, I was like, man, I bet this guy
6:00
Speaker 1: is a gazillionaire. Do you want to hear something very surprising?
6:04
Speaker 1: He is now the first person to patent in East cigarette. Well,
6:08
Speaker 1: and he's all he also, I mean, I'm not sure
6:10
Speaker 1: how much is net worth is, but he's still currently
6:13
Speaker 1: kind of battling for rights to make money and stuff West. So,
6:19
Speaker 1: back in the sixties, the mid sixties, a man named
6:21
Speaker 1: Herbert A. Gilbert, which is that's a nineteen sixties inventor's
6:25
Speaker 1: name if I've ever heard one. Yeah, he patented something
6:28
Speaker 1: that is basically an East cigarette. And then apparently even
6:33
Speaker 1: further back than that, in the nwenties, someone patented vaporizer penon,
6:38
Speaker 1: not necessarily for cigarette, but they were human spirit papers.
6:42
Speaker 1: It's my grandmother's soul. Uh Uh, here's the deal. We
6:47
Speaker 1: haven't even so worded it as yet. Um. I figured
6:49
Speaker 1: everyone knows because it seems to be their ubiquitous these days.
6:54
Speaker 1: But um, an East cigarette is it's a it's a
6:58
Speaker 1: battery powered device usually looks sometimes it can look like
7:02
Speaker 1: a cigarette that even lights up on the end, but
7:05
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of those anymore. No, it's
7:07
Speaker 1: kind of an early thing, I think so, and um
7:09
Speaker 1: just to make you feel more like you were smoking.
7:11
Speaker 1: But now they just look like a little pins with
7:14
Speaker 1: a cartridge and it converts that liquid nicotine into a
7:17
Speaker 1: vapor that you inhale, so you're not actually burning nicotine.
7:21
Speaker 1: There's no smoke, even though it looks like smoke. That's
7:25
Speaker 1: I don't even know what you call it, vaporation, depending
7:30
Speaker 1: depending on what's in the stuff that you're you're inhaling
7:33
Speaker 1: or vaporizing fat clouds, fat clouds, right, Um, but yeah,
7:38
Speaker 1: that's it. You you hit the nail on the head,
7:40
Speaker 1: it's combustion isn't involved. Right, There's little coils in there
7:45
Speaker 1: that get heated up by the battery, bring the vapor
7:48
Speaker 1: or the liquid up to its boiling point, converting it
7:52
Speaker 1: to vapor, and then that's what you inhale. And since
7:54
Speaker 1: there's no combustion, uh, you're not getting all the extra
7:58
Speaker 1: stuff that you get when you smoke to pacco like tar. Well,
8:01
Speaker 1: there is no tobacco in here. There isn't. And that's
8:04
Speaker 1: a really big point that even in articles about the
8:07
Speaker 1: difference between tobacco and the cigarettes they call this stuff
8:11
Speaker 1: interchangeably like tobacco. These are not tobacco. Tobacco is a
8:16
Speaker 1: plant that contains nicotine that we have learned over the
8:19
Speaker 1: centuries to smoke as a delivery system. Yeah, as a
8:23
Speaker 1: delivery system for that nicotine. The problem is is there's
8:27
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff, bad stuff that come from
8:30
Speaker 1: inhaling that tobacco. It's not necessarily the nicotine itself, although
8:34
Speaker 1: it is a highly addictive drug when inhaled. The point
8:38
Speaker 1: of these cigarettes, at least one of the points is
8:40
Speaker 1: is that you can still get that nicotine without the tobacco.
8:44
Speaker 1: It's separated from the tobacco, putting this other solution and
8:48
Speaker 1: that you heat up without combustion and inhale and then
8:51
Speaker 1: birds just kind of chirp around your head and you're
8:54
Speaker 1: suddenly dressed like snow white, and you say, what was
8:56
Speaker 1: in the juice? Or is it? And we'll talk about
9:00
Speaker 1: all this. This is I'm just teasing ahead, But is it?
9:03
Speaker 1: Is nicotine even bad for you if you're not burning
9:06
Speaker 1: it from tobacco? Is nicotine itself? Because that one, dude,
9:11
Speaker 1: I think from the seventies and one of these articles
9:14
Speaker 1: you said said, you know people people come for nicotine,
9:18
Speaker 1: but they die from tar. Yeah. Michael Russell, he was
9:22
Speaker 1: a South African scientist who basically was the guy who
9:25
Speaker 1: changed the way we viewed cigarettes. Like up to that point,
9:28
Speaker 1: it was a psychological habit smoking was and he said no, actually,
9:33
Speaker 1: we're addicted to nicotine. Um, And it's a it's a
9:37
Speaker 1: physiological addiction. Yes, So that you've heard that like um,
9:42
Speaker 1: and that came from there's this really great article, if
9:45
Speaker 1: not a little one sided um in Rolling Stone from
9:48
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen by David Ams Dinton. It's a tough
9:52
Speaker 1: one to say, um, but he talked about that guy, right,
9:56
Speaker 1: and that guy out of that whole thing, this big
10:01
Speaker 1: push to get people who quit smoking then focused on
10:04
Speaker 1: nicotine as an addictive drug, and you had to smoke
10:07
Speaker 1: tobacco to get your addicted drug, and the tobacco is
10:09
Speaker 1: going to kill you, So just quit smoking altogether. Apparently
10:13
Speaker 1: nicotine is not addictive unless you inhale it. So whether
10:17
Speaker 1: you're inhaling it in water, vapor, or tobacco, yes, it
10:19
Speaker 1: is an addictive drug. Right. So back to the device itself.
