E-Cigarettes and Vaping

for the congratulation for the under fire pun as well. Well, I was talking about quitting smoking also, I mean it's as we're gonna discuss, that is not an easy thing to do. And before we get into this episode, we have a couple of articles I want to I want to mention at the top because how Stuff Works has got some great stuff on here. If you really want to dig down deep and read these articles, they're they're

really well done, so check them both out. One is on how electronic cigarettes work by Susan Cassidy and another is how nicotine works by Maria Tremarchi and and Meager O'Connell. Both of those are going to be articles that will be referencing throughout this episode. And the reason for that is because we kind of need to talk about lots of different factors here, not just the technology involved. So first, electronic cigarettes siggs. Yes, they are electronic cigarettes or smokeless

cigarettes or vapes which you vape while you are vaping. Yeah, vapes, vapes typ vaporizing. But although people will call call it vaping, vapes tend to be the name of usually the either the liquid which that's also a thing, which is essentially your your liquid, uh, nicotine liquid, smoke stuff. It's not really electronic liquid, nor does it always have nicotine in it. But we'll get to that as well. But some people refer to the actual devices of vepes. It's kind of

a weird. It's this whole culture thing. Uh. There are people on the House of Works staff who have used these electronic devices in various ways. So, um, I have gotten to see ones that are shaped like a pipe,

which I had never seen before. I had seen them that look kind of like electronic you know, cigarettes, like maybe even cigarettes in the long electric the long cigarette holder, so you can look like you are a caricature off the cover of the New Yorker, um, except that you have a little led light at the end instead of an actual ember. So you probably have seen these. They are these Usually they look like some form of cigarette or pen or something. Two people put in their mouths.

They inhale and they puff out a little bit of what looks to be smoke. Usually. But how recent is this idea? I mean it only came out like a like like a year or two ago, right, uh yeah, Although they became popular recently, the idea goes back until ninete April seventeen specifically, is when a patent was filed

for granted. I suppose it was filed filed. It wasn't until I think sixty six that it was granted, But it was for a smokeless, non tobacco cigarette, which is essentially the ancestor to the East SIGs we see today. Not not that I don't know of any that were produced based off this first design, but it had the same basic components. Um not not designed the same way as today's e cigarettes, but the same you know, elements that you would find in the ones of today. Right.

This modern movement started as an industry in China. NPR credits the inventor is being one home Lick, Right, yeah, Han Lick He used a cartridge that had liquid nicotine mixed in a propolene glycol solution. We'll talk a little bit more about propoline glicoon the second fun stuff, and put that in an electronic device and called it essentially the equivalent of an electronic cigarette. The market, um, it was successful in China, you could say it was incredibly successful.

So in the early to mid two thousand's it got um well, it really made a name for itself, and then it started to expand beyond the Chinese market. Right. They were introduced in the US market in two thousands seven and have become really huge. The market is worth over two billion dollars per year according to some estimates. Yikes. Alright, So before we talk about the the technology, let's talk

about nicotine itself and what it does. Share. What happens when you when you smoke a nicotine cigarette, when you inhale nicotine in one form or another? Good question. So with a with a classic cigarette, what you do is you've got tobacco, right, that's your basic plant, and the nicotine is released in the smoke generated by burning that tobacco.

So by inhaling the smoke, you are transmitting that that nicotine into your system, transferring it, I guess I should say rather so it gets absorbed through the mucoastal linings and the nose, mouth, and lungs when you inhale this, and then the nicotine travels through the bloodstream to the brain. There it has a party time with your adrenal glands

to produce epinephrin, also known as adrenaline. Any of you guys out there who are big fans of the stuff you should know podcast have heard those guys talk about adrenaline a lot. You know. This is the whole fighter flight reflex thing. That's that's the thing that really fuels that. So, yeah,

same sort of stuff here. As a result, you have some other physiological effects take place, including an increase in your heart rate and blood pressure, and it stimulates dopamine production, dopamine being the neuro transmitter that controls the pleasure center in your brain. Yeah, this would be one of those reasons why people who crave a cigarette get that calming effect. They get that play as you're released when they are

