You're not wrong about smoke always being bad--there's a reason American Spirits have to have a disclaimer about "additive-free" not meaning healthier. Tobacco takes up alpha emitters from the soil and leaves them in your body--never good.

Pipe and cigar smokers are much less likely to smoke a pack's worth of tobacco a day. You also don't inhale them into your lungs, you hold the smoke in your mouth.

Smoking cigarettes is less about getting nicotine and more about having something to do when you are stressed etc.

I don't smoke, but when I've talked to smokers a lot of it is about the ritual. Filling the pipe, cutting and smelling the cigar, or removing the cigarette from the pack, tapping it, lighting it up, the taste and smell of the smoke, it's all part of it not just the nicotine.

That’s not true. The lifetime risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is about 10-20%, not “probably” (somewhere between 15 and 30 times higher risk than a non-smoker).

In fact, only about half of smokers die prematurely from their smoking.

I mean, I’m not saying start smoking, but also let’s at least have accurate facts.

It’s true and smoking marijuana is arguably as harmful as cigarettes but the pro-weed crowd throws a fit any time anyone points that out.

It takes "wilful blindness" to suggest vaping can be understood completely today.

We already know there are unexpected side-effects. Like kids starting to go blind, when they start young.

I didn't use Alzheimer's as a random example above. There is a known correlation.

So... Maybe it isn't combusting plant material. But it is probably causing brain damage in some form or another - and that is precisely the kind of symptom that requires a longitudinal study to understand the impact!

>Vaping is not healthy but there is a lot less material inhaled. No fine particles which do real damage.

Propylene glycol covers the alvoelae and over time (~15-20 years) blocks uptake of oxygen, causing respiratory failure and a slow, painful death.

Vegetable glycerine coats the lungs and over time (~10-25 years) blocks fluid from draining out of the lungs, causing congestive heart failure/pulmonary edema. Which ends up causing one to drown in their own bodily fluids and a slow, painful death.

If you disagree, please cite any long term studies that disprove the above. Thanks!