10:23
Speaker 1: There are many many kinds you can get out there.
10:25
Speaker 1: Some of them, um, are just sort of long and thin,
10:28
Speaker 1: like a like a ballpoint pen, and there's no button
10:31
Speaker 1: or device. Just simply inhaling it, putting your mouth on
10:34
Speaker 1: the tip and inhaling it will activate it. Other ones
10:37
Speaker 1: have little buttons on them that you push to activate
10:41
Speaker 1: the system that consists of three parts, which is the
10:44
Speaker 1: rechargeable battery. UM. And when you think of a rechargeable
10:47
Speaker 1: with the battery, you think of a little tiny thing
10:50
Speaker 1: that's the main body of these pins, is the battery.
10:53
Speaker 1: Then you have a little cartridge or the vaporization chamber. No, no, sorry,
10:58
Speaker 1: there's different things. Vaporization chambers where the party takes place,
11:03
Speaker 1: and in the cartridges where the liquid is stored. So
11:07
Speaker 1: the the vaporization chamber has the atomizer in it, and
11:12
Speaker 1: that's the thing that has the heating coils that heat
11:15
Speaker 1: up the juice. Yeah, the heating coils, which I just
11:18
Speaker 1: saw this today. They might be a problem as well.
11:22
Speaker 1: I saw that as well, and that's part of the
11:23
Speaker 1: wild Wild West thing. They're testing, like the juice, the joss,
11:29
Speaker 1: the jew to see if that's dangerous. But now it
11:33
Speaker 1: just said, I just saw a study UM published in
11:36
Speaker 1: Environmental Health Perspectives from John's Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
11:41
Speaker 1: Health that said that these coils are burning, These metal
11:45
Speaker 1: coils are producing like lead, chromium, manganese, and or nickel.
11:51
Speaker 1: That's part of the device itself. That is now being
11:54
Speaker 1: heated and mixed with the vapor. Yeah, toxic metals. You
11:57
Speaker 1: don't want that stuff in your now, that's the stuff
11:58
Speaker 1: in cigarettes that be will want to get rid of, right,
12:01
Speaker 1: And part of the problem. I also saw another study
12:04
Speaker 1: that found that some of those toxic metals are in
12:06
Speaker 1: concentrations as high as cigarettes, if not higher. Yeah, right, um,
12:12
Speaker 1: because it can vary, I think, depending on the yes.
12:15
Speaker 1: And they found it also in that same study that
12:17
Speaker 1: it seemed that the amounts were higher in um frequently
12:24
Speaker 1: changed atomizers. So it's today but later today I want oreo. Right,
12:31
Speaker 1: And if you're changing out your atomizer, the new head,
12:34
Speaker 1: a fresh head seems to leach more toxic chemicals that
12:38
Speaker 1: stops after a period of time, not not the cartridge. No,
12:41
Speaker 1: not the cartridge, the atomize or with the coils. Right,
12:44
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So yeah, so you don't want that stuff.
12:46
Speaker 1: Part of the part of the reason you're inhaling nicotine
12:50
Speaker 1: is because it delivers it right to your brain basically
12:53
Speaker 1: from your lungs. It's a really efficient delivery system. So
12:56
Speaker 1: you want to cut down on the additional stuff that's
12:59
Speaker 1: being delivered write to your brain like lead, because you
13:02
Speaker 1: take a big long pull off e sig. It's got
13:05
Speaker 1: a bunch of lead in it. There goes ten I
13:07
Speaker 1: Q points see you later. The cartridges. This this liquid
13:12
Speaker 1: that's in there um is nicotine and the delivery system
13:16
Speaker 1: is usually propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which I mean
13:22
Speaker 1: we'll get to all this. Yeah, we're jumping ahead of ourselves. Yes,
13:25
Speaker 1: that's that's what that's made of. Should we take a break, Yeah,
13:28
Speaker 1: let's all right, we'll be We're gonna go puff some
13:31
Speaker 1: fat clouds. Be back right after this. So is that
13:59
Speaker 1: really what some people call all the fat clouds? I've
14:01
Speaker 1: seen people make fun of people by saying that. So
14:06
Speaker 1: I think it has been said vapors. Uh, they take
14:11
Speaker 1: a lot of grief from people. Well, they pushed pushed
14:16
Speaker 1: boundaries a lot. Yeah, but the whole culture is kind
14:19
Speaker 1: of like ripe for and ridicule I think by people
14:25
Speaker 1: who don't do it. Is that fair to say? It
14:28
Speaker 1: seems that way like there's got to be a Portlandia
14:30
Speaker 1: sketch about like sidewalk vapors, you think. So here's the
14:34
Speaker 1: thing with the cartridges though, is not all of them
14:36
Speaker 1: even have nicotine sometimes? And I don't get this at all.
14:40
Speaker 1: I don't get it. But sometimes people just vape flavor.
