March 16, 2018 • 41 mins
E-cigs, vapes, whatever you call them they have been touted as a safer alternative to tobacco and even a way for people to quit smoking. But recent studies have found that perhaps they’re not so harmless after all. So who’s right?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Colorado, the States so nice. We're playing there twice,
two days in a row. Chuck, we added a second
show to our Gothic Theater tour. That's right, we're gonna
be there June seven and June now sold out, but
one of those weird cases where you go see the
first show you were actually late buying tickets. Right. We're
(00:21):
also going to be in Boston April four, d C
April five. We're gonna be in St. Louis on May
and Cleveland one, and then of course we're gonna wrap
this summer up on June at the Gothic Theater in Colorado.
So go to s Y s K live dot com
for all of your information and ticket needs. Welcome to
(00:43):
Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bright, and there's Jerry Smoke and Roland
over there. It's just a cloud chaser? Is that everything
(01:04):
called smokers? Dude? I looked up terminology vape terminology cloud
chaser really because I wanted to punish myself, and that's
apparently I don't know. That's what this website says. That
sounds like the kind of thing somebody who wears like
a flannel shirt tight around their waist would call somebody
who vapes. Yeah, oh no, these are vapors who you know,
(01:28):
puff fat clouds, you know, seeing those people with just
ridiculous amounts of smoke or not even smoke. Whatever it is,
whatever it is, is the right the right thing to say,
chuck because no one's quite sure. So we're talking electronic
cigarettes e cigarettes. If you go to the FDA website,
(01:48):
they're called electronic nicotine delivery systems. They don't people don't
call them e cigarettes anymore, do they or do they?
I don't know. I felt so square researching this because
it's such an ever of involving thing. You have to
be like right in the thick of it to know.
I saw the siggs a lot still today. Well by
the media, Yeah, I bet I think they just call
(02:11):
it vaping, right, Okay, so vapes babies, right? Um? The
you see it more and more these days the kids,
which is kind of a problem. The kids seem to
be enjoying this. Although I can't say anything because I
was thinking about this, I'm like, gosh, teenagers are trying
(02:32):
this and I was, like I was fourteen when I
started smoking tobacco like every day for twenty years, like
probably Marlboro Reds or something. Indeed, although when you're that
young and you ride up on your bike to the
convenience story to buy cigarettes, you just kind of you'll
take whatever you can get. Um, but it does it
(02:54):
strikes me as absolutely nuts when now that I don't
smoke anymore, the idea of like, teenager are smoking it's
just weird. Um. But some people kind of have this
idea that it's wrong headed to compare et siggs or
vapes who knows what they're called, with our SIGs with
(03:16):
with regular SIGs or non vape SIGs, right, um, And
that you could make a case that it's possible it's
fine that teenagers are doing this. Really, some might say,
or at the very least they might say, if you
if I had to choose a teenager smoking a cigarette
or tobacco, I would always choose the East cigarette. Yeah.
(03:39):
And I think that's one of the main points that
we're going to hammer home throughout this whole thing, is
that it is still sort of the wild, wild West,
And that's one of the big issues is that no
one really knows the deal a lot of times with
what's in here, how it's reacting in the body, what
the manufacturers, I mean, it's all just all just kind
(04:00):
of guessing right now for sure, for a couple of reasons.
One they're so new. But two here in the United States,
it wasn't until two thousand and sixteen that the f
d A gained regulatory control over these things. Before it
was like they could put anything into the e juice
who knows what it's actually called, um, that you're smoking,
(04:22):
and you would have no idea what's in there there
There was no regulation whatsoever until two thousand and sixteen.
So yeah, it is like you said, the wild blah West.
Still they're still figuring this out. And depending on what
country you're in. Um, they're either a great way to
to quit smoking tobacco or to smoke instead of smoking tobacco,
or they're just as bad as cigarettes, if not worse
(04:45):
in some respects. Or they're a gateway to a kid
who may not have even started smoking cigarettes but tried
this because it tastes like peaches and cream, right, and
then they get hooked on the nicotine. Remember, I remember,
I remember when Joe Cammell came out in the nineties
and they were like, Uh, you can't have this cartoon
(05:05):
camel hawking cigarettes because you're clearly targeting kids. Well, at
least he never had peaches and cream flavor, which, by
the way, I was looking at um ingredients in tobacco
because now in the United States, cigarette companies have to
list the ingredients on their on their websites, at least
because that's what all smokers do is go to the
(05:26):
website to see what they're smoking. Let me see, um
high fruit toast corns are up is in cigarettes. That
doesn't surprise me. It doesn't if you stop and think
about it. But if you stop one more time to
think about you're like, that stuff is everywhere. So yeah,
they were invented by a pharmacist in China name Han Lick,
(05:46):
who I believe his father died of lung cancer from smoking,
and I don't know if that was the impetus to
create this or not, but he did pat in the
device in two thousand three, and as soon as I
read that, I was like, man, I bet this guy
is a gazillionaire. Do you want to hear something very surprising?
He is now the first person to patent in East cigarette. Well,
(06:08):
and he's all he also, I mean, I'm not sure
how much is net worth is, but he's still currently
kind of battling for rights to make money and stuff West. So,
back in the sixties, the mid sixties, a man named
Herbert A. Gilbert, which is that's a nineteen sixties inventor's
name if I've ever heard one. Yeah, he patented something
that is basically an East cigarette. And then apparently even
(06:33):
further back than that, in the nwenties, someone patented vaporizer penon,
not necessarily for cigarette, but they were human spirit papers.
It's my grandmother's soul. Uh Uh, here's the deal. We
haven't even so worded it as yet. Um. I figured
everyone knows because it seems to be their ubiquitous these days.
(06:54):
But um, an East cigarette is it's a it's a
battery powered device usually looks sometimes it can look like
a cigarette that even lights up on the end, but
I don't see a lot of those anymore. No, it's
kind of an early thing, I think so, and um
just to make you feel more like you were smoking.
But now they just look like a little pins with
a cartridge and it converts that liquid nicotine into a
(07:17):
vapor that you inhale, so you're not actually burning nicotine.
There's no smoke, even though it looks like smoke. That's
I don't even know what you call it, vaporation, depending
depending on what's in the stuff that you're you're inhaling
or vaporizing fat clouds, fat clouds, right, Um, but yeah,
(07:38):
that's it. You you hit the nail on the head,
it's combustion isn't involved. Right, There's little coils in there
that get heated up by the battery, bring the vapor
or the liquid up to its boiling point, converting it
to vapor, and then that's what you inhale. And since
there's no combustion, uh, you're not getting all the extra
stuff that you get when you smoke to pacco like tar. Well,
(08:01):
there is no tobacco in here. There isn't. And that's
a really big point that even in articles about the
difference between tobacco and the cigarettes they call this stuff
interchangeably like tobacco. These are not tobacco. Tobacco is a
plant that contains nicotine that we have learned over the
centuries to smoke as a delivery system. Yeah, as a
(08:23):
delivery system for that nicotine. The problem is is there's
a lot of other stuff, bad stuff that come from
inhaling that tobacco. It's not necessarily the nicotine itself, although
it is a highly addictive drug when inhaled. The point
of these cigarettes, at least one of the points is
is that you can still get that nicotine without the tobacco.
(08:44):
It's separated from the tobacco, putting this other solution and
that you heat up without combustion and inhale and then
birds just kind of chirp around your head and you're
suddenly dressed like snow white, and you say, what was
in the juice? Or is it? And we'll talk about
all this. This is I'm just teasing ahead, But is it?
Is nicotine even bad for you if you're not burning
(09:06):
it from tobacco? Is nicotine itself? Because that one, dude,
I think from the seventies and one of these articles
you said said, you know people people come for nicotine,
but they die from tar. Yeah. Michael Russell, he was
a South African scientist who basically was the guy who
changed the way we viewed cigarettes. Like up to that point,
(09:28):
it was a psychological habit smoking was and he said no, actually,
we're addicted to nicotine. Um, And it's a it's a
physiological addiction. Yes, So that you've heard that like um,
and that came from there's this really great article, if
not a little one sided um in Rolling Stone from
(09:48):
two thousand thirteen by David Ams Dinton. It's a tough
one to say, um, but he talked about that guy, right,
and that guy out of that whole thing, this big
push to get people who quit smoking then focused on
nicotine as an addictive drug, and you had to smoke
tobacco to get your addicted drug, and the tobacco is
(10:09):
going to kill you, So just quit smoking altogether. Apparently
nicotine is not addictive unless you inhale it. So whether
you're inhaling it in water, vapor, or tobacco, yes, it
is an addictive drug. Right. So back to the device itself.
