Smoking vs Vaping (in a nutshell)

This just about sums it up ---

e-Cigarettes: What is the deal? (spoken in Seinfeld voice)

Searching e-cigarettes on Twitter will surely do one very specific thing.  Confuse the crap out of you!  Look at this picture.  Huffington Post says the vapor juice can increase your chances of getting a really hard to beat staph infection while Reuters says it's a great way to quit.  Both of these should fall under the hashtag WTF.  Allow me to weigh in on this one.  Forget all you think you know about the e-cigarette for a second and let's put some attention on traditional cigarettes; you know the one's with actual tobacco.  Habitual and consistent smoking of tobacco cigarettes will lead to an early death.  Period.  Usually the early death comes with severe pain and suffering as well.  Sure, someone's Grandmother smoked and lived to be 82 and her heart stopped one night while she slept.  Consider this.  How long would she have gone if she hadn't smoked first of all and secondly, YOU are not that woman.  Those lucky few are exceptions to the rule and we seek them out to provide us comfort and to avoid the reality that continuing this habit will lead us to an early grave.

Contemplating our own mortality is never easy.  We tend to create a mindset where we don't have to look it square in the eye.  Look at the marketing done by cigarette companies from the get go.  They were glamorous and showed people living.  Celebrities endorsed them, movies used them, doctors and opera singers were paid to recommend certain brands, tobacco companies gave cigarettes to the troops during both world wars.  Nothing about their advertising speaks of an early death wrought with pain and disease.  Rather, tobacco companies put up images like the Marlboro Man and Virginia Slims show progressive women.  They want you to feel ALIVE when you smoke, not setting yourself up for a bad exit.  Following me so far?

Now, what is happening right now in the world of the electronic cigarette?  The call it an e-cigarette.  Makes it sound totally harmless.  Like e-mail or e-commerce.  And now, you don't smoke an e-cigarette, you vape.  Because it's just vapor.  Right?  Harmless.  Right?  Sure...  I guess.  And that's the problem isn't it?  We're guessing for now...  just like 100 years ago.  What else is similar?  Celebrity endorsements?  Freedom themed marketing?  A healthy alternative?

At the end of the day, either way, you're rolling the dice.  At the end of the day you still wind up addicted to nicotine.  When the smoke settles (pun intended) you must recognize that every time you light up, electronic or otherwise you are handing over control of your mood, decisions, finances and life to a chemical that is lethal at 30-60 mg in humans, weakens the immune system, elevates blood pressure, messes with your hormones, all kinds of stuff, so while you're not dealing with the tar and smoke from tobacco, you're really just exchanging one set of complications from your addiction for another and yes, you're still addicted.  The downside of addiction is for another blog altogether, but nicotine is not good for you no matter how you chose to deliver it to yourself.  And you deserve total freedom from it.

While e-cigarettes may make it a little easier to stop smoking tobacco cigarettes and some studies show a moderate advantage over the patch and gum, do you really believe these people want you to quit?  Really?  They are all drug dealers.  Every one of them.

Shot's of e-Cig juice with a Red Bull chaser?

Are you effing kidding me right now?  The Inquisitr by way of the Chicago Tribune is reporting that that teens
are now using e-cigarettes to get high.

High schools students in Chicago are using e-cigarettes to consume THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Not a bad idea, as it would have saved me time between class but here's the real kicker with a stupid factor of 99.9.  According to Fox News Insider, kids and teens are also using the vials of nicotine that come with e-cigarettes.  The report stated that teens have been drinking the nicotine.  Even going so far as to mix it with an energy drinks to get a quick buzz on.

KIDS:  This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen.  Nicotine is fatal at 30 - 60 mgs.  It's a  very potent drug.   Once it's in your blood stream, it will increase your heart rate and your blood pressure.  Very likely chance that you could drop dead.

Look, when I was a kid in high school, I mis interpreted the high part and I experimented and had fun.  I will not tell you that a little messing around and experimenting will land you in a van down by the river, but I will tell you that shots of nicotine with a Red Bull chaser is about as smart as playing Russian Roulette with Christopher Walken.  It just doesn't end well.

Leave this one alone please...