For years, smoking has always been a main concern for the public health, with many healthcare experts globally highlighting the risks it pose and warning against its serious health effects. But recently, vaping emerged as a popular alternative to smoking. Although vaping is seen as less dangerous, it is also addictive and has long-term effects.
Understanding Vaping?
Vaping was termed by the e-cigarette industry that was looking for a marketable strategy of describing nicotine replacement products/devices. Although smokers still buy products at a vape store Calgary anduse them to try and quit cigarettes, you can use them as a delivery system for cannabis. Because of that, American Cancer Society (ACS) still insists that vaping is much safer than smoking. By taking this into consideration, the ACS advice doctors to urge smoking patients to vape rather than using cigarettes.
Understanding Smoking
Smoking involves inhaling smoke that results from burning materials. These materials include dried plant leaves, tobacco being the most popular product. When plant leaves are dried and combusted, they created smoke that smokers inhale into their lungs. Today, smoking has become part of everyday life for most people, often linked with personal habits, stress relief, and social interaction.
Their Key Comparisons
When you lit cigarettes, tobacco’s combustion creates smoke containing nicotine along with cancer-causing and toxic chemicals that are harmful to the lungs. On the other hand, liquids in e-cigarettes have flavors with/without nicotine. When vaping, the liquid heats to create a vapor. Usually, the temperature that you require to produce this favor is lower than the heat you need to burn tobacco in cigarettes. Here is more comparison between the two:
1. Health & Safety
Vaping doesn’t involve the process of combustion. Instead, in-build coils heat e-liquid elements, making it to vaporize. Medical experts believe that smoking is riskier than vaping. That is why many of them recommend using vapes for every chronic smoker who is having a hard time to stop their smoking habits. Tobacco itself isn’t a harmful product, but it has negative impacts when heated. Its smoke contains many compounds, which are very toxic. These compounds include:
- Lead
- Ammonia
- Carbon monoxide
- Benzene
- Hydrogen cyanide
- Formaldehyde
- Nitrosamines
2. Environmental Effect
In Canada, you will see many cigarette butt disposed almost everywhere. In fact, every year, a statistic shows that more than 500,000 metric tons of these items make their way to grasslands, sidewalks, rivers, oceans, and beaches. Although e-cigarettes and vapes aren’t common, they years to break down. Plus, manufacturing of these products release dangerous chemicals in the damage, negatively affecting the ozone layer.
When it comes to teens and nonsmokers, there are no controversies. Why? It is simple – they shouldn’t start vaping and smoking. However, if you are already an adult looking to stop your smoking bad habits, know that the balance of benefits and risks, as well as, health consequences, associated with vaping are not certain. We require more research to help us make a good decision. But meanwhile, ACS recommends chronic smokers to use vapes to stop smoking and minimize the risks that comes with it.