There are many many kinds you can get out there.
Some of them, um, are just sort of long and thin,
like a like a ballpoint pen, and there's no button
(10:31):
or device. Just simply inhaling it, putting your mouth on
the tip and inhaling it will activate it. Other ones
have little buttons on them that you push to activate
the system that consists of three parts, which is the
rechargeable battery. UM. And when you think of a rechargeable
with the battery, you think of a little tiny thing
that's the main body of these pins, is the battery.
(10:53):
Then you have a little cartridge or the vaporization chamber. No, no, sorry,
there's different things. Vaporization chambers where the party takes place,
and in the cartridges where the liquid is stored. So
the the vaporization chamber has the atomizer in it, and
that's the thing that has the heating coils that heat
(11:15):
up the juice. Yeah, the heating coils, which I just
saw this today. They might be a problem as well.
I saw that as well, and that's part of the
wild Wild West thing. They're testing, like the juice, the joss,
the jew to see if that's dangerous. But now it
just said, I just saw a study UM published in
(11:36):
Environmental Health Perspectives from John's Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health that said that these coils are burning, These metal
coils are producing like lead, chromium, manganese, and or nickel.
That's part of the device itself. That is now being
heated and mixed with the vapor. Yeah, toxic metals. You
(11:57):
don't want that stuff in your now, that's the stuff
in cigarettes that be will want to get rid of, right,
And part of the problem. I also saw another study
that found that some of those toxic metals are in
concentrations as high as cigarettes, if not higher. Yeah, right, um,
because it can vary, I think, depending on the yes.
And they found it also in that same study that
(12:17):
it seemed that the amounts were higher in um frequently
changed atomizers. So it's today but later today I want oreo. Right,
And if you're changing out your atomizer, the new head,
a fresh head seems to leach more toxic chemicals that
(12:38):
stops after a period of time, not not the cartridge. No,
not the cartridge, the atomize or with the coils. Right,
that makes sense. So yeah, so you don't want that stuff.
Part of the part of the reason you're inhaling nicotine
is because it delivers it right to your brain basically
from your lungs. It's a really efficient delivery system. So
you want to cut down on the additional stuff that's
(12:59):
being delivered write to your brain like lead, because you
take a big long pull off e sig. It's got
a bunch of lead in it. There goes ten I
Q points see you later. The cartridges. This this liquid
that's in there um is nicotine and the delivery system
is usually propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which I mean
(13:22):
we'll get to all this. Yeah, we're jumping ahead of ourselves. Yes,
that's that's what that's made of. Should we take a break, Yeah,
let's all right, we'll be We're gonna go puff some
fat clouds. Be back right after this. So is that
(13:59):
really what some people call all the fat clouds? I've
seen people make fun of people by saying that. So
I think it has been said vapors. Uh, they take
a lot of grief from people. Well, they pushed pushed
boundaries a lot. Yeah, but the whole culture is kind
(14:19):
of like ripe for and ridicule I think by people
who don't do it. Is that fair to say? It
seems that way like there's got to be a Portlandia
sketch about like sidewalk vapors, you think. So here's the
thing with the cartridges though, is not all of them
even have nicotine sometimes? And I don't get this at all.
(14:40):
I don't get it. But sometimes people just vape flavor.
That is stupid. That is a stupid thing to do,
because consider this, it's bad enough if you're doing this
to get nicotine, right, you're a drug addict if you're
doing this to get nicotine. So yeah, you're probably gonna
get some toxic metals. And that may or may not
(15:01):
mean a lot to you. It may mean enough for
you to quit, it may not mean anything to you.
Just keep on keeping on. But if you're huffing toxic
medic metals just to get a strawberry flavor, you're a dummy,
and just stop doing that immediate. Well, but what if
that is what you do in place of this bad
smoking habit you had, well, then you should learn more
(15:23):
about what you're inhaling, because you're probably not you're not
smoking the nicotine because if you're worried what it's going
to do to your health, So just stop altogether, go
get some dumb dumb lollipops, dumb dumb. Well, no, I
mean that, that's clearly and there are some studies that
will get too later that pretty recent ones that have
(15:45):
tested people who smoke and vape because that's sort of
one of the problems is sometimes people do both because
they want to get that nicotine hit, but they're at
a party where you can't smoke or whatever. That's like
the worst case scenario where that you're doing both. Yeah,
that you're using it to smoke more frequently because you're
smoking in places where you can't normally smoke Tobacca. So uh,
(16:07):
like I said, we'll get to that test. But they
tested people who do both, people who do want and
people to do none, and of course doing nothing is
the best case scenario. Yeah, and I want to go
back a couple of steps. I don't mean to be
all holier than now. I certainly don't think I'm any
better than anybody who smokes just because I quit with
the benefit of hindsight now that I don't smoke. Uh,
(16:32):
it's tough not to just be like, stop smoking. You're
gonna thank yourself. I know you want to. There are
very few smokers out there who are died in the wool.
Cigarette smokers who are like, man, I love smoking still
twenty years on, they probably want to quit, which is
the sad thing. Yeah, So I'm sorry everybody if I
(16:52):
came off its holder uh, it says in here, and
I don't know how accurate this still is, but it
says the cartridge just last about as long as the
back of its garettes. I don't know if that's still
accurate because there are so many different kinds of tanks
and cartridges you can get these days. I think it
generally does, though, because they yeah, and they sell them
at a certain price point, and I think it's comparable,
depending on where you live, to a pack of cigarettes,
(17:13):
like a pack of New York twelve dollar cigarettes, I think.
But that's if you buy the cartridges, use them up,
and then buy another cartridge. You can also buy a
vaporizer that has a refillable cartridge that always stays on
and you just refill it yourself because you're a thrifty person. Yeah,
that would be like, uh, I guess kind of like
(17:35):
rolling your own cigarettes. It would be you probably get
a little more bang for your black there, right, you
definitely do. But you know, and you look cool, do you?
I don't know, you look Europeans. It's a pain though.
I mean I went through a cigarette rolling phase. But like,
you want a cigarette right then, man, I gotta wait
forty five seconds until I get this thing just right now.
(17:56):
I just ripped the paper and not have to start
over grows cigarette. Yeah. When I was young and dumb, See,
I wasn't a smoker smoker. I would just smoke occasionally,
which always plucked smokers. Um. And when I did my
big Europe trip fresh out of college, I just thought
it was the coolest thing to, you know, roll up
my drum cigarettes walking around in Paris. Yeah, check me out, frenchees.
(18:17):
But again, did you have a beret on at least? Um? No,
I smoked that too. I had it on day one,
but I smoked it. Um. Alright, So we might as
well get into some of these um health studies and concerns. Um.
Like we said over and over, one of the big
(18:37):
problems is we don't know certainly don't know about long
term health effects and are just learning about some of
the short term effects. Well, the thing is is we
it's too new to know about east cigarettes specifically, but
from these early tests that are coming back, UM, we
(18:59):
know a lot about some of the chemicals that are
showing up in these tests. And some of them are
like whoa, Nelly, You do not want that in your brain? Um,
there's one in particular. Some of these you can just
tell from the names of them. There's terrible but um
a Krylla nitrial. I believe it's a Krylla nit trial.
It is, uh yeah, I think I nailed it, even
(19:21):
without even looking at it. It is a very toxic
poison that's used in the creation of um acrylic fibers,
I think maybe even some rubber. Um. It's it's a
it's a plastic it's yeah. Well, the problem is is um.
It is metabolized in your body into cyanide. So that's
(19:44):
just one example of some of the stuff they're finding
in the bloodstream of people who smoke the cigarettes. And
again it's too soon to say what kind of effects
these are having, but these chemicals have been documented for
so many decades now that when they pop up we
can say basically automatically, that's you shouldn't be doing that.
