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posted by mrcoolbp on Tuesday March 25 2014, @08:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the quitting-is-for-quitters dept.

GungnirSniper writes:

A small study done by The Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at The University of California, San Francisco, "suggests that e-cigarettes don't actually help people to quit smoking." However, of the 949 smokers in the study, only 88 used e-cigarettes, causing the study's researchers to "admit that their findings should be viewed with some caution."

World Science reports "They also found that e-cigarette use was more commmon among women, younger adults and people with less education." Last year, the US Centers for Disease Control reported e-cigarette use more than doubled among U.S. middle and high school students from 2011-2012. The lack of solid research, potential youth market, and abundance of caution have had anti-tobacco activists and researchers pushing for a ban on advertising of e-cigarettes.

NPR has a recently story about "vaping" (using e-cigarettes) indoors and in the workplace.

If you smoke, have you been able to cut back your smoking or quit thanks to electronic cigarettes? If you do not smoke, does it bother you that others use e-cigarettes indoors?

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Tuesday March 25 2014, @09:00PM

    by buswolley (848) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @09:00PM (#21188)

    Yes, and I think this is a positive development, and I say this as someone that faced down that beast 7 years ago and won, and I do not intend to get started again, in any way, with nicotine.

    E-cigarettes should still be banned from public indoor areas. Outdoors however, it should not be restricted. There is less harm coming out of e-cigarettes than is escaping from all those vehicle tailpipes,and other pollutants.

    In general I'm libertarian when it comes to activities that can only harm one's self, and believe the state should step in when it harms others.

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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday March 26 2014, @02:01AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @02:01AM (#21280) Homepage

    Has the 'secondhand smoke' from these gadgets been evaluated?

    Regardless, it's got to be better for everyone than sucking in carbonized tobacco leaves.

    Agreed on the philosophy. Do whatever you want to yourself, so long as you don't also do it to me. In fact, I think that's the core of being a libertarian.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by buswolley on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:05AM

      by buswolley (848) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:05AM (#21298)

      Yes. There is some research that shows that 2nd hand smoke has detectable levels of nicotine, but not the usual carcinogens associated with cancer tubes. Sorry I don't have link right now. There needs to be an assessment of the potential for addiction via 2nd hand smoke administration.

      As to the other I agree.
      For example, I have no problem that the government says I must make my child wear a seat belt, but I don't want to be forced to wear a seat belt myself (even though I do, because duh, I've taken a physics class).
      Or
      There shouldn't be laws that makes drugs illegal, but as soon as someone steals something to support their habit, or puts a child in danger, then that person should be prosecuted.
      Or
      Gay marriage. A libertarian view should probably be, why the hell did the government make a special kind of contract called marriage? A legal contract should be a legal contract. X and X, Y and Y, or X and Y form a contract to share resources for a certain goal. Sounds like a business contract. In business contracts, we do not say men can't have a contract to form a business partnership. So the answer is simply, the government should get out of marriage all together except for notarizing, enforcing, and arbitrating contracts.

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      subicular junctures
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:19AM

        by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:19AM (#21303) Homepage

        I'd disagree on one point:

        "I have no problem that the government says I must make my child wear a seat belt"

        I used to think the same, but the only way to enforce such stuff is through invasive monitoring, and we already have too much power wielded by CPS and the like. I've reached the conclusion that it's better that a few children (and animals) suffer, than that all of us be subject to these little tin gods.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:26AM

          by buswolley (848) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:26AM (#21306)

          Maybe in a few cases. However, we already enforce seat belt laws. Retracting the law to only apply to minors shouldn't have change how the it is enforced.

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          subicular junctures
        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 26 2014, @05:40AM

          by sjames (2882) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @05:40AM (#21349) Journal

          I am amazed today that they want 8 year olds in car seats. I remember growing up where the neighborhood kids would go to the matinee on Tuesdays. All of us in a hatchback with the hatch left open and strict instructions to never lean out of the car. Nobody thought anything of it. Of course, at that time seatbelts were the thing you shoved deep into the seat so they wouldn't poke you in the back.

          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday March 26 2014, @01:08PM

            by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @01:08PM (#21465) Homepage

            Hell, I first crossed a busy four-lane street (on a mission to buy cake flour) just before my 5th birthday. But that was in 1960. We've become such a risk-averse society that now ANY risk sounds disastrous, especially exceedingly rare risks (Bruce Schneier is right about that).... and along with the galloping regulatory expansion is causing crap like this (read the car-and-driver bit):

            http://www.troynovant.com/Farrell/Illuminants/Airb ags-and-Gun-Control.html [troynovant.com]

            See also
            http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How -children-lost-right-roam-generations.html [dailymail.co.uk]
            and here's a copy of the map, which didn't display in any of the article archives I found today:
            http://www.pinterest.com/pin/224687468879227327/ [pinterest.com]

            See http://www.freerangekids.com/ [freerangekids.com] for someone who is fighting this influence, which is raising a nation of incompetents and mental cripples unable to cope with even ordinary life, let alone risks (when and if they happen).