smoking a cigarettes. Not just that uh it feels like they're doing something familiar, although that may play a part two. It's that they're literally releasing a neurotransmitter that affects the pleasure center of the brain. Now, nicotine does not have to necessarily be inhaled. It can be absorbed through other means, like in the gastro intestinal tract or through the skin, which is why you have things like nicotine gum and nicotine skin patches for people who are trying to break

themselves in the habit of smoking. Now, it's a stimulant, but like I said, smokers talk about the calming effect it has when they're craving a cigarette, which may partially be a ritual yeah, more than anything else, that whole routine of of whatever steps a smoker goes through before they light up, because this is a very ritualized. It's part of the habit. Absolutely. Yeah, So you know you might see people who are tapping their cigarettes in a

certain number of times. All these sort of these things are comforting because they are ritualized. On top of that, you have that dopamine release that also has that calming effect. And when you get down to it, nicotine is an incredibly addictive drug, as addictive as like heroin and cocaine. Yeah, you probably have heard that before in health class or

or a science class is absolutely true. It is, and we're now we're not saying necessarily that it has the same uh effect on your system as those other drugs,

but it's certainly as addictive. So once you have developed this physical and psychological addiction to a substance, when you get that substance, like if you're craving that substance and you get it, then you feel a relief, even if it's a stimulant, right, And nicotine by itself is not necessarily the worst thing for you, but getting it through tobacco smoke is pretty nasty, yeah, because you've got a lot of other things in cigarettes besides just the nicotine,

And that's where you see things like toxins and carcinogens that will cause health problems down the road for a lot of people. So while nicotine itself may not necessarily have that toxicity or carcinogenic property, the stuff that goes along with regular cigarettes certainly does. So we all know smoking is bad for you. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about that, yeah, I mean,

especially because smokers themselves seem to know it. As according to a report that was put out by the U s Department of Health and Human Services. Almost se of adult smokers surveyed so that they wanted to quit, and some reported having attempted to quit in the previous year. But how how do you go about breaking such a

strong psychological and physiological habit. Now, this is why we saw the rise of things like nicotine gum and nicotine skin patches, because that was all meant to kind of help people first get rid of cigarettes, right, but they still need to have that nicotine release or else they are having these terms. Yeah, and the more you go through withdrawal, the more likely you are to go back to a bad habit. So that was meant to try and help them trend position off to eventually wean themselves

off of nicotine entirely. That was the idea. Unless your sherlock and you decide that you need like three or four of them on you at a time in order to really think clearly, by the way, do not do that. That's a terrible idea, not recommended. You can. By the way, this is a bit of a spoiler alert, but later in the podcast, you can suffer nicotine poisoning and it

is serious stuff. Anyway, so the cigarettes are a little different, you know, because it all depends on how First of all, they were marketed for a really long time as a means for people who are smokers to wean themselves off of cigarettes and go to e cigarettes, which would be in theory safer, right. I believe in the United Kingdom they can only be sold and marketed furthermore, as a device for smoking cessation. Interesting, and we'll talk more about

why that's interesting in a minute. But yeah, so some people are using this as a way of quitting smoking. Some people are using it as sort of just a transition, like a lateral move, like they're not gonna quit, they're just they're saying they're saying, well, i've heard that this is safer than real cigarettes, so I'm going to switch

to this. And there's also some concern uh that this could be enticing people to start smoking because of the perceived safety benefit, right, the idea that oh I can do this cool thing and I don't have all those downsides of like lung cancer. That's awesome. Sign me up. Well, hold on, folks, because we've got to talk about everything here. Also, we should mention not all the cigarettes use nicotine. In

their um in their cartridges. Some of it is more of a flavored liquid mixture, so you're breathing in flavored vapor, but there could be other issues with that as well. So anyway, now we've laid the groundwork, it's about time to talk about how these things work. All right, So these are electronic cigarettes. That means there's going to be certain components that you would expect right off the bat. Uh,