(20:04):
And I think part of the big problem is the
regulatory issues, Like it's finally under the FDA's wing right
as of two thousand and sixteen, but they're still so
new that they're not even making official statements yet, are
they or are they? So here's the thing, this is
this is a very bizarre thing. Chuck there. Um, they
(20:25):
now regulate these things like tobacco, but it's not tobacco
in the US. Yes, So if you have if you
buy a vape pen or vapor cartridge or something like
that and it has nicotine in it, it's to the
f d A, you're buying a pack of cigarettes. To
an East Sig user, that would drive you crazy because
(20:46):
you might be smoking East cigarettes because you don't smoke tobacco,
because tobacco is something that's very, very very bad for you.
Supposedly East cigarettes are a better alternative to that. To
the FDA, they're the exact same thing, right, And to
East cigarette, I mean I get their complaint because they
can say, listen, you can buy nicotine patches and nicotine
gum and it doesn't have health warnings on there. And
(21:08):
that's all we're doing is ingesting nicotine. We're not burning tobacco,
just like so many choose nicotine gum. Isn't burning tobacco.
So why it's it's because they look like cigarettes and
you puff fat clouds. Yeah, and that's a that's a
thing that David Amston says, and this is that that's
really the big distinction, Like, if you're using it to
quit smoking, it's the same thing as nicotine gum, and
(21:31):
you can just go buy that over the counter, right
with no warnings on the box at all. Um, But
here there are warnings. It is treated like tobacco. And
he says it's probably because the cigarettes aren't designed as
a medical device. They're designed for enjoyment too. They have
like this dual use, and America has a long history
(21:53):
of saying, oh, you enjoy this thing, Well, let's try
and squash that exactly. Yeah, but what's like the big
deal to them? Though? Really? I think, Okay, so it's
regulated like tobacco, Like what, it's not keeping them from smoking?
Oh to E cigarette users, Well yeah, I mean, it
doesn't prevent them from doing anything. What is it because
you have to be eighteen or something? I don't know.
(22:13):
I think there seems to be a bit of a
culture war going on with um between East cigarette users
and manufacturers too, and the anti tobacco warriors that were
very successful. Um, get this, from the sixties to today.
There was a drop from like I think forty of
(22:34):
Americans smoked in like nineteen sixty five, eighteen percent smoke
as of like two thousand, fifteen or sixteen. Pretty amazing.
It's a great drop in numbers. It's actually not that
big of a drop because the population kept growing, so
it was really just an eight million American drop. But
it shows this social trend of people saying, we don't
(22:56):
smoke anymore, smoking the losers, right. So um, that was
the That was the result of years, decades of government
P S a S and the American Cancer Society and
the American Heart Association and the Long Association all getting
together and just pumping drumming it into the heads of
(23:18):
Americans that smoking is stupid, it's a betrayal to your family,
it's a waste of money, you're killing yourself, You're you're
affecting like the insurance industry, you're you're crippling America with
your stupid habit. And it worked. Now if East cigarettes
are okay, they have to walk that back some and
the people who are who are still trying to get
(23:39):
America to be like totally smoke freeer, like, we're not
about to do that, but they don't though. That's that's
that confusion between burning tobacco and ingesting nicotine. Like you
would come you know, because it's a stigma because it
looks like a cigarette partially. But also remember that um
(24:00):
nicotine is most addictive when it's inhaled. When you chew
it as a gum or get it through a patch,
it's supposedly not addictive at all. It's only when you
inhale it that it's addictive. So they're also saying like,
this is a drug, and people are doing drugs, so
it should be regulated. But then other people say, well,
caffeine's a drug, why we regulate that? In Starbucks? Is
(24:22):
like shut your mouth should be taken another break. All right,
we'll come back and we'll talk about um. That Rolling
Stone article in a very interesting study from a few
years ago, right after this, alright, so in that Only
(25:00):
Stone magazine, there was a very um, big time study
that came out of Britain in August that they called
the Landmark Review of the SIGs. And uh they they
said quote around safer than smoking, which is that's a
(25:20):
bold statement, it is. And I went and looked today
to see how much that's changed. They have doubled and
tripled down on that number. If you go onto the
the U K's government Health service, the NHS, site, they
say it's about safer than smoking. Still, I saw somewhere
(25:42):
and this is like the Royal College of Surgeons saying this.
So it's very much touted as an alternative tobacco to tobacco.
It's safer alternative to tobacco. So here's the deal. Though
it seems like people in this article, even that um
take issue with the number, say it may not be,
but it's it is certainly better than burning tar into
(26:05):
your loans. Well, yeah, then those are the Americans. Though
the Americans are saying like, we're never gonna say it's safer,
but apparently most public health people in America say it's
almost certainly safer than than cigarettes. Like you said, just
that combustion alone creates some really bad stuff that you're
(26:26):
not gonna get from vapor, just because there's no combustions,
just just by that alone would make e cigarettes safer
than than tobacco. But the question is I think a
lot of people have this idea that oh, I can
just totally like vape to my heart's content. It's healthy,
even like it's like huffing vitamin C or something like that.
(26:47):
That doesn't seem to be the case. From recent research. Yeah,
and it sets to here that um, and this may
be because of the American propaganda machine, but said of
smokers believed the Siggs were safer in two thousand ten,
and just three years later that dropped to Yeah. And
(27:08):
there was another stat I think, I don't know if
it was in that or another article, but they said
that something like a third of former East SIGG smokers
said they went back to tobacco because they were worried
about the health dangers of the cigarettes. Now that's a problem,
and there's a there's the people who are saying, like, no,
eat Siggs are safer than tobacco. And what you're talking
(27:31):
about at base are nicotine addicts. So tell this this
nicotine delivery system over this nicotine delivery system if it's
even a little healthier, you know. Uh. And and America
is saying absolutely not, We're not doing that. In our eyes,
they're one and the same, tobacco and East cigarettes. So
some people are saying, well, there's blood on your hands,
(27:53):
the blood of four and eighty thousand Americans who die
from smoking every year, from smoking tobacco, that's the that's
the stakes to all this. But nicotine itself and this
is in that Rolling Stone article too, is super interesting.
Do we do one of nicotine or just I know
we did quite a few on smoking, We do one
on caffeine back in the day. But nicotine is interesting
(28:14):
in that it is uh apparently if it's not in,
if it's not smoked, and if you remove it from
that cigarette, then it's fairly benign as a substance itself,
although addictive as far as what it does to the body.
But the weird thing is is that it it doesn't
do the same thing like it's sort of like this
(28:34):
little magic and that's why people smoke, probably this little
magic thing. If you're if you need to feel up
and your body wants to feel up, a cigarette can
make you feel up. But if you want to chill
out and relax, it can also do that. So it
has some pharmacological um magic yeah to it, which makes
it useful. But it's also again, as that article is
(28:56):
pointing out, it's been stigmatized ever since the seventies, and
that change in paradigm of what smoking is came about
nicotine got targeted. So let's talk about some of these
some of the things that have been found because one
of the one of the big problems also a big
objection to just allowing um, these cigarettes smoked anywhere, people
(29:21):
vaping wherever they want, is that when we don't know
very much about it. But too if we say, okay,
maybe smoking is not so bad. If you're not actually smoking,
you're just vaping, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Maybe it is on par with like drinking or coffee
or whatever. Um, And teens start to take this up
and they are Um. The problem is is a lot
(29:44):
of people say, well, okay, we're turning our teens in
the nicotine addics. I have a problem with that. But
what if this whole vaping thing goes away and we've
got all these teenage nicotine addicts. Do you really think
they're not going to just start smoking cigarettes after after that, right,
or just do that anyway? Right? Apparently that's not necessarily happening.
(30:05):
That teens who are I feel like such an old
guy saying the word teens. Try saying tweens, tweens really old? Terrible?
Uh that teens and tweens um that when they are
trying this, they're trying it. Most of them are deciding
(30:25):
it's not for them and they're not going on to tobacco. Actually, well,
you're right, because they did a study. The CDC did
one that you said tripled in the past year among
the middle and high school students. But then you poke
into the study and it doesn't differentiate at all between
someone who just tried it once right waiting for the
(30:45):
school bus and a kid who really took it up.