14:44
Speaker 1: That is stupid. That is a stupid thing to do,
14:49
Speaker 1: because consider this, it's bad enough if you're doing this
14:52
Speaker 1: to get nicotine, right, you're a drug addict if you're
14:55
Speaker 1: doing this to get nicotine. So yeah, you're probably gonna
14:59
Speaker 1: get some toxic metals. And that may or may not
15:01
Speaker 1: mean a lot to you. It may mean enough for
15:03
Speaker 1: you to quit, it may not mean anything to you.
15:06
Speaker 1: Just keep on keeping on. But if you're huffing toxic
15:09
Speaker 1: medic metals just to get a strawberry flavor, you're a dummy,
15:14
Speaker 1: and just stop doing that immediate. Well, but what if
15:18
Speaker 1: that is what you do in place of this bad
15:20
Speaker 1: smoking habit you had, well, then you should learn more
15:23
Speaker 1: about what you're inhaling, because you're probably not you're not
15:27
Speaker 1: smoking the nicotine because if you're worried what it's going
15:32
Speaker 1: to do to your health, So just stop altogether, go
15:37
Speaker 1: get some dumb dumb lollipops, dumb dumb. Well, no, I
15:39
Speaker 1: mean that, that's clearly and there are some studies that
15:42
Speaker 1: will get too later that pretty recent ones that have
15:45
Speaker 1: tested people who smoke and vape because that's sort of
15:48
Speaker 1: one of the problems is sometimes people do both because
15:51
Speaker 1: they want to get that nicotine hit, but they're at
15:53
Speaker 1: a party where you can't smoke or whatever. That's like
15:56
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario where that you're doing both. Yeah,
15:59
Speaker 1: that you're using it to smoke more frequently because you're
16:03
Speaker 1: smoking in places where you can't normally smoke Tobacca. So uh,
16:07
Speaker 1: like I said, we'll get to that test. But they
16:09
Speaker 1: tested people who do both, people who do want and
16:11
Speaker 1: people to do none, and of course doing nothing is
16:14
Speaker 1: the best case scenario. Yeah, and I want to go
16:17
Speaker 1: back a couple of steps. I don't mean to be
16:19
Speaker 1: all holier than now. I certainly don't think I'm any
16:22
Speaker 1: better than anybody who smokes just because I quit with
16:26
Speaker 1: the benefit of hindsight now that I don't smoke. Uh,
16:32
Speaker 1: it's tough not to just be like, stop smoking. You're
16:35
Speaker 1: gonna thank yourself. I know you want to. There are
16:38
Speaker 1: very few smokers out there who are died in the wool.
16:42
Speaker 1: Cigarette smokers who are like, man, I love smoking still
16:46
Speaker 1: twenty years on, they probably want to quit, which is
16:49
Speaker 1: the sad thing. Yeah, So I'm sorry everybody if I
16:52
Speaker 1: came off its holder uh, it says in here, and
16:55
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate this still is, but it
16:56
Speaker 1: says the cartridge just last about as long as the
16:58
Speaker 1: back of its garettes. I don't know if that's still
17:01
Speaker 1: accurate because there are so many different kinds of tanks
17:03
Speaker 1: and cartridges you can get these days. I think it
17:05
Speaker 1: generally does, though, because they yeah, and they sell them
17:08
Speaker 1: at a certain price point, and I think it's comparable,
17:10
Speaker 1: depending on where you live, to a pack of cigarettes,
17:13
Speaker 1: like a pack of New York twelve dollar cigarettes, I think.
17:16
Speaker 1: But that's if you buy the cartridges, use them up,
17:19
Speaker 1: and then buy another cartridge. You can also buy a
17:23
Speaker 1: vaporizer that has a refillable cartridge that always stays on
17:28
Speaker 1: and you just refill it yourself because you're a thrifty person. Yeah,
17:32
Speaker 1: that would be like, uh, I guess kind of like
17:35
Speaker 1: rolling your own cigarettes. It would be you probably get
17:37
Speaker 1: a little more bang for your black there, right, you
17:40
Speaker 1: definitely do. But you know, and you look cool, do you?
17:44
Speaker 1: I don't know, you look Europeans. It's a pain though.
17:47
Speaker 1: I mean I went through a cigarette rolling phase. But like,
17:50
Speaker 1: you want a cigarette right then, man, I gotta wait
17:53
Speaker 1: forty five seconds until I get this thing just right now.
17:56
Speaker 1: I just ripped the paper and not have to start
17:57
Speaker 1: over grows cigarette. Yeah. When I was young and dumb, See,
18:01
Speaker 1: I wasn't a smoker smoker. I would just smoke occasionally,
18:04
Speaker 1: which always plucked smokers. Um. And when I did my
18:08
Speaker 1: big Europe trip fresh out of college, I just thought
18:11
Speaker 1: it was the coolest thing to, you know, roll up
18:13
Speaker 1: my drum cigarettes walking around in Paris. Yeah, check me out, frenchees.
18:17
Speaker 1: But again, did you have a beret on at least? Um? No,
18:23
Speaker 1: I smoked that too. I had it on day one,
18:27
Speaker 1: but I smoked it. Um. Alright, So we might as
18:30
Speaker 1: well get into some of these um health studies and concerns. Um.
