Real Life Episodes in Vaping

It is not unusual to see one person vape or one person berate you for some untrue and mythical quote straight out of FDA "facts".

But to have three in one day is a beautiful thing, so much that I gave one of the three a new Boge atty and a charged 650 mah battery and told him about Route 66, our local vapor who seems to delight in kiosk rebuking. 

The first was at work, a new hire who was just gawking at my joy ego.  I talked to him and sent him to one of three online sites that we will talk about in the morning. Wanted to know what a Pearveeriw was sic).  Suggested to start with a different mod and we'll go over options.  Beginning to feel like an AA sponsor.

The second was a good Samaritan using her Iphone to locate the class that they had changed room numbers today.  Nothing like being 30 minutes for your first class.  We were sitting on the steps outside one of the buildings (my Blackberry won't work on their email.  I pulled out my ego-T and she said, where did you get that, all I ever use comes from a convenience store or Walgreens.  I had an extra tank and tip and gave here that to puff on while she looked up the unforsaken hall- which turned out to be 2 minutes across the street, but 20 minutes because there is a fence that runs 2 miles to keep the students from Jay Walking.Suggested three websites, which she googled on her Iphone and bought a Halo kit for 70 dollars less than the equivalent in the kiosk.

Best of all as I was walking to my class, I was puffing on the ego-T and a University Policeman stopped me and told me to put the cigarette out (College has select smoking areas that seem to be placed near dumpsters and the like).  I told him it was not smoke but vapor and that it was free of the toxic levels of carcinogens.  I told him I could put it away, but not out. He started asking me what they were and pulled out a Marlboro Red ( the benefit of being a King you know).  I t0ld him to try an e-cig, and gave him joy ego and one of my new cartos.  I had Papa Smurf and Home made green tea.  He was impressed and offered me a ride across campus- really one mile down and one mile back by fence. I left the ego, my ice tea DIY and the atty by mistake in his campus cop car.  He was right there in front of the building my class was in to return it with 1/2 the juice gone.  Told him about a couple places, but to keep the atty and battery,  Told him to check out route 66 and that I was here Tuesdays and Thursdays.  10 to one he will be there to return them.  Wanted some more of the ice tea and if 20 was enough for a 15 ml bottle. I told him 5 ml for 3, and I'd bring him a couple flavors some time.  He looked like the cat that had eaten the canary.

I wasn't late for class anyway- they moved it back 45 minutes.

Nice feeling to meet vapors spontaneously.  He also said they were thinking of banning the hiring of smokers at the Hospital where he moonlights.

I don't think he will be very active against vapors.

I just feel blessed and inspired.  Nice day to all I hope and keep your eye on CASAA!

Now if I could just get the Major of Indianapolis to cooperate......

Marion County- e-cigarettes are Not Smoke

"Some men see things as they are and ask “Why?”.  I dream things that never were and ask, “Why not?" –Robert F. Kennedy.  (Paraphrasing his brother JFK).

Don’t ask me why I smoked because I really have no good reason.  I started in the sixties when everyone smoked and the thought that cigarettes might be harmful was being undermined by the tobacco lobby and glamorous jingles that I can remember to this day.  Don’t tell me I made a conscious choice to start, I was nine years old.  Don’t tell me that I was following the crowd; most of my peers didn’t smoke. Don’t tell me I was stupid, I skipped two grades and was taking college classes at 15.  RFK was prophetic, the answer is in looking at history and postulating from what is known, then going a step further into the unknown.  What if I never had a chance to make the decision?

My parents both smoked 10 years prior to my birth, so the germ cells from which I was eventually conceived were bathed in nicotine; my conception to birth was a nicotine sea as my mother smoked heavily.  I was breast fed and lived in a small house with two active smokers.  We know that nicotine evokes distinct changes in the brain, in the body and causes dependence.  I have never been successfully free of nicotine.  But I have been free of smoke.   Nicotine patches and gums did something, as I have 10 of my 45 years since the first cigarette smoke free through those agents.  They did not work because there was always something missing.  I could wean myself down to a quarter strip of a 2 mg gum- but never any further.  Why not? Because I stop being able to think clearly and my attention span is absent. I would go six months free of smoke then fall again into the lue haze.

I found e-cigarettes quite by accident, a co-worker switched at first to avoid having to take smoke breaks as vaping was allowed in the workplace.  The only awareness the rest of the center noted was he smelled better, as did his office.  I ordered them in Dec. 2010 and have not smoked a cigarette since.  My doctor visit six months later led to a discussion of how my weight, blood pressure and pulmonary function were dramatically better.  I simply told him I was off cigarettes.  I saw him last week and again and am now on no blood pressure medications and no inhalers.  I told him about the e-cigarette and being a physician expected a lecture.  He just smiled and said, my wife started those 6 weeks ago, small world.

Interestingly, before I retired to enter into teaching, I was a psychiatrist and addictionologist.  Smoking has three main features.  The first is addiction and withdrawal, the second is what some call pleasurable but I call self-medication of mood and attention span problems and the third the behavior of smoking and the physical nature of the act.  It explains a great deal to me.

E-cigarettes are vapor producing agents that contain the equivalent level of carcinogens as a patch or gum.  Both felt lower than any level dangerous per the FDA.  There is no evidence of any risk higher than that of the official nicotine replacement therapies.  But most important, there is no smoke.  Vapor produce a mist, like a kettle produces steam.  Tobacco burns and chemically emits at least 4000 compounds, 40 of which are carcinogens.  A cloth put over the spout of a kettle dampens and dries to a show no residue.  Put your mouth to a tissue and blow out smoke from a cigarette- brown residue that does not go away.