So there, it's so funny that after depressing that after
all these years, there's still such bad studies, well bad reporting,
Well that too. On the studies, I saw that the
CDC says that the cigarette smoking is down two thousand
fifteen to two thousand and sixteen. Sixteen percent of teenagers
(31:08):
had smoked or vaped in the last thirty days in
two thousand and fifteen. It was down to eleven point
three percent in two thousand and sixteen. And apparently tobacco
smoking tobacco is like holding steady at eight percent, but
like seven percent smoked cigars, which is hilarious. Remember that
cartoon baby that was like a bank robber who smoked
(31:29):
cigars On the Bugs Bunny, Yeah, on the Bugs Bunny.
You know the tweens love that. I did see on
some weird link researching all this. That very sad kid.
I think he was like Indonesian. That was the two
year old smoker. It was it was a follow up,
he's done't smoke now, um, but then he had a
lot of weight gain. But it seems like now he's
(31:53):
doing okay, all right, But it was like I hated
that people laughed and thought that was funny. Oh it
was disturbing. It was completely disturbing. Yeah, like a baby's
like a baby. Yeah, he could barely hold his head
up and he was smoking. And here we are laughing,
but not from that. It's laughing at how I said
(32:13):
baby exactly. Um, so where are the chemicals coming from? Then?
If they're not smoking tobacco, it's the problem. Well, I
mean it's some of it is is from the flavoring, right,
the flavoring, yeah, like that. This is a Harvard study.
(32:34):
The flavored e siggs contain that. I think that's when
you said diet diets. That was a different one. Oh
that's the popcorn flavor popcorn long yeah, butter flavored, and
that was I mean, we don't we're not saying it
tastes like that, but it is a chemical used in
artificial butter and back in the early two thousand's that
(32:56):
was when he heard the term popcorn popcorn Latin. Well,
actually they do use as a buttery flavor in um
in in whenever you have a buttery flavored E sig
or vape. Right right, So these this what did you
call it? Diacet Yeah, diacet popcorn long is um Like
(33:19):
you said, it came from the early two thousands where
people who worked in microwave popcorn plants were coming down
with this irreversible scarring of the lungs and a cough
they couldn't kick. And it was from this molecule from
inhaling the molecule. Well, it turns out the amount of
diacet al that was that's found in even cigarettes, let
(33:40):
alone e cigarettes, is not nearly enough to give you
popcorn long right, But like you said, it's a bad,
bad reporting. That doesn't keep someone like our own beloved
mother Jones Heaven from saying headlines like flavored e s
eggs maybe worse than nicotine. I saw also that some
other uh fruity flavors in a recent study on that
fruity flavors tended to be particularly toxic. Yeah, and um
(34:07):
I can't remember what the chemical was. And then cinnamon, vanilla,
and buttery all had um all had bad reactions with
white blood cells that they think might promote long tissue
damage in the long run. It just seems so gross
to me. So like that's why if you're not smoking
(34:28):
with nicotine and you're still inhaling all these chemicals for nothing,
I still I'm gonna double down. You're a dummy. Well,
the FDA, and this is a big deal. Um in April,
I think this was a couple of years ago, they
released these regulations, one of which said that in order
(34:50):
to get it passed through, each skew that is what
it's called in the biz, not just this business, but
you have a retail shop, like every little thing you
sell is called a skew. Each skew had to be approved,
and that means every single flavor is a different skew.
And the dude did the math and he was like,
we have two forty skews a hundred dollars an hour,
(35:14):
five million per scue, and he's like billions of dollars
basically to get all these stupid flavors approved. Right now
that now that the FDA has come in right, And
what this guy was saying was, we have spent decades
trying to get the tobacco companies stripped the power from them,
and now that the cigarettes are a thing, and now
(35:37):
they're being regulated, you just gut it out the independent
businesses which left big tobacco this huge vacuum to come
in and be like, Okay, here your e cigarettes courtesy
of us Big Tobacco. Are they doing that? Already been
screwing you over for decades. Yeah, so they're making the
six now. Yeah. I believe Altria, who makes Marlboro, came
(35:59):
out with the marked and like almost immediately really once
they hit the US in like two thousand seven or right.
I'm surprised Big Tobacco hasn't gotten in on the cannabis thing.
I can't believe they're not, because cannabis vaping is a
big thing now too. Yeah. Well, that guy in the
Rolling Stone article was saying, like a lot of his
colleagues are being like, forget nicotine and I'm going over
to cannabis. It's less regulated. Really basically I'm paraphrasing here.
(36:25):
That's funny, though, you got anything else? Uh, well, just
that last study we we never finally said the results
this u C. SFS Division of Adolescent Medicine. They tested
sixty seventeens who vape compared to sixteens who vape and
smoke and twenty who did not do either, And of
(36:46):
course they found out that if you do both, it's
a lot higher. If you vape, it's still high. If
you don't do anything, then you're fine. It's kind of
a no duh study apparently. Also, some of the um
depending on what chemicals like formale hyde, can really come
out of the flavorings or the vegetable glycerin um or
(37:11):
the propylene glycol I think, or reactions between these things.
But it's also very temperature dependent. The higher temperatures they
can they can create some really toxic stuff, but at
lower temperatures you can inhale the same stuff and the
um those chemicals are not created. But if you're blowing
fat clouds, you're probably at a higher temperature. Yeah, so
(37:36):
you are probably getting the worst of the worst chemicals
that your cartridge has to offer. Yeah, I think a
lot of those pins. You can vary the temp depending
on what you want to get out of it. Right
for after like a certain price point I would guess.
And then lastly, one of the thing that whole jazz
about how you're just exhaling water vapor that is almost
certainly not the case. So you're exhaling some of those
(37:58):
chemicals into your cubicle neighbors face. I mean, at the
very least, like it's not like, oh, we should be
able to do this in movie theaters and restaurants because
it's not smoke, it's still obnoxious. You look like a dope. Yeah,
with that flannel tight around your wife. Boy, we're gonna
hear from vapors. They're gonna be mad. Uh. If you
(38:21):
want to know more about vaping, read about this, don't
go take it up. That was another problem that people
were saying, is like, there, if it's touted as like
harmless or whatever, people might be like, well, I was
putting off smoking because I didn't want to die, but
maybe I'll try this vaping thing, right, don't do that.
Just go read about it, figure out what you think
about it, and then don't vape or smoke it, says I.
(38:46):
And in the meantime, it's time for listening. Now we
call this uh Sea Monkey follow up? Oh yeah, good,
we love that episode. That was a great one. Hey, guys,
just listen to sea monkeys. Is young reporter with a
local newspaper. I interviewed Yolanda at her home in Brian's Road, Maryland.
That was the widow of the inventors sea monkeys, right.
(39:09):
She wrote a children's book and I was doing a
story about it. It was about animals, by the way,
not sea monkeys. I remember her giving me a giant
bottle of Ebby and water and the best vegan pumpkin
chocolate chip cookies ever. She was a devoted animal lover
and one of those people who would feed wildlife and
deer that wandered onto her property, leading them to overrun
(39:30):
the surrounding neighborhood. She also filled me in on the
sea monkey saga and gave me a T shirt another
sea monkey merchandise. I gave the sea monkeys and tank
to my friend, who kept them alive on our office
desk for years. There are always rumors about von braun
Hut having a Nazi flag displayed on their house, but
(39:50):
he was long dead by the time I met Yolanda.
The house was shabby, but the ruins I had I
saw had a comfortable vibe. Uh shabby comfy, and she
was very kind to me, and you couldn't help but
feel sorry for I love the podcast, Sarah, Thanks a lot, Sarah,
that's pretty good. I love follow ups like that, where
(40:10):
it's like, Hey, this thing you talked about, here's an
extra little peek that you didn't know peek. Well, if
you want to give us a peek, you can tweet
to us. I'm at Joshuam Clark and s y s
K podcast also have a website called Are You Serious
Clark dot com. You can get to Chuck on Facebook
at Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
(40:31):
also a slash Stuff you Should Know Facebook page. You
can send all of us, including Jerry and email to
TOFF podcast How Stuff Works dot com and as always,
join us out at home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know doc for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com two
(41:00):
th
Hello, Colorado, the States so nice. We're playing there twice,
two days in a row. Chuck, we added a second
show to our Gothic Theater tour. That's right, we're gonna
be there June seven and June now sold out, but
one of those weird cases where you go see the
first show you were actually late buying tickets. Right. We're
(00:21):
also going to be in Boston April four, d C
April five. We're gonna be in St. Louis on May
and Cleveland one, and then of course we're gonna wrap
this summer up on June at the Gothic Theater in Colorado.
