Health experts think low tobacco prices, a general tolerance of smoking and changes brought by the pandemic may explain the uptick in cigarette use.

  • banana_meccanica
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    1 year ago

    I don’t doubt it’s growing, but I think it’s the classic temporary trend, a huge growth with an equally huge fall. Vape is harmful, something to be left to itself, there aren’t many excuses that hold.

    • escapesamsara@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      Everything is harmful though, that’s the problem of existence. Nicotine is a psychoactive drug that does have both positive and negative effects. Vaping is safer than almost every other delivery method, and it’s the safest recreational delivery method available. There’s more than enough education on why nicotine is bad, which is the most you can really do.

      People still drink, despite the physical addiction risks, the massive health risks of even a single drink a week, and the fact drinking any amount puts you almost comically more at risk of physical injury than not drinking. The education is fully out there. People still do it.

      Free will is a hell of a thing, and restricting it has never ended well for those that restrict it, regardless of reason.

      • banana_meccanica
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        1 year ago

        No one talked about restrictions, just common sense. A smart person will always realize that smoking or vaping doesn’t make sense, that there are no positive aspects, that all the qualities they’d like to associate with are idiocy, to give something toxic a positive aspect. An evolved society must bury these trivia.

        • escapesamsara@discuss.online
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          1 year ago

          Hyperbole works against your goals, and is a direct driver of teen vaping. There are absolutely positive effects with nicotine, to pretend otherwise is simply ‘Reefer Madness’ for overly panicked sheltered millennials. The primary problem, and thus the messaging, should be that the positives do not outweigh the negatives; and nicotine addiction is incredibly hard to break away from.

          An ‘evolved’ society that resorts to pointless, unfounded, unscientific scare tactics to justify government control isn’t an evolved society, it’s the 1920s.

        • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Hate to break it to you but humanity, or any of its societies, do not qualify as “evolved”. We are still squabbling as petty nation states over the minuscule resources of the planet, all the while we are letting it die of greedy neglect. All of mankind but the select few are toiling away in obscurity, systematically excluded from the fruits of their labor.

          Where are you getting “evolved” society?

          • banana_meccanica
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            1 year ago

            Evolution is the result, I agree with you that we’re still behind, discussions like this about smoking I think are indicative of how we actually live.

    • tal@kbin.socialOP
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      1 year ago

      I mean, I’m not arguing in favor of vaping. I just think that you’re being optimistic about people choosing not to vape.

      • banana_meccanica
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        1 year ago

        We just have to open our eyes and see things for what they are, ridiculous and damaging. Like cigarettes will stop being a status symbol when they’re no longer cool