some kind of electronics. Yeah, and electronics have to have power, so therefore there's got to be a power source, which means you're not going to see someone plug in a cigarette and stand next to an outlet all day, I would mention not all day. I mean, some of them are rechargeable, so you can technically sort of USB plugged them into an outlet. But at anyway, there's a battery

involved in in this cigarette looking thing. Um, And you know, essentially they convert this liquid possibly liquid nicotine into a vapor which the user then inhales, right, And the way it converts liquid into a vapor, you know that we kind of just sort of gloss over it, but no, the way it's actually working is there's a heating element inside these devices Normally you've got some sort of wick that wicks in liquid and then wrapped around that wick

is a heating element, like a coil of wire. Okay, Now we've talked about electric resistance a lot. Right. Resistance is when you are passing a current through something, it resists that and you lose some energy in the form of heat. Uh. And this case, something that's a heating element is designed to heat up. It's meant to have a high resistance so that it heats up very quickly with just a little bit of power running through it,

a little bit electricity running through it. So this heating element heats up very quickly, converting that liquid into a gas, which then you can inhale. Uh. And it's supposed to warm it up. So it's a one it's supposed to be a pleasant sensation, and two it's supposed to kind of mimic the feeling you would have your inhaling smoke. Yeah, because fire has Yeah. Turns out I have to remind

myself of that frequently at Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who has ever been burnt by something like this, you you remember it. So that that little element, that heating element that turns the liquid into a vapor is usually called an atomizer. Uh. This is something that you often will hear used in in lots of different products, not just a heating element.

Atomizer doesn't have to have heat, turning something from a liquid into a vapor, yeah, into some sort of vapor or missed usually by making a liquid into very very very very tiny droplets. So you like like an ald like a perfume bottle as an atomizer in it so that it can convert the liquid perfume into a missed spray and uh, and so similar sort of thing here,

we also have the heating element. Now, generally speaking, this whole process is usually triggered by a change in pressure, meaning that when you're sucking on this electronic cigarette, that's when it generates the vapor. It's it's the key. So you've got a sensor in there that's more or less detecting a drop in pressure which indicates someone's taking a puff, and that's when it's doing it. You could have electronic cigarettes where it doesn't do it based upon when you puff.

It could have a button on it and then you inhale. But in general, the most the ones I've seen are responsive to that that yeah, because it's because it's like in trying to mimic what an actual cigarette is like. So now in smoke tobacco, that nicotine it's found in the smoke itself. But the SIGs don't actually create smoke. You're not burning anything. So since you're not burning anything,

then you can't have smoke. Now, anyone who's seen or used an e sig has seen that kind of cloud that looks like smoke come out, and you might be thinking, what's up with that. If it's not creating smoke, where's this stuff coming from. Well, we've already talked about it a little bit. It's it's a vapor and not vapors. And I've got the vapors. No I can explain to anyone who's not from the South what the vapors are, but it is. It is a polite way of saying

that you're having some you're having some issues. So this is a vapor that is made from propylene glycol, which is the stuff in fog machine. Wait a minute, I've been told more times than I care to admit not to breathe in the fog generated by these fog machines. It's actually been a p as a food additive by the FDA because it's a it's a nice stable solvent for stuff like food coloring and flavoring, and one of its physical properties is that it vaporizes into a fog

when it's heated or briskly shaken. It Also it also absorbs water, so it's used to maintain moisture levels and some medications and foods and cosmetics. UM. It's furthermore f y i uh component of anti freeze and some de icing solutions. It's a solvent in some paints and plastics, and it's used to make polyesters. But that doesn't mean

that your e cigarette is filled with anti freeze. They just share a common component, right, Which is interesting because we have a study we'll be talking about where one of the things they found as a study by the FDA was saying that there was a chemical in there that was found in anti freeze, and I wonder if it was this one, because if it were, that's not