So go to s Y s K live dot com
for all of your information and ticket needs. Welcome to
(00:43):
Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bright, and there's Jerry Smoke and Roland
over there. It's just a cloud chaser? Is that everything
(01:04):
called smokers? Dude? I looked up terminology vape terminology cloud
chaser really because I wanted to punish myself, and that's
apparently I don't know. That's what this website says. That
sounds like the kind of thing somebody who wears like
a flannel shirt tight around their waist would call somebody
who vapes. Yeah, oh no, these are vapors who you know,
(01:28):
puff fat clouds, you know, seeing those people with just
ridiculous amounts of smoke or not even smoke. Whatever it is,
whatever it is, is the right the right thing to say,
chuck because no one's quite sure. So we're talking electronic
cigarettes e cigarettes. If you go to the FDA website,
(01:48):
they're called electronic nicotine delivery systems. They don't people don't
call them e cigarettes anymore, do they or do they?
I don't know. I felt so square researching this because
it's such an ever of involving thing. You have to
be like right in the thick of it to know.
I saw the siggs a lot still today. Well by
the media, Yeah, I bet I think they just call
(02:11):
it vaping, right, Okay, so vapes babies, right? Um? The
you see it more and more these days the kids,
which is kind of a problem. The kids seem to
be enjoying this. Although I can't say anything because I
was thinking about this, I'm like, gosh, teenagers are trying
(02:32):
this and I was, like I was fourteen when I
started smoking tobacco like every day for twenty years, like
probably Marlboro Reds or something. Indeed, although when you're that
young and you ride up on your bike to the
convenience story to buy cigarettes, you just kind of you'll
take whatever you can get. Um, but it does it
(02:54):
strikes me as absolutely nuts when now that I don't
smoke anymore, the idea of like, teenager are smoking it's
just weird. Um. But some people kind of have this
idea that it's wrong headed to compare et siggs or
vapes who knows what they're called, with our SIGs with
(03:16):
with regular SIGs or non vape SIGs, right, um, And
that you could make a case that it's possible it's
fine that teenagers are doing this. Really, some might say,
or at the very least they might say, if you
if I had to choose a teenager smoking a cigarette
or tobacco, I would always choose the East cigarette. Yeah.
(03:39):
And I think that's one of the main points that
we're going to hammer home throughout this whole thing, is
that it is still sort of the wild, wild West,
And that's one of the big issues is that no
one really knows the deal a lot of times with
what's in here, how it's reacting in the body, what
the manufacturers, I mean, it's all just all just kind
(04:00):
of guessing right now for sure, for a couple of reasons.
One they're so new. But two here in the United States,
it wasn't until two thousand and sixteen that the f
d A gained regulatory control over these things. Before it
was like they could put anything into the e juice
who knows what it's actually called, um, that you're smoking,
(04:22):
and you would have no idea what's in there there
There was no regulation whatsoever until two thousand and sixteen.
So yeah, it is like you said, the wild blah West.
Still they're still figuring this out. And depending on what
country you're in. Um, they're either a great way to
to quit smoking tobacco or to smoke instead of smoking tobacco,
or they're just as bad as cigarettes, if not worse
(04:45):
in some respects. Or they're a gateway to a kid
who may not have even started smoking cigarettes but tried
this because it tastes like peaches and cream, right, and
then they get hooked on the nicotine. Remember, I remember,
I remember when Joe Cammell came out in the nineties
and they were like, Uh, you can't have this cartoon
(05:05):
camel hawking cigarettes because you're clearly targeting kids. Well, at
least he never had peaches and cream flavor, which, by
the way, I was looking at um ingredients in tobacco
because now in the United States, cigarette companies have to
list the ingredients on their on their websites, at least
because that's what all smokers do is go to the
(05:26):
website to see what they're smoking. Let me see, um
high fruit toast corns are up is in cigarettes. That
doesn't surprise me. It doesn't if you stop and think
about it. But if you stop one more time to
think about you're like, that stuff is everywhere. So yeah,
they were invented by a pharmacist in China name Han Lick,
(05:46):
who I believe his father died of lung cancer from smoking,
and I don't know if that was the impetus to
create this or not, but he did pat in the
device in two thousand three, and as soon as I
read that, I was like, man, I bet this guy
is a gazillionaire. Do you want to hear something very surprising?
He is now the first person to patent in East cigarette. Well,
(06:08):
and he's all he also, I mean, I'm not sure
how much is net worth is, but he's still currently
kind of battling for rights to make money and stuff West. So,
back in the sixties, the mid sixties, a man named
Herbert A. Gilbert, which is that's a nineteen sixties inventor's
name if I've ever heard one. Yeah, he patented something
that is basically an East cigarette. And then apparently even
(06:33):
further back than that, in the nwenties, someone patented vaporizer penon,
not necessarily for cigarette, but they were human spirit papers.
It's my grandmother's soul. Uh Uh, here's the deal. We
haven't even so worded it as yet. Um. I figured
everyone knows because it seems to be their ubiquitous these days.
(06:54):
But um, an East cigarette is it's a it's a
battery powered device usually looks sometimes it can look like
a cigarette that even lights up on the end, but
I don't see a lot of those anymore. No, it's
kind of an early thing, I think so, and um
just to make you feel more like you were smoking.
But now they just look like a little pins with
a cartridge and it converts that liquid nicotine into a
(07:17):
vapor that you inhale, so you're not actually burning nicotine.
There's no smoke, even though it looks like smoke. That's
I don't even know what you call it, vaporation, depending
depending on what's in the stuff that you're you're inhaling
or vaporizing fat clouds, fat clouds, right, Um, but yeah,
(07:38):
that's it. You you hit the nail on the head,
it's combustion isn't involved. Right, There's little coils in there
that get heated up by the battery, bring the vapor
or the liquid up to its boiling point, converting it
to vapor, and then that's what you inhale. And since
there's no combustion, uh, you're not getting all the extra
stuff that you get when you smoke to pacco like tar. Well,
(08:01):
there is no tobacco in here. There isn't. And that's
a really big point that even in articles about the
difference between tobacco and the cigarettes they call this stuff
interchangeably like tobacco. These are not tobacco. Tobacco is a
plant that contains nicotine that we have learned over the
centuries to smoke as a delivery system. Yeah, as a
(08:23):
delivery system for that nicotine. The problem is is there's
a lot of other stuff, bad stuff that come from
inhaling that tobacco. It's not necessarily the nicotine itself, although
it is a highly addictive drug when inhaled. The point
of these cigarettes, at least one of the points is
is that you can still get that nicotine without the tobacco.
(08:44):
It's separated from the tobacco, putting this other solution and
that you heat up without combustion and inhale and then
birds just kind of chirp around your head and you're
suddenly dressed like snow white, and you say, what was
in the juice? Or is it? And we'll talk about
all this. This is I'm just teasing ahead, But is it?
Is nicotine even bad for you if you're not burning
(09:06):
it from tobacco? Is nicotine itself? Because that one, dude,
I think from the seventies and one of these articles
you said said, you know people people come for nicotine,
but they die from tar. Yeah. Michael Russell, he was
a South African scientist who basically was the guy who
changed the way we viewed cigarettes. Like up to that point,
(09:28):
it was a psychological habit smoking was and he said no, actually,
we're addicted to nicotine. Um, And it's a it's a
physiological addiction. Yes, So that you've heard that like um,
and that came from there's this really great article, if
not a little one sided um in Rolling Stone from
(09:48):
two thousand thirteen by David Ams Dinton. It's a tough
one to say, um, but he talked about that guy, right,
and that guy out of that whole thing, this big
push to get people who quit smoking then focused on
nicotine as an addictive drug, and you had to smoke
tobacco to get your addicted drug, and the tobacco is
(10:09):
going to kill you, So just quit smoking altogether. Apparently
nicotine is not addictive unless you inhale it. So whether
you're inhaling it in water, vapor, or tobacco, yes, it
is an addictive drug. Right. So back to the device itself.