18:35
Speaker 1: Like we said over and over, one of the big
18:37
Speaker 1: problems is we don't know certainly don't know about long
18:40
Speaker 1: term health effects and are just learning about some of
18:45
Speaker 1: the short term effects. Well, the thing is is we
18:50
Speaker 1: it's too new to know about east cigarettes specifically, but
18:55
Speaker 1: from these early tests that are coming back, UM, we
18:59
Speaker 1: know a lot about some of the chemicals that are
19:01
Speaker 1: showing up in these tests. And some of them are
19:04
Speaker 1: like whoa, Nelly, You do not want that in your brain? Um,
19:09
Speaker 1: there's one in particular. Some of these you can just
19:11
Speaker 1: tell from the names of them. There's terrible but um
19:14
Speaker 1: a Krylla nitrial. I believe it's a Krylla nit trial.
19:19
Speaker 1: It is, uh yeah, I think I nailed it, even
19:21
Speaker 1: without even looking at it. It is a very toxic
19:25
Speaker 1: poison that's used in the creation of um acrylic fibers,
19:31
Speaker 1: I think maybe even some rubber. Um. It's it's a
19:34
Speaker 1: it's a plastic it's yeah. Well, the problem is is um.
19:40
Speaker 1: It is metabolized in your body into cyanide. So that's
19:44
Speaker 1: just one example of some of the stuff they're finding
19:47
Speaker 1: in the bloodstream of people who smoke the cigarettes. And
19:50
Speaker 1: again it's too soon to say what kind of effects
19:53
Speaker 1: these are having, but these chemicals have been documented for
19:56
Speaker 1: so many decades now that when they pop up we
19:59
Speaker 1: can say basically automatically, that's you shouldn't be doing that.
20:04
Speaker 1: And I think part of the big problem is the
20:06
Speaker 1: regulatory issues, Like it's finally under the FDA's wing right
20:11
Speaker 1: as of two thousand and sixteen, but they're still so
20:14
Speaker 1: new that they're not even making official statements yet, are
20:17
Speaker 1: they or are they? So here's the thing, this is
20:20
Speaker 1: this is a very bizarre thing. Chuck there. Um, they
20:25
Speaker 1: now regulate these things like tobacco, but it's not tobacco
20:30
Speaker 1: in the US. Yes, So if you have if you
20:33
Speaker 1: buy a vape pen or vapor cartridge or something like
20:38
Speaker 1: that and it has nicotine in it, it's to the
20:40
Speaker 1: f d A, you're buying a pack of cigarettes. To
20:43
Speaker 1: an East Sig user, that would drive you crazy because
20:46
Speaker 1: you might be smoking East cigarettes because you don't smoke tobacco,
20:50
Speaker 1: because tobacco is something that's very, very very bad for you.
20:53
Speaker 1: Supposedly East cigarettes are a better alternative to that. To
20:57
Speaker 1: the FDA, they're the exact same thing, right, And to
21:00
Speaker 1: East cigarette, I mean I get their complaint because they
21:03
Speaker 1: can say, listen, you can buy nicotine patches and nicotine
21:05
Speaker 1: gum and it doesn't have health warnings on there. And
21:08
Speaker 1: that's all we're doing is ingesting nicotine. We're not burning tobacco,
21:12
Speaker 1: just like so many choose nicotine gum. Isn't burning tobacco.
21:16
Speaker 1: So why it's it's because they look like cigarettes and
21:19
Speaker 1: you puff fat clouds. Yeah, and that's a that's a
21:22
Speaker 1: thing that David Amston says, and this is that that's
21:26
Speaker 1: really the big distinction, Like, if you're using it to
21:28
Speaker 1: quit smoking, it's the same thing as nicotine gum, and
21:31
Speaker 1: you can just go buy that over the counter, right
21:34
Speaker 1: with no warnings on the box at all. Um, But
21:38
Speaker 1: here there are warnings. It is treated like tobacco. And
21:42
Speaker 1: he says it's probably because the cigarettes aren't designed as
21:46
Speaker 1: a medical device. They're designed for enjoyment too. They have
21:50
Speaker 1: like this dual use, and America has a long history
21:53
Speaker 1: of saying, oh, you enjoy this thing, Well, let's try
21:56
Speaker 1: and squash that exactly. Yeah, but what's like the big
21:59
Speaker 1: deal to them? Though? Really? I think, Okay, so it's
22:02
Speaker 1: regulated like tobacco, Like what, it's not keeping them from smoking?
22:06
Speaker 1: Oh to E cigarette users, Well yeah, I mean, it
22:09
Speaker 1: doesn't prevent them from doing anything. What is it because
22:11
Speaker 1: you have to be eighteen or something? I don't know.
22:13
Speaker 1: I think there seems to be a bit of a
22:15
Speaker 1: culture war going on with um between East cigarette users
22:19
Speaker 1: and manufacturers too, and the anti tobacco warriors that were
22:25
Speaker 1: very successful. Um, get this, from the sixties to today.
22:30
Speaker 1: There was a drop from like I think forty of
22:34
Speaker 1: Americans smoked in like nineteen sixty five, eighteen percent smoke
22:39
Speaker 1: as of like two thousand, fifteen or sixteen. Pretty amazing.