that's a little misleading. Yes, it's kind of like saying that a derivative of formaldehyde has all the properties of formaldehyde and it doesn't and it doesn't, or like saying like, well, this carbon based thing is made with carbon, which which is bad. That's it's far too simple. The answer to this question is always looked deeper, all right, So these cartridges can contain the nicotine or be nicotine free. And the thing is that manufacturers can actually tweak exactly how

much nicotine is in a cartridge. So theoretically they could make a line of different cartridges with different amounts of nicotine in each different version. And they certainly do sell cartridges with that are marketed as having different amounts of nicotine in them. Which so that you can step down exactly, Yeah, you can, you can start to step Yeah, the intent is to step down, but you know, we've got some

people out there who are real go getters. But the idea is to step down so that you can wean yourself off of cigarettes entirely, uh, mostly to wean yourself off nicotine entirely. We should be more specific, honestly. So, um, you can also just make it flavored. So some of the flavors, and there are things like you can get caramel or coffee or apple or Earl Gray tea or I mean there's there's lots of different ones. Yeah, when you go into a vape shop, they will often have

an entire wall dedicated to different flavors. This, by the way, has created some uh some questions recently in in legal circles. Will get to that about how how these flavors may or may not be a good idea. So one about health concerns. We know the health concerns with cigarettes. We've got decades and decades of research. Yes, I think it

goes back to the nineteen thirties. So and since this is a relatively new product on the mass market, Unfortunately the answers that we don't know what the health effects maybe yeah, in fact there are We're not saying there are no studies out there were has Most of the studies that are out there are either inconclusive or they conflict with each other, so inclusion is hard to to come to. And at any rate this these have only been running since at best the mid two thousands. So first,

there's not a lot we don't know. The World Health Organization w h O, part of the u N has been looking into it, but no conclusive findings. Um, there's there. And then there's the issue. The FDA has done some studies on various cartridges. This is the one I was talking about earlier that showed that ingredients that were listed were not always what you got in the actual cartridge.

They would test the chemicals within the cartridge and then see if it matches up with what was essentially on the list of ingredients, and they said that the concentrations didn't match up all the time, So sometimes you've got more or less nicotine than what was being advertised, or that you were even getting other chemicals that were not

listed on the ingredients at all, including some toxins. In this case, the one of the ones they mentioned was it's one that's found an anti freeze, and that made me wonder if it was the the the fog stuff. Uh. At any rate, I mean, it's interesting to me that the FDA put out the study because the FDA does not regulate yeah, this liquid. There's still a lot of debate on whether or not the FDA will. Uh. It

confuses me. I mean, granted, there's not necessarily nicotine in everything, but they did find that even some of the ones that said there was no nicotine in it, there was totally nicotine in it. Um. So again, this is a case by case basis. It's not like you know, you can't point to the entire industry and say this is a problem. It may just be something that a couple of different manufacturers have issues. Oh sure, I mean, but but part of the problem is that there are tons

of manufacturers out there. Yeah. Yeah, there's no standardization here. Uh, there can be lots of different types of cartridges and atomizers. The atomizer can affect how much of a given chemical you inhale per puff versus just the cartridge itself. So it could be that there's just a component inside the e cigarette that is causing people to get either more or less of a particular chemical per puff than what

was intended. Uh. So there's a lot of a lot of variable is here, and that's part of what makes doing a study so difficult, because it's not just the the chemical that you have to look at, it's the entire picture, and because there's so many different variations on it, it's hard to draw any hard conclusions, especially this early on. So, uh, we don't know what kind of health hazards there could be using the cigarettes, And we don't even technically know

whether or not, I mean, you know, medically conclusively. Research wise, we don't know whether e cigarettes actually help people quit smoking. Yes, there is a lot of conflicting reports out there. There are, i should say, a lot of conflicting reports out there that that state whether or not they are helpful for people who are trying to quit. Some of them say absolutely, some of them say absolutely not, and they should not ever be marketed that way. So it's it's lots of