There are many many kinds you can get out there.
Some of them, um, are just sort of long and thin,
like a like a ballpoint pen, and there's no button
(10:31):
or device. Just simply inhaling it, putting your mouth on
the tip and inhaling it will activate it. Other ones
have little buttons on them that you push to activate
the system that consists of three parts, which is the
rechargeable battery. UM. And when you think of a rechargeable
with the battery, you think of a little tiny thing
that's the main body of these pins, is the battery.
(10:53):
Then you have a little cartridge or the vaporization chamber. No, no, sorry,
there's different things. Vaporization chambers where the party takes place,
and in the cartridges where the liquid is stored. So
the the vaporization chamber has the atomizer in it, and
that's the thing that has the heating coils that heat
(11:15):
up the juice. Yeah, the heating coils, which I just
saw this today. They might be a problem as well.
I saw that as well, and that's part of the
wild Wild West thing. They're testing, like the juice, the joss,
the jew to see if that's dangerous. But now it
just said, I just saw a study UM published in
(11:36):
Environmental Health Perspectives from John's Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health that said that these coils are burning, These metal
coils are producing like lead, chromium, manganese, and or nickel.
That's part of the device itself. That is now being
heated and mixed with the vapor. Yeah, toxic metals. You
(11:57):
don't want that stuff in your now, that's the stuff
in cigarettes that be will want to get rid of, right,
And part of the problem. I also saw another study
that found that some of those toxic metals are in
concentrations as high as cigarettes, if not higher. Yeah, right, um,
because it can vary, I think, depending on the yes.
And they found it also in that same study that
(12:17):
it seemed that the amounts were higher in um frequently
changed atomizers. So it's today but later today I want oreo. Right,
And if you're changing out your atomizer, the new head,
a fresh head seems to leach more toxic chemicals that
(12:38):
stops after a period of time, not not the cartridge. No,
not the cartridge, the atomize or with the coils. Right,
that makes sense. So yeah, so you don't want that stuff.
Part of the part of the reason you're inhaling nicotine
is because it delivers it right to your brain basically
from your lungs. It's a really efficient delivery system. So
you want to cut down on the additional stuff that's
(12:59):
being delivered write to your brain like lead, because you
take a big long pull off e sig. It's got
a bunch of lead in it. There goes ten I
Q points see you later. The cartridges. This this liquid
that's in there um is nicotine and the delivery system
is usually propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which I mean
(13:22):
we'll get to all this. Yeah, we're jumping ahead of ourselves. Yes,
that's that's what that's made of. Should we take a break, Yeah,
let's all right, we'll be We're gonna go puff some
fat clouds. Be back right after this. So is that
(13:59):
really what some people call all the fat clouds? I've
seen people make fun of people by saying that. So
I think it has been said vapors. Uh, they take
a lot of grief from people. Well, they pushed pushed
boundaries a lot. Yeah, but the whole culture is kind
(14:19):
of like ripe for and ridicule I think by people
who don't do it. Is that fair to say? It
seems that way like there's got to be a Portlandia
sketch about like sidewalk vapors, you think. So here's the
thing with the cartridges though, is not all of them
even have nicotine sometimes? And I don't get this at all.
(14:40):
I don't get it. But sometimes people just vape flavor.
That is stupid. That is a stupid thing to do,
because consider this, it's bad enough if you're doing this
to get nicotine, right, you're a drug addict if you're
doing this to get nicotine. So yeah, you're probably gonna
get some toxic metals. And that may or may not
(15:01):
mean a lot to you. It may mean enough for
you to quit, it may not mean anything to you.
Just keep on keeping on. But if you're huffing toxic
medic metals just to get a strawberry flavor, you're a dummy,
and just stop doing that immediate. Well, but what if
that is what you do in place of this bad
smoking habit you had, well, then you should learn more
(15:23):
about what you're inhaling, because you're probably not you're not
smoking the nicotine because if you're worried what it's going
to do to your health, So just stop altogether, go
get some dumb dumb lollipops, dumb dumb. Well, no, I
mean that, that's clearly and there are some studies that
will get too later that pretty recent ones that have
(15:45):
tested people who smoke and vape because that's sort of
one of the problems is sometimes people do both because
they want to get that nicotine hit, but they're at
a party where you can't smoke or whatever. That's like
the worst case scenario where that you're doing both. Yeah,
that you're using it to smoke more frequently because you're
smoking in places where you can't normally smoke Tobacca. So uh,
(16:07):
like I said, we'll get to that test. But they
tested people who do both, people who do want and
people to do none, and of course doing nothing is
the best case scenario. Yeah, and I want to go
back a couple of steps. I don't mean to be
all holier than now. I certainly don't think I'm any
better than anybody who smokes just because I quit with
the benefit of hindsight now that I don't smoke. Uh,
(16:32):
it's tough not to just be like, stop smoking. You're
gonna thank yourself. I know you want to. There are
very few smokers out there who are died in the wool.
Cigarette smokers who are like, man, I love smoking still
twenty years on, they probably want to quit, which is
the sad thing. Yeah, So I'm sorry everybody if I
(16:52):
came off its holder uh, it says in here, and
I don't know how accurate this still is, but it
says the cartridge just last about as long as the
back of its garettes. I don't know if that's still
accurate because there are so many different kinds of tanks
and cartridges you can get these days. I think it
generally does, though, because they yeah, and they sell them
at a certain price point, and I think it's comparable,
depending on where you live, to a pack of cigarettes,
(17:13):
like a pack of New York twelve dollar cigarettes, I think.
But that's if you buy the cartridges, use them up,
and then buy another cartridge. You can also buy a
vaporizer that has a refillable cartridge that always stays on
and you just refill it yourself because you're a thrifty person. Yeah,
that would be like, uh, I guess kind of like
(17:35):
rolling your own cigarettes. It would be you probably get
a little more bang for your black there, right, you
definitely do. But you know, and you look cool, do you?
I don't know, you look Europeans. It's a pain though.
I mean I went through a cigarette rolling phase. But like,
you want a cigarette right then, man, I gotta wait
forty five seconds until I get this thing just right now.
(17:56):
I just ripped the paper and not have to start
over grows cigarette. Yeah. When I was young and dumb, See,
I wasn't a smoker smoker. I would just smoke occasionally,
which always plucked smokers. Um. And when I did my
big Europe trip fresh out of college, I just thought
it was the coolest thing to, you know, roll up
my drum cigarettes walking around in Paris. Yeah, check me out, frenchees.
(18:17):
But again, did you have a beret on at least? Um? No,
I smoked that too. I had it on day one,
but I smoked it. Um. Alright, So we might as
well get into some of these um health studies and concerns. Um.
Like we said over and over, one of the big
(18:37):
problems is we don't know certainly don't know about long
term health effects and are just learning about some of
the short term effects. Well, the thing is is we
it's too new to know about east cigarettes specifically, but
from these early tests that are coming back, UM, we
(18:59):
know a lot about some of the chemicals that are
showing up in these tests. And some of them are
like whoa, Nelly, You do not want that in your brain? Um,
there's one in particular. Some of these you can just
tell from the names of them. There's terrible but um
a Krylla nitrial. I believe it's a Krylla nit trial.
It is, uh yeah, I think I nailed it, even
(19:21):
without even looking at it. It is a very toxic
poison that's used in the creation of um acrylic fibers,
I think maybe even some rubber. Um. It's it's a
it's a plastic it's yeah. Well, the problem is is um.
It is metabolized in your body into cyanide. So that's
(19:44):
just one example of some of the stuff they're finding
in the bloodstream of people who smoke the cigarettes. And
again it's too soon to say what kind of effects
these are having, but these chemicals have been documented for
so many decades now that when they pop up we
can say basically automatically, that's you shouldn't be doing that.