22:42
Speaker 1: It's a great drop in numbers. It's actually not that
22:45
Speaker 1: big of a drop because the population kept growing, so
22:48
Speaker 1: it was really just an eight million American drop. But
22:52
Speaker 1: it shows this social trend of people saying, we don't
22:56
Speaker 1: smoke anymore, smoking the losers, right. So um, that was
23:00
Speaker 1: the That was the result of years, decades of government
23:07
Speaker 1: P S a S and the American Cancer Society and
23:11
Speaker 1: the American Heart Association and the Long Association all getting
23:15
Speaker 1: together and just pumping drumming it into the heads of
23:18
Speaker 1: Americans that smoking is stupid, it's a betrayal to your family,
23:22
Speaker 1: it's a waste of money, you're killing yourself, You're you're
23:25
Speaker 1: affecting like the insurance industry, you're you're crippling America with
23:29
Speaker 1: your stupid habit. And it worked. Now if East cigarettes
23:33
Speaker 1: are okay, they have to walk that back some and
23:37
Speaker 1: the people who are who are still trying to get
23:39
Speaker 1: America to be like totally smoke freeer, like, we're not
23:42
Speaker 1: about to do that, but they don't though. That's that's
23:45
Speaker 1: that confusion between burning tobacco and ingesting nicotine. Like you
23:51
Speaker 1: would come you know, because it's a stigma because it
23:55
Speaker 1: looks like a cigarette partially. But also remember that um
24:00
Speaker 1: nicotine is most addictive when it's inhaled. When you chew
24:03
Speaker 1: it as a gum or get it through a patch,
24:05
Speaker 1: it's supposedly not addictive at all. It's only when you
24:08
Speaker 1: inhale it that it's addictive. So they're also saying like,
24:11
Speaker 1: this is a drug, and people are doing drugs, so
24:15
Speaker 1: it should be regulated. But then other people say, well,
24:18
Speaker 1: caffeine's a drug, why we regulate that? In Starbucks? Is
24:22
Speaker 1: like shut your mouth should be taken another break. All right,
24:26
Speaker 1: we'll come back and we'll talk about um. That Rolling
24:29
Speaker 1: Stone article in a very interesting study from a few
24:32
Speaker 1: years ago, right after this, alright, so in that Only
25:00
Speaker 1: Stone magazine, there was a very um, big time study
25:04
Speaker 1: that came out of Britain in August that they called
25:09
Speaker 1: the Landmark Review of the SIGs. And uh they they
25:15
Speaker 1: said quote around safer than smoking, which is that's a
25:20
Speaker 1: bold statement, it is. And I went and looked today
25:25
Speaker 1: to see how much that's changed. They have doubled and
25:28
Speaker 1: tripled down on that number. If you go onto the
25:31
Speaker 1: the U K's government Health service, the NHS, site, they
25:35
Speaker 1: say it's about safer than smoking. Still, I saw somewhere
25:42
Speaker 1: and this is like the Royal College of Surgeons saying this.
25:45
Speaker 1: So it's very much touted as an alternative tobacco to tobacco.
25:50
Speaker 1: It's safer alternative to tobacco. So here's the deal. Though
25:52
Speaker 1: it seems like people in this article, even that um
25:56
Speaker 1: take issue with the number, say it may not be,
26:01
Speaker 1: but it's it is certainly better than burning tar into
26:05
Speaker 1: your loans. Well, yeah, then those are the Americans. Though
26:07
Speaker 1: the Americans are saying like, we're never gonna say it's safer,
26:12
Speaker 1: but apparently most public health people in America say it's
26:16
Speaker 1: almost certainly safer than than cigarettes. Like you said, just
26:20
Speaker 1: that combustion alone creates some really bad stuff that you're
26:26
Speaker 1: not gonna get from vapor, just because there's no combustions,
26:30
Speaker 1: just just by that alone would make e cigarettes safer
26:33
Speaker 1: than than tobacco. But the question is I think a
26:37
Speaker 1: lot of people have this idea that oh, I can
26:40
Speaker 1: just totally like vape to my heart's content. It's healthy,
26:44
Speaker 1: even like it's like huffing vitamin C or something like that.
26:47
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem to be the case. From recent research. Yeah,
26:50
Speaker 1: and it sets to here that um, and this may
26:53
Speaker 1: be because of the American propaganda machine, but said of
27:00
Speaker 1: smokers believed the Siggs were safer in two thousand ten,
27:04
Speaker 1: and just three years later that dropped to Yeah. And
27:08
Speaker 1: there was another stat I think, I don't know if
27:10
Speaker 1: it was in that or another article, but they said
27:13
Speaker 1: that something like a third of former East SIGG smokers
27:17
Speaker 1: said they went back to tobacco because they were worried
27:20
Speaker 1: about the health dangers of the cigarettes. Now that's a problem,
27:25
Speaker 1: and there's a there's the people who are saying, like, no,
27:27
Speaker 1: eat Siggs are safer than tobacco. And what you're talking
27:31
Speaker 1: about at base are nicotine addicts. So tell this this
27:36
Speaker 1: nicotine delivery system over this nicotine delivery system if it's
27:39
Speaker 1: even a little healthier, you know. Uh. And and America
27:44
Speaker 1: is saying absolutely not, We're not doing that. In our eyes,
27:47
Speaker 1: they're one and the same, tobacco and East cigarettes. So
27:51
Speaker 1: some people are saying, well, there's blood on your hands,
27:53
Speaker 1: the blood of four and eighty thousand Americans who die
27:55
Speaker 1: from smoking every year, from smoking tobacco, that's the that's
28:00
Speaker 1: the stakes to all this. But nicotine itself and this
28:03
Speaker 1: is in that Rolling Stone article too, is super interesting.
