People hooked on vapes try a new way to quit: cigarettes (bloomberg.com)

61 pointsby alephnerd21 hours ago53 comments

dasKrokodil 15 hours ago

A while back I saw this on reddit... in case you don't want to click the link, it's a picture of a cigarette with the caption "This plant-based alternative promises to help high schoolers stop vaping".

I would have never thought that people would be stupid enough to try this for real, but here we are...

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

EvanAnderson 14 hours ago

I am reminded of: https://theonion.com/new-smokable-nicotine-sticks-can-they-h...

d--b an hour ago

You're being judgmental but I think you're just misinformed.

Vaping can be difficult to stop because:

- it's more accepted

- it's smoother on the throat, and there's plenty of tastes.

- there is no "dose", if you want to you can just vape non stop, and you can pace yourself. With a cigarette, you can't smoke slowly, or you'll loose half the cigarette.

All in all, it's just more convenient and cheaper to vape. If you're hooked, I can see it quite a challenge to stop. You can always say : "oh I am just taking x drags a day".

Personnally I didn't like vaping much, cause it was the beginning, the tastes were weird, the gear was not great battery-wise. So I kept going back to smoking. Eventually going cold turkey from cigarettes was way easier than through vaping.

axospaxos 31 minutes ago

Heroin is even less accepted, offers less tastes and is more serious about correct dose.

sph 14 hours ago

For the past 3 years I have replaced my ADHD stimulant medication with nicotine patches and they’ve been great, cheap, and legal in the country I live in now.

Recently I got the urge to try vaping again, bought all the paraphernalia and started vaping like a chimney 24/7. Got light nicotine poisoning as well. After two days, I caught myself compulsively reaching for the vape.

So I threw everything away and I’m back to patches. Took me a week to forget the compulsive hand-to-mouth urge. I now believe intradermal nicotine is the superior method of administration. At least with cigarettes the smoke is such an intense irritant you self-regulate pretty quickly compared to a cupcake flavoured vape you can just suck on all day long.

Melatonic 14 hours ago

Isn't that way shorter acting ?

sph 13 hours ago

What is?

dasKrokodil 13 hours ago

> At least with cigarettes the smoke is such an intense irritant you self-regulate pretty quickly compared to a cupcake flavoured vape you can just suck on all day long.

In my experience: no, you don't. You just arrange your life around the fact that you need to smoke all the time.

nom 8 hours ago

it also stops being unpleasant once your brain has associated it deeply with the dopamine

if anything, the strong smell and taste sensations makes it even more addictive

sph 4 hours ago

I've been a heavy cigarette smoker for 12 years (pack a day min.). When I switched to vaping, I vaped continuously the entire day.

There is no human on earth that can smoke continuously the entire day for very long. A pack a day smoker means smoking one every ~30 minutes circa.

AngryData 2 hours ago

I don't know how they did it but 50 years ago some people did seem to smoke non-stop. Of course they were still an exception. Of course when they cigarettes were dirt cheap you could let atleast a few burn up with just a puff or two off it also. These days they are so expensive from taxes that setting it down and breathing for a second instead of smoking can feel like burning money.

saulpw 2 hours ago

John Wayne is said to have chain-smoked 5-7 packs a day? If you can smoke a cigarette every ~30 mins, that's 2/hour (actually about 1.5 packs/day), but if a cigarette takes 10 minutes to smoke and you chain-smoke, that's 6/hour (4.5 packs/day). So it's doable but John Wayne was significantly out of breath the last 10+ years of his life, perhaps from having an entire lung removed.

dmix an hour ago

Lucille Ball's voice changed dramatically over the course of the 6yr show from heavy smoking. Their show was sponsored by cigarette companies and she used to hand out cigarettes on a platter to guest when they came over to her house.

caymanjim an hour ago

A lifelong chain smoker will smoke a cigarette in 1-2 minutes and light up another. 3-5 minutes is a relaxed casual smoke. Cigarettes were modified a decade or so ago to ensure that they go out quickly if not actively smoked. It's not even possible anymore to keep a cigarette burning for long enough for it to take 10 minutes.

This is all pedantic. The point is that you can chain smoke quite a lot if you're dedicated. I've never met anyone who smoked more than two packs a day regularly or maybe three on a crazy night out of drinking and smoking. 4-5 is crazy.

cucumber3732842 9 hours ago

>For the past 3 years I have replaced my ADHD stimulant medication with nicotine patches

My first thought was "That's a no brainer why didn't I think of that".