(20:04):
And I think part of the big problem is the
regulatory issues, Like it's finally under the FDA's wing right
as of two thousand and sixteen, but they're still so
new that they're not even making official statements yet, are
they or are they? So here's the thing, this is
this is a very bizarre thing. Chuck there. Um, they
(20:25):
now regulate these things like tobacco, but it's not tobacco
in the US. Yes, So if you have if you
buy a vape pen or vapor cartridge or something like
that and it has nicotine in it, it's to the
f d A, you're buying a pack of cigarettes. To
an East Sig user, that would drive you crazy because
(20:46):
you might be smoking East cigarettes because you don't smoke tobacco,
because tobacco is something that's very, very very bad for you.
Supposedly East cigarettes are a better alternative to that. To
the FDA, they're the exact same thing, right, And to
East cigarette, I mean I get their complaint because they
can say, listen, you can buy nicotine patches and nicotine
gum and it doesn't have health warnings on there. And
(21:08):
that's all we're doing is ingesting nicotine. We're not burning tobacco,
just like so many choose nicotine gum. Isn't burning tobacco.
So why it's it's because they look like cigarettes and
you puff fat clouds. Yeah, and that's a that's a
thing that David Amston says, and this is that that's
really the big distinction, Like, if you're using it to
quit smoking, it's the same thing as nicotine gum, and
(21:31):
you can just go buy that over the counter, right
with no warnings on the box at all. Um, But
here there are warnings. It is treated like tobacco. And
he says it's probably because the cigarettes aren't designed as
a medical device. They're designed for enjoyment too. They have
like this dual use, and America has a long history
(21:53):
of saying, oh, you enjoy this thing, Well, let's try
and squash that exactly. Yeah, but what's like the big
deal to them? Though? Really? I think, Okay, so it's
regulated like tobacco, Like what, it's not keeping them from smoking?
Oh to E cigarette users, Well yeah, I mean, it
doesn't prevent them from doing anything. What is it because
you have to be eighteen or something? I don't know.
(22:13):
I think there seems to be a bit of a
culture war going on with um between East cigarette users
and manufacturers too, and the anti tobacco warriors that were
very successful. Um, get this, from the sixties to today.
There was a drop from like I think forty of
(22:34):
Americans smoked in like nineteen sixty five, eighteen percent smoke
as of like two thousand, fifteen or sixteen. Pretty amazing.
It's a great drop in numbers. It's actually not that
big of a drop because the population kept growing, so
it was really just an eight million American drop. But
it shows this social trend of people saying, we don't
(22:56):
smoke anymore, smoking the losers, right. So um, that was
the That was the result of years, decades of government
P S a S and the American Cancer Society and
the American Heart Association and the Long Association all getting
together and just pumping drumming it into the heads of
(23:18):
Americans that smoking is stupid, it's a betrayal to your family,
it's a waste of money, you're killing yourself, You're you're
affecting like the insurance industry, you're you're crippling America with
your stupid habit. And it worked. Now if East cigarettes
are okay, they have to walk that back some and
the people who are who are still trying to get
(23:39):
America to be like totally smoke freeer, like, we're not
about to do that, but they don't though. That's that's
that confusion between burning tobacco and ingesting nicotine. Like you
would come you know, because it's a stigma because it
looks like a cigarette partially. But also remember that um
(24:00):
nicotine is most addictive when it's inhaled. When you chew
it as a gum or get it through a patch,
it's supposedly not addictive at all. It's only when you
inhale it that it's addictive. So they're also saying like,
this is a drug, and people are doing drugs, so
it should be regulated. But then other people say, well,
caffeine's a drug, why we regulate that? In Starbucks? Is
(24:22):
like shut your mouth should be taken another break. All right,
we'll come back and we'll talk about um. That Rolling
Stone article in a very interesting study from a few
years ago, right after this, alright, so in that Only
(25:00):
Stone magazine, there was a very um, big time study
that came out of Britain in August that they called
the Landmark Review of the SIGs. And uh they they
said quote around safer than smoking, which is that's a
(25:20):
bold statement, it is. And I went and looked today
to see how much that's changed. They have doubled and
tripled down on that number. If you go onto the
the U K's government Health service, the NHS, site, they
say it's about safer than smoking. Still, I saw somewhere
(25:42):
and this is like the Royal College of Surgeons saying this.
So it's very much touted as an alternative tobacco to tobacco.
It's safer alternative to tobacco. So here's the deal. Though
it seems like people in this article, even that um
take issue with the number, say it may not be,
but it's it is certainly better than burning tar into
(26:05):
your loans. Well, yeah, then those are the Americans. Though
the Americans are saying like, we're never gonna say it's safer,
but apparently most public health people in America say it's
almost certainly safer than than cigarettes. Like you said, just
that combustion alone creates some really bad stuff that you're
(26:26):
not gonna get from vapor, just because there's no combustions,
just just by that alone would make e cigarettes safer
than than tobacco. But the question is I think a
lot of people have this idea that oh, I can
just totally like vape to my heart's content. It's healthy,
even like it's like huffing vitamin C or something like that.
(26:47):
That doesn't seem to be the case. From recent research. Yeah,
and it sets to here that um, and this may
be because of the American propaganda machine, but said of
smokers believed the Siggs were safer in two thousand ten,
and just three years later that dropped to Yeah. And
(27:08):
there was another stat I think, I don't know if
it was in that or another article, but they said
that something like a third of former East SIGG smokers
said they went back to tobacco because they were worried
about the health dangers of the cigarettes. Now that's a problem,
and there's a there's the people who are saying, like, no,
eat Siggs are safer than tobacco. And what you're talking
(27:31):
about at base are nicotine addicts. So tell this this
nicotine delivery system over this nicotine delivery system if it's
even a little healthier, you know. Uh. And and America
is saying absolutely not, We're not doing that. In our eyes,
they're one and the same, tobacco and East cigarettes. So
some people are saying, well, there's blood on your hands,
(27:53):
the blood of four and eighty thousand Americans who die
from smoking every year, from smoking tobacco, that's the that's
the stakes to all this. But nicotine itself and this
is in that Rolling Stone article too, is super interesting.
Do we do one of nicotine or just I know
we did quite a few on smoking, We do one
on caffeine back in the day. But nicotine is interesting
(28:14):
in that it is uh apparently if it's not in,
if it's not smoked, and if you remove it from
that cigarette, then it's fairly benign as a substance itself,
although addictive as far as what it does to the body.
But the weird thing is is that it it doesn't
do the same thing like it's sort of like this
(28:34):
little magic and that's why people smoke, probably this little
magic thing. If you're if you need to feel up
and your body wants to feel up, a cigarette can
make you feel up. But if you want to chill
out and relax, it can also do that. So it
has some pharmacological um magic yeah to it, which makes
it useful. But it's also again, as that article is
(28:56):
pointing out, it's been stigmatized ever since the seventies, and
that change in paradigm of what smoking is came about
nicotine got targeted. So let's talk about some of these
some of the things that have been found because one
of the one of the big problems also a big
objection to just allowing um, these cigarettes smoked anywhere, people
(29:21):
vaping wherever they want, is that when we don't know
very much about it. But too if we say, okay,
maybe smoking is not so bad. If you're not actually smoking,
you're just vaping, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Maybe it is on par with like drinking or coffee
or whatever. Um, And teens start to take this up
and they are Um. The problem is is a lot
(29:44):
of people say, well, okay, we're turning our teens in
the nicotine addics. I have a problem with that. But
what if this whole vaping thing goes away and we've
got all these teenage nicotine addicts. Do you really think
they're not going to just start smoking cigarettes after after that, right,
or just do that anyway? Right? Apparently that's not necessarily happening.
(30:05):
That teens who are I feel like such an old
guy saying the word teens. Try saying tweens, tweens really old? Terrible?
Uh that teens and tweens um that when they are
trying this, they're trying it. Most of them are deciding
(30:25):
it's not for them and they're not going on to tobacco. Actually, well,
you're right, because they did a study. The CDC did
one that you said tripled in the past year among
the middle and high school students. But then you poke
into the study and it doesn't differentiate at all between
someone who just tried it once right waiting for the
(30:45):
school bus and a kid who really took it up.