conflicting information. Yeah, there's also been some research indicating that these things aren't necessarily as safe as they're being marketed as. Um. Some studies have shown diminished lung function, airway resistance, and cellular changes that may lead to lung cancer in people who use e cigarettes. And it may even be that those devices are releasing stuff into our lungs that that normal cigarettes wouldn't, like metals. Yeah, that's that's not good

stuff or other or other byproducts. Yeah, exactly. And also, when you get down to it, even if even if we say that maybe these health hazards, maybe studies will bear out over time that it's it's not as big a concern and that they are in fact safer than cigarettes, and maybe even that they help you in the long

run get rid of that addiction. Here's the thing, if you're using those nicotine cartridges, you're still delivering a dose of a highly addictive substance to your your bloodstream, and that addiction creates that physical and psychological craving that you feel necessary to to uh appease on a regular basis. So people who would think, oh, I want to try this out because it's safer and it looks like it's kind of kind of an interesting, uh cool like blade

it's a blade runner way of smoking. Um, it turns out that you know, you're you're subjecting yourself to a very addictive substance that you could then you know, develop a habit, and that can get pretty expensive, uh, even if the health hazards are not that that great in the long run. Uh. Also, you can develop a tolerance to drugs, which means you need to have more of whatever the drug is in order for it to have the same sort of effect both physically and psychologically. And

it is possible to overdose on nicotine. So this case, if you were to get too much nicotine in your system too quickly, that stimulating effect of the drug quickly shifts into a depressant and you become a victim of nicotine poisoning. Now, the most common symptom of nicotine poisoning is vomiting, so that's not pleasant, but there are more or serious symptoms that can also follow, including seizures, abnormal

heart rhythms, and fluctuating blood pressure. Regular cigarettes might actually have the benefit over over e cigarettes here because liquid nicotine, like we said earlier, can be you know, ingested or absorbed through the skin, and as little as a tablespoon of the liquid sold for e cigarettes can could possibly kill an adult human person. Uh. Calls to poison control centers regarding this kind of thing are on the rise from one per month in to as many as two

hundred and fifteen per month here in the United States. Yikes. Now, and the interest of full disclosure, there are some possible benefits to nicotine as well. Yeah, now, those benefits are pretty interesting. They may play a part in helping reduce the risk of developing things like Parkinson's disease in Alzheimer's. It might be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.

But self medicating is not a good idea, right. This is the kind of thing that a professional would be Yeah, you would want to have a doctor overseeing the sort of thing so that you make sure you have the right amount of the active ingredient. So that's one of those things again getting up on a little bit of a tangent here, but the idea that you know you're going through a very specific prescribed amount that is geared to helping you, as opposed to taking something that may

or may not have that right amount. You could be over medicating or under medicating. That's neither of those options are good, and the chances of you hitting exactly what you need when you need it are low. So see a doctor's what we're saying before you start trying to do that sort of thing. Now as we're recording this podcast right now, there are actual debates going on in the Senate about whether the stig manufacturers are aiming at

younger customer basis. And this is similar to a controversy that has happened in the past about cigarette companies traditional cigarettes using cartoon characters with their next as part of advertising campaign. Right, and I wanted to talk a little bit about the history of tobacco and legislation at this point because it's really interesting and and it comes back

into eat cigarettes in just a moment here. So okay, medical research linking negative health effects to tobacco use goes all the way back to nineteen thirty nine, and that's when the first studies started being published about it. UM. Tobacco products had to have warning labels on them starting in nineteen sixties six and as as part of this general push that was happening here in the US at the time. We're talking all about the U S in this in this section because we're from the United States.

