Vapoteuse : current state of knowledge

Appeared in 2007, from the Middle Kingdom, the first electronic cigarettes arrive on the French market in 2010. We currently have more than 10 years of hindsight.

What is it ?

The presentation and technique have evolved significantly over the past decade. The metal cylinder, in addition to its battery and its resistance that will heat the product, has a tank of e-liquid. This transformation by heating the product has two main reasons :

• To allow it and its constituents to diffuse in the respiratory tree ;
• To maintain a gesture that the smoker needs, accompanied by the cloud of smoke, immaterial arabesques that rise into the sky.

These puffs, offerings of a harmless sacrifice, connect man to the gods. I like the fog, this incense of the ground. Every smoker dreams of disappearing into its clouds.

Sylvain Tesson

What does this e-liquid ?

• The propylene glycol (PG)

Colorless liquid, slightly viscous considered an additive in the food sector, (in emulsifiers, sauces, seasonings, ice cream, dairy drinks) also used in Pharmacy in cosmetics or even for smoke machines in the shows and considered safe by the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is partly responsible for the “hit” in jargon vape, that is to say this sensation of tingling, throat contraction that smokers seek because it is similar to the sensation felt when smoking a cigarette. This hit is related to nicotine but the PG is an enhancer. It is also a flavor enhancer.

• The vegetable glycerin (VG)

Colorless, viscous, odorless liquid. Also considered safe, it gives a large volume of steam. The percentage of these two liquids will determine the power of the hit and the smoke. The ratio PG / VG is recorded. If it is specified 80% of e liquid means that the dosage is 80% of TG and 20% of VG.

To these liquids, it should be added (apart from alcohol and water), 1 or 2 essential components that are the flavors and nicotine (optional). The current concentration of nicotine in the bottles is such that it can not cause any accident even if you ingest the e liquid. The nicotine, whose concentration is chosen, will allow former smokers who want to stop their addiction to get rid of this addictive substance PROGRESSIVELY. In extreme cases, nothing prevents them from continuing with low concentrations of nicotine.

Here is a device that heats the contents of the e-liquid to bring it to the state of steam. During the aspiration, this cloud will circulate in the bronchial tubes and will be evacuated as smoke when exhaled.

Why such a device ?

It has been known for a long time that if nicotine creates the addiction and therefore the dependence to tobacco, it is necessary for the latter to be under a few micro-microns in size to pass the broncho-alveolar barrier and to fix in a FEW SECONDS on the nicotinic site of the brain, creating the nicotinic shot with the release of a neurotransmitter, the dopamine, known as the pleasure hormone.

The absence of nicotine creates CRAVING, i.e. lack, with an impulsive need to consume again to avoid it. These microparticles only exist in cigarettes and this explains why cigarettes make you feel addicted, whereas a nicotine decoction, for example, would have no effect whatsoever on the subject’s addiction. This explains in the same way the little effect of nicotine substitutes whatever they are because they do not achieve this shot.

In addition, this product is subject to a VAT of 20% because it does not include any tobacco derivative (unlike the cigarette whose tax duty is more than 80% (VAT + consumption duty) is heated. A cigarette, which includes tobacco leaves that release a natural pesticide, nicotine, is burned. But it is the burning of tobacco that brings the carcinogenic substances. When inhaled, a puff of cigarette releases a particulate phase (or condensate), made of tars (with more than 4000 carcinogenic substances), water and nicotine and a gaseous phase with in particular carbon monoxide (CO) which clogs the arteries much more surely than any other pathology (diabetes, hypercholesterolemia).

We see therefore the dangers of burned tobacco. We also understand why the state seeks by certain means to discredit the electronic cigarette that does not necessarily their happiness for the income of money (bans increasingly large including in the workplace closed and covered for collective use since 2016) before finding a parade certainly to tax this device as the cigarette.

A very recent article (January 4, 2022) of the High Council of Public Health recommends to doctors not to advise vaping to wean themselves from tobacco.

Fortunately, addictologists and tobaccologists are watching!

Health professionals who accompany a smoker in a process of smoking cessation must, they argue, use drug treatments that have proven their effectiveness. But they have, on the contrary, proven their ineffectiveness or their very low effectiveness.

Let’s remember Mark Twain’s humorous phrase

Quitting smoking is the easiest thing there is. I know what it is: I’ve done it fifty times.

The WHO is even mentioned again to beat the recall and worry the vapoteurs. It decrees in July 2021 that the electronic cigarette can be dangerous.

This organization is not at its first excess. In Punta del Este in Uruguay in November 2010, it had announced that the e-cigarette sabotaged the fight against tobacco. The regional director of the Alliance for the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) emphasizes the harmfulness of some components of electronic cigarettes and states:

‘Nicotine is a highly addictive drug and what they use to carry the nicotine is propylene glycol, a substance that is toxic to humans..