So there, it's so funny that after depressing that after
all these years, there's still such bad studies, well bad reporting,
Well that too. On the studies, I saw that the
CDC says that the cigarette smoking is down two thousand
fifteen to two thousand and sixteen. Sixteen percent of teenagers
(31:08):
had smoked or vaped in the last thirty days in
two thousand and fifteen. It was down to eleven point
three percent in two thousand and sixteen. And apparently tobacco
smoking tobacco is like holding steady at eight percent, but
like seven percent smoked cigars, which is hilarious. Remember that
cartoon baby that was like a bank robber who smoked
(31:29):
cigars On the Bugs Bunny, Yeah, on the Bugs Bunny.
You know the tweens love that. I did see on
some weird link researching all this. That very sad kid.
I think he was like Indonesian. That was the two
year old smoker. It was it was a follow up,
he's done't smoke now, um, but then he had a
lot of weight gain. But it seems like now he's
(31:53):
doing okay, all right, But it was like I hated
that people laughed and thought that was funny. Oh it
was disturbing. It was completely disturbing. Yeah, like a baby's
like a baby. Yeah, he could barely hold his head
up and he was smoking. And here we are laughing,
but not from that. It's laughing at how I said
(32:13):
baby exactly. Um, so where are the chemicals coming from? Then?
If they're not smoking tobacco, it's the problem. Well, I
mean it's some of it is is from the flavoring, right,
the flavoring, yeah, like that. This is a Harvard study.
(32:34):
The flavored e siggs contain that. I think that's when
you said diet diets. That was a different one. Oh
that's the popcorn flavor popcorn long yeah, butter flavored, and
that was I mean, we don't we're not saying it
tastes like that, but it is a chemical used in
artificial butter and back in the early two thousand's that
(32:56):
was when he heard the term popcorn popcorn Latin. Well,
actually they do use as a buttery flavor in um
in in whenever you have a buttery flavored E sig
or vape. Right right, So these this what did you
call it? Diacet Yeah, diacet popcorn long is um Like
(33:19):
you said, it came from the early two thousands where
people who worked in microwave popcorn plants were coming down
with this irreversible scarring of the lungs and a cough
they couldn't kick. And it was from this molecule from
inhaling the molecule. Well, it turns out the amount of
diacet al that was that's found in even cigarettes, let
(33:40):
alone e cigarettes, is not nearly enough to give you
popcorn long right, But like you said, it's a bad,
bad reporting. That doesn't keep someone like our own beloved
mother Jones Heaven from saying headlines like flavored e s
eggs maybe worse than nicotine. I saw also that some
other uh fruity flavors in a recent study on that
fruity flavors tended to be particularly toxic. Yeah, and um
(34:07):
I can't remember what the chemical was. And then cinnamon, vanilla,
and buttery all had um all had bad reactions with
white blood cells that they think might promote long tissue
damage in the long run. It just seems so gross
to me. So like that's why if you're not smoking
(34:28):
with nicotine and you're still inhaling all these chemicals for nothing,
I still I'm gonna double down. You're a dummy. Well,
the FDA, and this is a big deal. Um in April,
I think this was a couple of years ago, they
released these regulations, one of which said that in order
(34:50):
to get it passed through, each skew that is what
it's called in the biz, not just this business, but
you have a retail shop, like every little thing you
sell is called a skew. Each skew had to be approved,
and that means every single flavor is a different skew.
And the dude did the math and he was like,
we have two forty skews a hundred dollars an hour,
(35:14):
five million per scue, and he's like billions of dollars
basically to get all these stupid flavors approved. Right now
that now that the FDA has come in right, And
what this guy was saying was, we have spent decades
trying to get the tobacco companies stripped the power from them,
and now that the cigarettes are a thing, and now
(35:37):
they're being regulated, you just gut it out the independent
businesses which left big tobacco this huge vacuum to come
in and be like, Okay, here your e cigarettes courtesy
of us Big Tobacco. Are they doing that? Already been
screwing you over for decades. Yeah, so they're making the
six now. Yeah. I believe Altria, who makes Marlboro, came
(35:59):
out with the marked and like almost immediately really once
they hit the US in like two thousand seven or right.
I'm surprised Big Tobacco hasn't gotten in on the cannabis thing.
I can't believe they're not, because cannabis vaping is a
big thing now too. Yeah. Well, that guy in the
Rolling Stone article was saying, like a lot of his
colleagues are being like, forget nicotine and I'm going over
to cannabis. It's less regulated. Really basically I'm paraphrasing here.
(36:25):
That's funny, though, you got anything else? Uh, well, just
that last study we we never finally said the results
this u C. SFS Division of Adolescent Medicine. They tested
sixty seventeens who vape compared to sixteens who vape and
smoke and twenty who did not do either, And of
(36:46):
course they found out that if you do both, it's
a lot higher. If you vape, it's still high. If
you don't do anything, then you're fine. It's kind of
a no duh study apparently. Also, some of the um
depending on what chemicals like formale hyde, can really come
out of the flavorings or the vegetable glycerin um or
(37:11):
the propylene glycol I think, or reactions between these things.
But it's also very temperature dependent. The higher temperatures they
can they can create some really toxic stuff, but at
lower temperatures you can inhale the same stuff and the
um those chemicals are not created. But if you're blowing
fat clouds, you're probably at a higher temperature. Yeah, so
(37:36):
you are probably getting the worst of the worst chemicals
that your cartridge has to offer. Yeah, I think a
lot of those pins. You can vary the temp depending
on what you want to get out of it. Right
for after like a certain price point I would guess.
And then lastly, one of the thing that whole jazz
about how you're just exhaling water vapor that is almost
certainly not the case. So you're exhaling some of those
(37:58):
chemicals into your cubicle neighbors face. I mean, at the
very least, like it's not like, oh, we should be
able to do this in movie theaters and restaurants because
it's not smoke, it's still obnoxious. You look like a dope. Yeah,
with that flannel tight around your wife. Boy, we're gonna
hear from vapors. They're gonna be mad. Uh. If you
(38:21):
want to know more about vaping, read about this, don't
go take it up. That was another problem that people
were saying, is like, there, if it's touted as like
harmless or whatever, people might be like, well, I was
putting off smoking because I didn't want to die, but
maybe I'll try this vaping thing, right, don't do that.
Just go read about it, figure out what you think
about it, and then don't vape or smoke it, says I.
(38:46):
And in the meantime, it's time for listening. Now we
call this uh Sea Monkey follow up? Oh yeah, good,
we love that episode. That was a great one. Hey, guys,
just listen to sea monkeys. Is young reporter with a
local newspaper. I interviewed Yolanda at her home in Brian's Road, Maryland.
That was the widow of the inventors sea monkeys, right.
(39:09):
She wrote a children's book and I was doing a
story about it. It was about animals, by the way,
not sea monkeys. I remember her giving me a giant
bottle of Ebby and water and the best vegan pumpkin
chocolate chip cookies ever. She was a devoted animal lover
and one of those people who would feed wildlife and
deer that wandered onto her property, leading them to overrun
(39:30):
the surrounding neighborhood. She also filled me in on the
sea monkey saga and gave me a T shirt another
sea monkey merchandise. I gave the sea monkeys and tank
to my friend, who kept them alive on our office
desk for years. There are always rumors about von braun
Hut having a Nazi flag displayed on their house, but
(39:50):
he was long dead by the time I met Yolanda.
The house was shabby, but the ruins I had I
saw had a comfortable vibe. Uh shabby comfy, and she
was very kind to me, and you couldn't help but
feel sorry for I love the podcast, Sarah, Thanks a lot, Sarah,
that's pretty good. I love follow ups like that, where
(40:10):
it's like, Hey, this thing you talked about, here's an
extra little peek that you didn't know peek. Well, if
you want to give us a peek, you can tweet
to us. I'm at Joshuam Clark and s y s
K podcast also have a website called Are You Serious
Clark dot com. You can get to Chuck on Facebook
at Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
(40:31):
also a slash Stuff you Should Know Facebook page. You
can send all of us, including Jerry and email to
TOFF podcast How Stuff Works dot com and as always,
join us out at home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know doc for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com two
(41:00):
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