28:06
Speaker 1: Do we do one of nicotine or just I know
28:09
Speaker 1: we did quite a few on smoking, We do one
28:10
Speaker 1: on caffeine back in the day. But nicotine is interesting
28:14
Speaker 1: in that it is uh apparently if it's not in,
28:19
Speaker 1: if it's not smoked, and if you remove it from
28:21
Speaker 1: that cigarette, then it's fairly benign as a substance itself,
28:26
Speaker 1: although addictive as far as what it does to the body.
28:29
Speaker 1: But the weird thing is is that it it doesn't
28:32
Speaker 1: do the same thing like it's sort of like this
28:34
Speaker 1: little magic and that's why people smoke, probably this little
28:37
Speaker 1: magic thing. If you're if you need to feel up
28:40
Speaker 1: and your body wants to feel up, a cigarette can
28:42
Speaker 1: make you feel up. But if you want to chill
28:44
Speaker 1: out and relax, it can also do that. So it
28:47
Speaker 1: has some pharmacological um magic yeah to it, which makes
28:53
Speaker 1: it useful. But it's also again, as that article is
28:56
Speaker 1: pointing out, it's been stigmatized ever since the seventies, and
28:59
Speaker 1: that change in paradigm of what smoking is came about
29:03
Speaker 1: nicotine got targeted. So let's talk about some of these
29:09
Speaker 1: some of the things that have been found because one
29:11
Speaker 1: of the one of the big problems also a big
29:14
Speaker 1: objection to just allowing um, these cigarettes smoked anywhere, people
29:21
Speaker 1: vaping wherever they want, is that when we don't know
29:24
Speaker 1: very much about it. But too if we say, okay,
29:27
Speaker 1: maybe smoking is not so bad. If you're not actually smoking,
29:30
Speaker 1: you're just vaping, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
29:32
Speaker 1: Maybe it is on par with like drinking or coffee
29:35
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, And teens start to take this up
29:40
Speaker 1: and they are Um. The problem is is a lot
29:44
Speaker 1: of people say, well, okay, we're turning our teens in
29:46
Speaker 1: the nicotine addics. I have a problem with that. But
29:49
Speaker 1: what if this whole vaping thing goes away and we've
29:52
Speaker 1: got all these teenage nicotine addicts. Do you really think
29:55
Speaker 1: they're not going to just start smoking cigarettes after after that, right,
29:59
Speaker 1: or just do that anyway? Right? Apparently that's not necessarily happening.
30:05
Speaker 1: That teens who are I feel like such an old
30:08
Speaker 1: guy saying the word teens. Try saying tweens, tweens really old? Terrible?
30:15
Speaker 1: Uh that teens and tweens um that when they are
30:21
Speaker 1: trying this, they're trying it. Most of them are deciding
30:25
Speaker 1: it's not for them and they're not going on to tobacco. Actually, well,
30:30
Speaker 1: you're right, because they did a study. The CDC did
30:32
Speaker 1: one that you said tripled in the past year among
30:36
Speaker 1: the middle and high school students. But then you poke
30:38
Speaker 1: into the study and it doesn't differentiate at all between
30:42
Speaker 1: someone who just tried it once right waiting for the
30:45
Speaker 1: school bus and a kid who really took it up.
30:49
Speaker 1: So there, it's so funny that after depressing that after
30:52
Speaker 1: all these years, there's still such bad studies, well bad reporting,
30:57
Speaker 1: Well that too. On the studies, I saw that the
31:00
Speaker 1: CDC says that the cigarette smoking is down two thousand
31:04
Speaker 1: fifteen to two thousand and sixteen. Sixteen percent of teenagers
31:08
Speaker 1: had smoked or vaped in the last thirty days in
31:11
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen. It was down to eleven point
31:14
Speaker 1: three percent in two thousand and sixteen. And apparently tobacco
31:18
Speaker 1: smoking tobacco is like holding steady at eight percent, but
31:23
Speaker 1: like seven percent smoked cigars, which is hilarious. Remember that
31:27
Speaker 1: cartoon baby that was like a bank robber who smoked
31:29
Speaker 1: cigars On the Bugs Bunny, Yeah, on the Bugs Bunny.
31:34
Speaker 1: You know the tweens love that. I did see on
31:37
Speaker 1: some weird link researching all this. That very sad kid.
31:41
Speaker 1: I think he was like Indonesian. That was the two
31:43
Speaker 1: year old smoker. It was it was a follow up,
31:46
Speaker 1: he's done't smoke now, um, but then he had a
31:49
Speaker 1: lot of weight gain. But it seems like now he's
31:53
Speaker 1: doing okay, all right, But it was like I hated
31:56
Speaker 1: that people laughed and thought that was funny. Oh it
31:58
Speaker 1: was disturbing. It was completely disturbing. Yeah, like a baby's
32:03
Speaker 1: like a baby. Yeah, he could barely hold his head
32:06
Speaker 1: up and he was smoking. And here we are laughing,
32:09
Speaker 1: but not from that. It's laughing at how I said
32:13
Speaker 1: baby exactly. Um, so where are the chemicals coming from? Then?