Then I remembered that I grew up during peak anti-smoking and so they made nicotine out to be some sort of borderline meth boogeyman rather than just extra addictive extra effective caffeine that comes in bad for your health form factors and that all that propaganda got sent straight to long term memory and I was indoctrinated by it at such a young age it didn't even occur to me to think outside the box like that.

Nicotine patches are expensive for what they are but they're basically free compared to meds.

sph 4 hours ago

It's two very touchy subjects: nicotine and ADHD. I'm not fond to talk about it because misinformation and ignorance is just rampant. Nicotine has indeed been turned into the boogeyman.

Anyway, I told my psych about my plan, and he agreed there is research indicating nicotine works as a third-line stimulant medication for ADHD. In many modern, Western countries adult ADHD is not even recognized, let alone medicated, so one has to make do with what's available.

In my experience it is almost as effective as amphetamines, with fewer side effects, much longer lasting (a patch lasts 16+ hours), and very cheap - if you get them on ebay from China. Addiction potential is null: addiction is a function of how quickly the effect peaks, and it takes 3 hours. Not even lisdexamfetamine can compare with how unaddictive patches are.

That said, if I had access to prescription amphetamines, I'd go back to them, but I sure don't miss the days all it did was making me incredibly horny and focused scrolling social media all day long. It was a little too effective at keeping me engaged for my own good, so using a subpar medication means learning to live with ADHD, adjusting your life around your own quirk, rather than only relying on the medication to fix everything for you.

fsiefken 2 hours ago

as a medication alternative there's saffron, which also helps (not as good)

Phemist 2 hours ago

Did you read gwerns post on it by any chance?

https://gwern.net/nicotine

snarfy 2 hours ago

I smoked my first cigarette at 6, really started at 13 and smoked 2 packs a day for 30 years. Patches are the best way.

altairprime an hour ago

Hey, another person with addiction-intolerant ADHD! I have run into so few people who encountered and noted it. Most people can’t just treat a compulsion by curtailing it through willpower, though I still don’t comprehend why. Ironic that the willpower disorder wins the day versus the baseline.

Spooky23 18 minutes ago

I always wondered if ADHD and smoking were related.

I’m ADHD boy for sure, and my dad and his younger sister are both very much not like my aunt, who is more like me. Shes in her 80s now, and was the only smoker - literally smoked cartons a week for about as long as I remember.

sijmen an hour ago

In early 2025, a Dutch newspaper was also writing about young adults struggling with vaping addiction, and how some switch to smoking as a better alternative.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/volkskrant-magazine/als-deze-moede... (https://archive.ph/O7dpL)

raver1975 9 hours ago

The only way I could quit my nicotine addiction was to slowly reduce the amount of nicotine in my vape juice. Even at 0% nicotine and no more physical dependence it still took a whole year to finally stop vaping. If I had a single cigarette I would have to start the whole process over again. Nicotine addiction is a terrible enslavement.

AngryData 2 hours ago

Which is why it is BS that many places have marketted and regulated away fillable vapes and buying your own juice. Most vapes available now are disposables and have one and only one concentration level available.

imzadi 42 minutes ago

I quit smoking by using Swedish snus until I got used to not smoking and then just tapered off the snus. This was after smoking 2 packs a day for 10+ years.

rustcleaner an hour ago

Try pipe tobacco in a corncob (beginner level, easy/forgiving) or briar (more advanced, takes packing & coal management technique) pipe. Way less costly than cigarettes, in more ways than the wallet!

kjetijor an hour ago

I'm pretty sure it wasn't entirely uncommon in Norway (and probably also Sweden) to quit cigarettes by switching to snus (tobacco between your lip/gum).

giancarlostoro 2 hours ago

I am more of a cigar smoker, I used to smoke a cigar every month, every other month and sometimes all month long for several months, but I was never addicted, I have gone a year or two without cigars, currently I have not had one in about five years now, give or take. I could have one any moment, they sit in my humidor, but I did try ecigs for a little bit. I'd love to have an alternative that doesn't compromise my health, but until then I'll keep my cigars.

I love cigars for various reasons, but there's no true alternative that's worth while.

ipsod 2 hours ago

Pipes?