So let us dream and ask ourselves- exposed to nicotine all his life and probably for 10 years prior to conception, why would a person like me not be helped by this product.  And since it is the particulate smoke that lingers in the bronchioles in a maelstrom of carcinogenic material, how is an e-cigarette not a better and more appropriate choice? 

Associating vaping with smoking is comparing Utah Basketball to European Rugby.  They have a ball, but that is about the only association. 

Ban e-cigarette sales to minors, there isn’t much interest anyway.  Ban smoking, as an ex-smoker I am in awe of the pungent and lingering odors.  But vaping has not been shown to be an entry drug to smoking, it is not the evil empire of tobacco- it is an exit from the tobacco smoking habit.  Vapor is rapidly dissipating and not smoke.

And since it was not developed by a Pharmaceutical Company or Big Tobacco, those lobbies oppose them because they were a grass root industry that has formed to help millions across the globe and are more interested in the empathic elimination of smoking, harm reduction and choice.

When we dream of what is not obvious, find a solution and experience the amazing heath changes, we ask “Why not”.  When we see there are no toxins and no particulate smoke, we ask “Why not”.  When we see it is again American (borrowed from China) ingenuity and the American people seeking a solution to a problem that works for many more than FDA approved replacements, it is then we ask why, why eliminate a product that is less toxic to all.  The presence of vapers in public is an enticement for smokers to be exposed to a possible and most probably less harmful agent.  Like me they just might try it.  With Boston’s Department of Health stating they are 98-99% less toxic than cigarettes, think of the gains.

And the thought of being segregated with smokers in a designated area, is this not placing me in a harmful and toxic environment, the exact point the bill is attempting to free others of experiencing?

Equating vapor and smoke is not science and is not accurate, and accuracy is what leadership is all about.  Dream, be leaders and ask, as RFK did- WHY NOT?

Canadian Ecigarette Hockey Results

Hockey Scores- Calgary Alberta:


E-Cig All stars  4-  Health Canada 0

In one of the most intriguing and unexpected results of the day the E-Cigarette All-Stars crushed Health Canada in a game broadcast on:

The Rob Breakenridge Show on CHQR AM radio in Calgary.

His guest was Jesse Kline, author of the article E-smoke'em if you got them a boldly written history and expose of Health Canada's stance on the E-cigarette.  CHQR aired the talk show subject last night with three callers all expressing their gratitude for quitting combustible and carcinogen laden cigarettes for the e-cigarette, a product that produces a nicotine vapor that has drastically changed the lives of countless former cigarette users- and from their standpoint for the better.  The text of the article is linked below.  Mr. Breakenridge did a thorough job of questioning and exploring the actions (or more appropriately deemed the inaction of Health Canada in addressing an issue they put on the table in 2009). 

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/02/jesse-kline-e-smoke-em-if-you-got-em/

In the segment aired 1/2/2012 entitles, Why Won't Health Canada Allow E-Cigarettes?  Mr Breckenridge posed straight and direct questions to Mr. Klein about the

real issues of why this method of nicotine use was being undermined in a country which is thought to be a leader among prevention of disease and harm reduction.  In his interview he talked openly with Mr. Klein about the question of why Health Canada would not allow adults to use a product that is tobacco, but in a means that is safer (his words) than smoking.  He opened up with the significant differences between the e-cigarette and the smoked tobacco.

Link to podcast  http://www.qr77.com/Station/Episodes.aspx?PID=1022

Major points:

1. Health Canada is taking no action except to prevent the import of nicotine into the country.
2. It has gone after, through the RCMP's (short form Mounties), producers in Canada and shut them down.
3. The e-cigarette device is not illegal and 0 nicotine juices are legal.
4. He points out that there is a high revenue base from taxation of cigarettes that may be diluted by this product.
5. Demonizing of cigarettes is evident in Canada yet the harm reduction potential of the e-cigarette have been neglected.  The patches and gums just do not have the same feel for the smoker and with the advent of a product that seems to mimic smoking nothing except active government resistance is evident.
6. On one hand the government is taking measures to stop smoking but is hooked on the tobacco money and does not want to go all the way.
7. Klein reports that the electronic cigarette is used as a replacement method as opposed to the patch that is looked upon as a short term quit.
8. His conclusion is that the incentive for the government of Canada is not for this to become a real option from a revenue standpoint.

Several callers (not on the podcast) expressed views that this has been helpful and life changing.  Greg commented on the effects on health and re-emphasized the illusion that this is somehow not a change in the smoker's world.  Another caller related that he had slowly transitioned over several months to e-cigarettes with health benefits, but that he related it to a replacement for the cigarette that he felt was beneficial.  The last caller Kristin related that there was evidence of safety, that there was a group CASAA (cassa.org) that was actively involved in attempting to get truthful information about the product, 

Overall this was a phenomenal interview with a glimpse into the politics of money verses the general good of the Canadian.  It focused on the ability of adults to purchase carcinogen filled tobacco and yet not obtain a harm reduction product.

Read the article, listen to the podcast, and sit back- smoker, e-cigarette user or nonsmoker and judge for yourself the real reason tobacco is smokeable but nicotine not vapable.

Then try to think of a good reason for these not to be available.

Good job Mr. Breakenridge, smashing article Mr. Klein and excellent viewpoints by the callers.

My thoughts- in the next Tobacco Harm Reduction Blog.