32:19
Speaker 1: If they're not smoking tobacco, it's the problem. Well, I
32:24
Speaker 1: mean it's some of it is is from the flavoring, right,
32:29
Speaker 1: the flavoring, yeah, like that. This is a Harvard study.
32:34
Speaker 1: The flavored e siggs contain that. I think that's when
32:38
Speaker 1: you said diet diets. That was a different one. Oh
32:43
Speaker 1: that's the popcorn flavor popcorn long yeah, butter flavored, and
32:48
Speaker 1: that was I mean, we don't we're not saying it
32:50
Speaker 1: tastes like that, but it is a chemical used in
32:53
Speaker 1: artificial butter and back in the early two thousand's that
32:56
Speaker 1: was when he heard the term popcorn popcorn Latin. Well,
33:00
Speaker 1: actually they do use as a buttery flavor in um
33:05
Speaker 1: in in whenever you have a buttery flavored E sig
33:08
Speaker 1: or vape. Right right, So these this what did you
33:12
Speaker 1: call it? Diacet Yeah, diacet popcorn long is um Like
33:19
Speaker 1: you said, it came from the early two thousands where
33:21
Speaker 1: people who worked in microwave popcorn plants were coming down
33:25
Speaker 1: with this irreversible scarring of the lungs and a cough
33:28
Speaker 1: they couldn't kick. And it was from this molecule from
33:32
Speaker 1: inhaling the molecule. Well, it turns out the amount of
33:36
Speaker 1: diacet al that was that's found in even cigarettes, let
33:40
Speaker 1: alone e cigarettes, is not nearly enough to give you
33:43
Speaker 1: popcorn long right, But like you said, it's a bad,
33:46
Speaker 1: bad reporting. That doesn't keep someone like our own beloved
33:50
Speaker 1: mother Jones Heaven from saying headlines like flavored e s
33:53
Speaker 1: eggs maybe worse than nicotine. I saw also that some
33:56
Speaker 1: other uh fruity flavors in a recent study on that
34:00
Speaker 1: fruity flavors tended to be particularly toxic. Yeah, and um
34:07
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the chemical was. And then cinnamon, vanilla,
34:11
Speaker 1: and buttery all had um all had bad reactions with
34:17
Speaker 1: white blood cells that they think might promote long tissue
34:22
Speaker 1: damage in the long run. It just seems so gross
34:25
Speaker 1: to me. So like that's why if you're not smoking
34:28
Speaker 1: with nicotine and you're still inhaling all these chemicals for nothing,
34:33
Speaker 1: I still I'm gonna double down. You're a dummy. Well,
34:38
Speaker 1: the FDA, and this is a big deal. Um in April,
34:43
Speaker 1: I think this was a couple of years ago, they
34:45
Speaker 1: released these regulations, one of which said that in order
34:50
Speaker 1: to get it passed through, each skew that is what
34:55
Speaker 1: it's called in the biz, not just this business, but
34:58
Speaker 1: you have a retail shop, like every little thing you
35:00
Speaker 1: sell is called a skew. Each skew had to be approved,
35:04
Speaker 1: and that means every single flavor is a different skew.
35:08
Speaker 1: And the dude did the math and he was like,
35:10
Speaker 1: we have two forty skews a hundred dollars an hour,
35:14
Speaker 1: five million per scue, and he's like billions of dollars
35:17
Speaker 1: basically to get all these stupid flavors approved. Right now
35:22
Speaker 1: that now that the FDA has come in right, And
35:25
Speaker 1: what this guy was saying was, we have spent decades
35:29
Speaker 1: trying to get the tobacco companies stripped the power from them,
35:34
Speaker 1: and now that the cigarettes are a thing, and now
35:37
Speaker 1: they're being regulated, you just gut it out the independent
35:41
Speaker 1: businesses which left big tobacco this huge vacuum to come
35:45
Speaker 1: in and be like, Okay, here your e cigarettes courtesy
35:49
Speaker 1: of us Big Tobacco. Are they doing that? Already been
35:51
Speaker 1: screwing you over for decades. Yeah, so they're making the
35:55
Speaker 1: six now. Yeah. I believe Altria, who makes Marlboro, came
35:59
Speaker 1: out with the marked and like almost immediately really once
36:02
Speaker 1: they hit the US in like two thousand seven or right.
36:04
Speaker 1: I'm surprised Big Tobacco hasn't gotten in on the cannabis thing.
36:08
Speaker 1: I can't believe they're not, because cannabis vaping is a
36:11
Speaker 1: big thing now too. Yeah. Well, that guy in the
36:13
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone article was saying, like a lot of his
36:15
Speaker 1: colleagues are being like, forget nicotine and I'm going over
36:18
Speaker 1: to cannabis. It's less regulated. Really basically I'm paraphrasing here.