Other countries have perhaps a similar timeline with vaguely different results here and there, But at any rate, UM in one, cigarette television and radio commercials were outlawed here when Nixon

signed the Cigarette Smoking Act into law. At the time, tobacco was the leading product category that was featured in television commercials, and I remember hearing radio commercials for cigarettes, like if you ever listened to any old radio programming where they incorporate yeah, it was almost always it was it was a soap or a cigarette, or some form

of hair product. Um. The use of cartoon characters to market tobacco products wasn't banned until the nineteen nineties or early two thousand's, but that was that wasn't legislation as much as it was part of this multi hundred billion dollars settlement that the entire tobacco industry came to in a series of lawsuits that were levied at it by state governments looking for reparation for healthcare costs. Yeah, it was one of those things where they said, well, we're

already going to have to pay all this money. We don't want to fight this battle about whether or not we're marketing to kids. And when we're talking about the SIGs marketing to kids, remember when I mentioned all those flavors. There are senators who are saying things like you should not be marketing certain types of flavors because they are flavors that are appealing specifically to children, things like candy

flavor cherry and cotton candy and etcetera, etcetera. And Uh, part of part of the reason that all of my goth friends were really upset in the early two thousands

was that stuff like clove cigarettes were outlawed. You know, that was part of that legislation, part of that settlement that prevented that was hoping to prevent youth from picking up this habit or tobacco companies from marketing to youth and and the cigarettes right are not under the same restriction, and there's a growing number of commercials for them on the air. So a lot of detractors are suggesting the tobacco companies are going to start using this market to

get younger generations addicted to their products. Um And indeed, the tobacco industry is officially getting into the east cigarette market. Camel maker Reynolds American is taking its views brand East cigarette to the national market starting June tween. We're recording this podcast, by the way, on June nineteen, and Marlboro maker Newmark will have its own called Mark ten, out by the end of the year. Now, the FDA is still debating about whether or not it will start to

impose regulations and oversee things like the cigarettes. I thought that was kind of weird that that debate still going on, because ultimately, again you're talking mainly about the delivery system for nicotine, which is a known drug, So I would think that would be a uh, something that would easily fall under the purview of the FDA, But what do I know. Lots of states, though, have already started imposing

regulations on East cigarettes. As of June thirty eight states have restricted the sale of the cigarettes by by age you know, kids can buy. I'm like a five year old couldn't walk up to the counter, But what age that is depends from state to state. UM A few states have banned the use of the cigarettes anywhere that regular cigarettes are banned, and some states have even started taxing e cigarettes, although I think Minnesota is currently the only state that's doing so at a comparable rate to

that of regular cigarettes. Right. So, again, the other thing we're ending here is that using the SIGs to to get yourself off of smoking regular cigarettes may or may not work. We don't know. The studies are inconclusive and it and we just don't know. So it may sound like a lot of the stuff we've been saying have all been negatives about the cigarettes, but really what we're saying is that we don't have enough information to draw

any conclusions one way or the other. It would be it would be premature for us to say the cigarettes are purely bad and no one should use them. It would also be equally premature for us to say the cigarettes are a much safer alternative to any other type of smoking. And if you're trying to get off smoking, it's a great way of doing that. We just can't say those things and and science can't say those things yet.

You know, if you're an adult and you're smoker and you are trying to stop smoking, then, because we love you and we want you to continue listening to this show for years and years and years to come, we congratulate you, yes, um. And if you're trying to use the cigrettes to do that, then we If that is your method, then we wish you the absolute best, and it may very well work for you. We just can't

say one way or the other. Yea. Yeah, But just as a consumer, you know, always always try to be intelligent about your decisions and listen to science when you can. Right now, I'm hoping very much that that science will get on it. Yeah, me too, and and have a really more definitive answer for these questions so that people can make responsible choices. That's that's ultimately what we want. So thank you so much for writing in and asking

us the question. Remember, if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes, maybe there's some other technology and you've always wondered what the heck is the story behind that. Let us know, send us a message on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler or handle it. All three is tech stuff hs w our mythical email address should be tech stuff at our stuff works dot com. That that should be kicking in any now. The more frequently I bring it up like that, the more likely someone will be motivated

to make sure it happens. Um, but yes, we are going. We are still working on that. Uh Dan, who knows? Maybe now it's working. Give it a shot, Send an emails tex stuff at how stuff works dot com. Why not what happens? Let's know on Twitter you don't hear response and we will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics because at how stuff works dot com