Vaping is all the rage!!

edgarblythe wrote:

I just gave my personal take. I'm no doctor Welby or even Doc Holiday for that matter.

and maybe just maybe your opinion is based upon pure ignorance.

Liquid nicotine is extracted from tobacco, but unlike tobacco leaves, liquid nicotine can be lethal. It can cause harm when it's inhaled, but it can also be harmful when ingested or absorbed through your skin. Only a small dose is dangerous -- less than one tablespoon of many of the e-liquids on the market is enough to kill an adult, and as little as a teaspoon could kill a child) [source: Richtel]. The number of calls to poison control centers regarding e-cigarette nicotine-infused liquids rose sharply every month between September 2010 and February 2014, from just one call per month to as many as 215 -- that's a rise from 0.3 percent to 41.7 percent of all emergency calls. As many as 51.1 percent of those calls involved accidental poisoning of kids under the age of 5 (roughly 42 percent involved adults age 20 or older) [source: CDC].
Some testing suggests it's not only the nicotine that may be dangerous. Certain e-cigarette devices may also release metals during use -- including tin in some cases -- as well as other impurities known to be toxic and/or carcinogenic.
Despite being on the market for several years, many regulatory agencies and health experts aren't sure just how safe e-cigarettes actually are. Among their concerns is the lack of disclosure of all the ingredients used as well as the lack of (or validity of) health and safety claims by manufacturers about their products. In 2009, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found some cartridges of liquid nicotine contained about 1 percent diethylene glycol (DEG), a toxic chemical ingredient also found in antifreeze [source: FDA].
To make matters worse, the amount of nicotine listed on a cartridge label maynot match the actual amount in the cartridge. FDA testing has found cartridges under the same manufacturing label may release significantly different levels of nicotine, ranging from 26.8 to 43.2 micrograms nicotine per 100 milliliter puff. And those nicotine-free cartridges? Lab tests indicate you're still getting a low dose, despite the claims [source: FDA].

shooting yourself in the head with a .45 IS more dangerous than shooting yourself in the head with a 9mm, yet I imgine that the longterm outcomes for both could be similar.

It's possibly hard to enjoy such pleasures spending the last couple years of your life dying in agony from lung cancer.

Seventy Five. That’s how long I want to live: 75 years.

This preference drives my daughters crazy. It drives my brothers crazy. My loving friends think I am crazy. They think that I can’t mean what I say; that I haven’t thought clearly about this, because there is so much in the world to see and do. To convince me of my errors, they enumerate the myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well. They are certain that as I get closer to 75, I will push the desired age back to 80, then 85, maybe even 90.

I am sure of my position. Doubtless, death is a loss. It deprives us of experiences and milestones, of time spent with our spouse and children. In short, it deprives us of all the things we value.


But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations. Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy. Indeed, I plan to have my memorial service before I die. And I don’t want any crying or wailing, but a warm gathering filled with fun reminiscences, stories of my awkwardness, and celebrations of a good life. After I die, my survivors can have their own memorial service if they want—that is not my business.

Let me be clear about my wish. I’m neither asking for more time than is likely nor foreshortening my life. Today I am, as far as my physician and I know, very healthy, with no chronic illness. I just climbed Kilimanjaro with two of my nephews. So I am not talking about bargaining with God to live to 75 because I have a terminal illness. Nor am I talking about waking up one morning 18 years from now and ending my life through euthanasia or suicide. Since the 1990s, I have actively opposed legalizing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. People who want to die in one of these ways tend to suffer not from unremitting pain but from depression, hopelessness, and fear of losing their dignity and control. The people they leave behind inevitably feel they have somehow failed. The answer to these symptoms is not ending a life but getting help. I have long argued that we should focus on giving all terminally ill people a good, compassionate death—not euthanasia or assisted suicide for a tiny minority.

I am talking about how long I want to live and the kind and amount of health care I will consent to after 75. Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal.

I reject this aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop.

I believe in people having the right to live or die on their own terms. But...if people are misinformed or under informed then they aren't exercising a true choice.