36:25
Speaker 1: That's funny, though, you got anything else? Uh, well, just
36:28
Speaker 1: that last study we we never finally said the results
36:32
Speaker 1: this u C. SFS Division of Adolescent Medicine. They tested
36:38
Speaker 1: sixty seventeens who vape compared to sixteens who vape and
36:42
Speaker 1: smoke and twenty who did not do either, And of
36:46
Speaker 1: course they found out that if you do both, it's
36:49
Speaker 1: a lot higher. If you vape, it's still high. If
36:52
Speaker 1: you don't do anything, then you're fine. It's kind of
36:55
Speaker 1: a no duh study apparently. Also, some of the um
37:01
Speaker 1: depending on what chemicals like formale hyde, can really come
37:04
Speaker 1: out of the flavorings or the vegetable glycerin um or
37:11
Speaker 1: the propylene glycol I think, or reactions between these things.
37:16
Speaker 1: But it's also very temperature dependent. The higher temperatures they
37:20
Speaker 1: can they can create some really toxic stuff, but at
37:23
Speaker 1: lower temperatures you can inhale the same stuff and the
37:27
Speaker 1: um those chemicals are not created. But if you're blowing
37:31
Speaker 1: fat clouds, you're probably at a higher temperature. Yeah, so
37:36
Speaker 1: you are probably getting the worst of the worst chemicals
37:39
Speaker 1: that your cartridge has to offer. Yeah, I think a
37:41
Speaker 1: lot of those pins. You can vary the temp depending
37:46
Speaker 1: on what you want to get out of it. Right
37:47
Speaker 1: for after like a certain price point I would guess.
37:50
Speaker 1: And then lastly, one of the thing that whole jazz
37:52
Speaker 1: about how you're just exhaling water vapor that is almost
37:55
Speaker 1: certainly not the case. So you're exhaling some of those
37:58
Speaker 1: chemicals into your cubicle neighbors face. I mean, at the
38:04
Speaker 1: very least, like it's not like, oh, we should be
38:05
Speaker 1: able to do this in movie theaters and restaurants because
38:08
Speaker 1: it's not smoke, it's still obnoxious. You look like a dope. Yeah,
38:14
Speaker 1: with that flannel tight around your wife. Boy, we're gonna
38:16
Speaker 1: hear from vapors. They're gonna be mad. Uh. If you
38:21
Speaker 1: want to know more about vaping, read about this, don't
38:24
Speaker 1: go take it up. That was another problem that people
38:26
Speaker 1: were saying, is like, there, if it's touted as like
38:29
Speaker 1: harmless or whatever, people might be like, well, I was
38:31
Speaker 1: putting off smoking because I didn't want to die, but
38:34
Speaker 1: maybe I'll try this vaping thing, right, don't do that.
38:37
Speaker 1: Just go read about it, figure out what you think
38:40
Speaker 1: about it, and then don't vape or smoke it, says I.
38:46
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, it's time for listening. Now we
38:51
Speaker 1: call this uh Sea Monkey follow up? Oh yeah, good,
38:55
Speaker 1: we love that episode. That was a great one. Hey, guys,
38:58
Speaker 1: just listen to sea monkeys. Is young reporter with a
39:00
Speaker 1: local newspaper. I interviewed Yolanda at her home in Brian's Road, Maryland.
39:05
Speaker 1: That was the widow of the inventors sea monkeys, right.
39:09
Speaker 1: She wrote a children's book and I was doing a
39:11
Speaker 1: story about it. It was about animals, by the way,
39:13
Speaker 1: not sea monkeys. I remember her giving me a giant
39:16
Speaker 1: bottle of Ebby and water and the best vegan pumpkin
39:19
Speaker 1: chocolate chip cookies ever. She was a devoted animal lover
39:23
Speaker 1: and one of those people who would feed wildlife and
39:26
Speaker 1: deer that wandered onto her property, leading them to overrun
39:30
Speaker 1: the surrounding neighborhood. She also filled me in on the
39:33
Speaker 1: sea monkey saga and gave me a T shirt another
39:35
Speaker 1: sea monkey merchandise. I gave the sea monkeys and tank
39:38
Speaker 1: to my friend, who kept them alive on our office
39:41
Speaker 1: desk for years. There are always rumors about von braun
39:45
Speaker 1: Hut having a Nazi flag displayed on their house, but
39:50
Speaker 1: he was long dead by the time I met Yolanda.
39:52
Speaker 1: The house was shabby, but the ruins I had I
39:54
Speaker 1: saw had a comfortable vibe. Uh shabby comfy, and she
40:01
Speaker 1: was very kind to me, and you couldn't help but
40:03
Speaker 1: feel sorry for I love the podcast, Sarah, Thanks a lot, Sarah,
40:07
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. I love follow ups like that, where
40:10
Speaker 1: it's like, Hey, this thing you talked about, here's an
40:12
Speaker 1: extra little peek that you didn't know peek. Well, if
40:16
Speaker 1: you want to give us a peek, you can tweet
40:18
Speaker 1: to us. I'm at Joshuam Clark and s y s
40:21
Speaker 1: K podcast also have a website called Are You Serious
40:24
Speaker 1: Clark dot com. You can get to Chuck on Facebook
40:27
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
40:31
Speaker 1: also a slash Stuff you Should Know Facebook page. You
40:34
Speaker 1: can send all of us, including Jerry and email to
40:37
Speaker 1: TOFF podcast How Stuff Works dot com and as always,
40:40
Speaker 1: join us out at home on the web. Stuff you
40:42
Speaker 1: Should Know doc for more on this and thousands of
40:49
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com two
41:00
Speaker 1: th