Ancapistani an hour ago

Yeah, I love my pipes.

To be clear, it's 100%, definitely not good for you - but the level of harm doesn't seem to be even close to cigarettes or chewing tobacco.

The amount consumed is much less, the smoke shouldn't be entering your lungs, and if there are tons of good, "all-natural" tobacco out there without all the additives put in by cigarette companies.

Zaraif13 20 hours ago

Literally the worst idea. I quit vaping a while ago. Vaping made me, it gave me dopamine hits even when I got nothing done. Quitting has made me noticeably more focused, alert and let's me push myself harder. That feels great to me.

mikestorrent 18 hours ago

I've heard that you can get a "0%" vape that has no nicotine in it, but the vape shops I've asked have no idea what I'm talking about or why I'd want it. Any idea if that's real?

Stevvo 18 hours ago

You can get Propylene Glycol or vegetable glycerin and vape that.

erelong 18 hours ago

It's apparently a thing, "nicotine free" vaping

nucleardog 18 hours ago

Every day we stray further from god, etc, etc.

Yes this is and has always been an option. Find any real vape shop at any point in the past... _checks calendar_ 15 years at least, and they will sell you nearly any of their "e-juice" products with no nicotine.

Trick is, the companies making disposables vapes/pods/etc generally don't offer them because those are generally large tobacco and other companies and ... well, why would they manufacturer and sell a non-addictive cigarette when an addictive version exists.

0% nicotine was an option almost 20 years ago when I started vaping and is still available. The tobacco companies getting involved and polluting the streets with single use lithium ion batteries and shit have done nothing but made everything worse.

mikestorrent 17 hours ago

Thanks for the confirmation!

fragilerock 12 hours ago

It's useful for quitting. A lot of smokers/vapers struggle with "oral fixation", ie needing something to do with their mouth. Gradually lowering your nicotine to 0% is a way to get off nicotine without having to face this problem at the same time.

vyaa 12 hours ago

That’s how I did it and what I recommend to my friends (who vape constantly). It’s two habits you have to beat, why not do them one at a time?

Zaraif13 4 hours ago

Yep, it exists. I tried it before, and it still felt as bad because of the smoke you're inhaling. Our lungs are extremely sensitive receptors and are pretty much supposed to interact with absolutely nothing else other than the air we breathe.

kolanos 2 hours ago

Here's a company with a product meant specifically for this. [0]

[0]: https://tryfum.com

robotnikman an hour ago

I literally saw a meme image saying this last year. Crazy to see it become reality.

theGeatZhopa 15 hours ago

Evolution:

The next will be nicotine free tobacco. .. the leafs will be watered for a undisclosed amount of time to remove the nicotine as it's water soluble. It's like decaffeinated coffee - it's when you need this tastes but your heart can't take it anymore :)

euroderf 12 hours ago

If you can also keep the usual tobacco-processing chemicals and other additives out, is the bare leaf, nicotine-free, arguably no worse than other common vices ?

Ekaros 12 hours ago

Generally I would say that burning(flame/smoldering) anything is bad for you. Even simplest hydrocarbons (methane, propane, butane) with imperfect combustion have negative effects. You can make it slightly better, but smoke is most likely always carcinogenic.

cwmoore 8 hours ago

Cars, trucks, powerplants, indoor air, are bad for you.

piperswe 7 hours ago

Indeed they are, and you should also minimize exposure to the fumes from cars/trucks/powerplants and try to improve indoor ventilation.

doubled112 2 hours ago

I don't generally suck on the tailpipe of my car like a cigarette or vape.

ksyx99 8 hours ago

This has effectively been a product for many years, 22nd Century Group sells very low nicotine tobacco smoking cessation products.

samiwami 2 hours ago

i know this sounds dumb on the surface, but assuming you have other restrictions in your life it works.

Vaping tastes great, can be done indoors, doesn’t need an ash tray, and others around you are mildly annoyed vs visibly upset. Cigarettes are the direct opposite of all of those. The added friction could put someone over the hump.

xyst an hour ago

A perfect, ouroboros of addiction

IAmNotACellist 2 hours ago

BS, fake news, and dumb. Did a handful of humans actually post about this? I'm sure, and probably tried it for a day. But "people," as in a group of people large enough to be remotely news worthy? No. This is just bait. Also not hacker news.

ls612 14 hours ago

How is this not The Onion…