            The roots of this insanity are in the very economic prosperity that lets us enjoy a relatively risk-free society:

            Back before the industrial revolution, most new parents (still too young to be emotionally competent to raise kids) lived in an extended family of grandparents and maiden aunts and unmarried uncles, who were experienced enough to understand that every skinned knee isn't a pediatric emergency, and that you can't sanely prevent kids from getting those skinned knees. And mature opinion prevailed, preventing young parents from being full-time helicopterists. But the industrial revolution's increased money flow let young newlyweds move away from that influence, into a "home of our own" and today's largely-dysfunctional 'nuclear family' gradually became the norm. So effectively, we have children raising children, with a child's lack of perspective about ordinary childhood risks.

            This is also the origin of a great deal of the modern political-liberal's mindset that every ill can be fixed and every risk prevented, if only you sufficiently legislate, regulate, and fund against it.

            --
            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
            • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 27 2014, @07:39PM

              by sjames (2882) on Thursday March 27 2014, @07:39PM (#22194) Journal

              Some of all of this is the relative safety and prosperity, but some of it is also a matter of the two income family becoming the norm. When I roamed all around the neighborhood and the next growing up (in a nuclear family), it was a good bet that if there was a problem there would be a responsible adult at nearly every house. It helped that the nightly news wasn't at that time better titled 'the moral panic hour'. I don't advocate a return to women staying home, rather that pay grow to match the massive productivity gains in the last few decades and a move to two part time incomes as the norm.

              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday March 28 2014, @01:07AM

                by Reziac (2489) on Friday March 28 2014, @01:07AM (#22325) Homepage

                The two-income family is just the latest incarnation. It takes two to three generations for a way of thinking to die out. We are now about a generation past that point. Many people don't even have a living grandparent who remembers the freedom kids used to have, and how no one (save a very few nutjobs) worried about 'em round the clock.

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @05:06PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @05:06PM (#21601)

            Of course nobody thought anything of it, the people who died of it weren't around to have an opinion, and any survivors with first-hand experience are themselves a tiny minority.

            Part of the problem here is that humans suck at evaluating rare risks, the math is not intuitive, so we under-rate the ones we don't experience first hand and over-rate the ones we do.

            In this case it would be useful to track down the statistics behind the car-seat requirement instead of relying on personal anecdotes.

            • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 27 2014, @09:08PM

              by sjames (2882) on Thursday March 27 2014, @09:08PM (#22233) Journal

              If the survivors (That is, siblings and parents) are such a tiny minority, that must mean the risk of what was once a nearly ubiquitous practice must have been minuscule.

              There have been a few reviews of the deeply flawed research on car seats and their effect on safety such as this one (PDF) [uchicago.edu]. Among it's findings, most of the studies compare children in car seats to completely unrestrained children. The case of a child using a seatbelt but no child seat is ignored. That considerably reduces the NHTSA of 6000 lives saved between 1975 and 2003.

              That's often the problem, too many studies more or less designed so that they can't help but confirm the author's bias flood the field.

              It reminds me of air bags and their many unintended consequences such as killing a child in what would otherwise be an injury free fender bender. That's how we reach the grim truth that airbags kill more children than school shootings.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @04:08AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @04:08AM (#21316)

        I like the cut of your jib.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 26 2014, @04:51AM

        by edIII (791) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @04:51AM (#21337)

        I disagree on the seat belt bit, but only because I have certain libertarian leanings.

        While I agree with the principles of freedom wholeheartedly, driving a vehicle is not one of them. Flying a plane is not one of them. Basically, operating any kind of machinery or technology in which there is a real risk of bodily harm or death towards another citizen unrelated to your activities should be inherently unlawful.

        You've taken physics and I think you have a grasp of just how stupid the 20-35 age demographic is in this country now. Most people have no clue about the real dangers of operating multi-ton machinery at high speed (45+).

        If there is anything I want heavily licensed and regulated it's other citizens operating motor vehicles and I would rather mandate proper safety than have some idiot fly through the front of his windshield and then expect me to pay for his family's welfare checks because his wife is equally stupid and their crotch fruit are hungry.

        As far as the future goes, as libertarian as I might be, we just might need to legislate rounded corners and helmets for the generations in front of us :)

        Yes, I do believe Idiocracy was a documentary.

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        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Wednesday March 26 2014, @07:58AM

          by buswolley (848) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @07:58AM (#21391)

          Freedom is not free. The secondary cost of an individual's loss (through death to his children) is a burden a democracy should bear.

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          subicular junctures
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:50PM (#24316)

    Fucking banning them indoors.