Calling vaping tobacco use is like likening a painkiller to eating tree bark.
Yes the nicotine comes from tobacco, but hundreds of other compounds are removed, and smoking or chewing tobacco is cancerous, AFAIK vaping is not, or more precisely less than 1% the toxicity of tobacco.

The probabilty is on par with alchool

Which makes sense since the base is relatively close to a sugar-alcohol. But that would probably be per gram.
So if you vape 2 ml per day (moderate use), and compare that to drinking 1 beer per day (also moderate use). The beer is 33cl of 4.5% alcohol (vol) = 15ml alcohol in one beer, or 10.5 grams, where 10 grams is 1 standard drink.

So by that measure vaping 2 ml is 1/7th as likely to cause cancer as drinking 1 beer.
I personally stopped vaping a few years ago, after being a heavy smoker for many years. The maximum I ever vaped was less than 5 ml per day as a former heavy smoker.

In EU we have limits on how powerful the vape can be, and how big the tanks can be. So I doubt many of those girls even vape 2ml per day.
Apart from the dependency on nicotine, it is mostly harmless.

Vaping would be a great alternative to smoking cigarettes. As a substitute, it can aid in the process of trying to quit smoking altogether.

The goal, however, is always to remain or become smoke free.

Vaping feels cleaner than cigarettes and tastes better when you haven't smoked before. It makes it easier to start smoking. Once you are vaping, you have a higher chance of picking up cigarettes than if you haven't vaped before.

Also, I'd argue that putting nicotine in the growing bodies of kids and youngsters isn't the best idea to begin with, no matter the form of presentation..

In EU we have limits on how powerful the vape can be, and how big the tanks can be.

It's unfortunately trivially easy to buy completely unregulated health hazards from china.

I know those are frequently confiscated here, but when I vaped, most the equipment was made in China anyway, and the highest quality brands were also from China.
Puff bars are apparently exceedingly popular, but to me it seems like a giant waste, I personally mixed my own juices from pure pharmaceutical quality PG and nicotine, and buying the best vaporizers and tanks from China. But that is next to impossible today, which I suppose is a part of why puff bars have become so popular.
IMO the EU regulation is a bit heavy handed, but I suppose it does prevent extreme use to some extend, personally I'm happy I could use vaping as a means to get rid of my addiction, where several attempts before vaping had failed.

As a substitute, it can aid in the process of trying to quit smoking altogether.

Yes I used it myself, where I had failed with several attempts before, I finally succeeded getting rid of tobacco with vaping, and then step the vaping down by mixing ever less nicotine in may vape juice.

Vaping feels cleaner than cigarettes and tastes better when you haven’t smoked before.

I agree, and even as a heavy smoker, when you have vaped for 14 days, a cigarette taste horrible.

It makes it easier to start smoking.

I know what you mean, but I have to correct you there. Vaping is NOT smoking. There's a HUGE difference between inhaling a vapor that has been proven safe, to a degree that it was used to prevent infections in kindergartens in the 50's in USA. The nicotine itself has few detrimental health effects, apart from creating dependency.
Smoke from tobacco on the other hand, contains hundreds of carcinogens, and it is pretty obvious that inhaling smoke is dangerous. While vaping is more like smelling the fragrance of a pot of tea.

Also, I’d argue that putting nicotine in the growing bodies of kids and youngsters isn’t the best idea to begin with,

I absolutely agree, the fact that it creates a dependency, is IMO a good argument for making it illegal for under 18's.
You are not fit to make that decision as a minor. However, it is also my impression that many young people actually do vape without the nicotine.
Also regarding the nicotine in vapes, there are allegedly similar problems with energy drinks, that can also create dependencies. Those should be restricted too IMO. Preferably completely outlawed, or rather limited to be no stronger than a cup of tea.

The problem is however, that there's no studies on the effect yet that can tell anything about long-term effects.

The better smell and taste, espescially the sweetness and renewed coolness factor has however had quite the impact on early smoking among adolescents.
Regarding addiction and effects of energy drinks, yes they are bad. In fact, IFAIC there was a study posted on lemmy recently that showed how bad hightened coffeine intake is for teens. And I'd for one very much support a ban on energy drinks before the age of 16 or even 18 for all I care.

What are you basing this on? It won't surprise me even slightly if studies show vaping is actually worse because everyone I know who vapes does it constantly, far far more than they ever smoked.

Edit: this person is adamant that vaping is safe because they emotionally need it to be, I guess. This thread is a waste of time.

As I mentioned earlier, the bases of the juice have been used since the 50's. And is also used in asthma inhalers. So it is false to claim the long term effect is unknown.
The nicotine is also pretty well known, and is not a major carcinogen. All that remain is the flavor, where there may be minimal risk, but they too are known enough to be good grade, and we'll enough to mass produce and workers working with that every day.

So that part is mostly an argument from ignorance, which is unfortunately what we see regarding vaping about 99% of the time.

Again you call it early smoking, which is false. Vaping is not smoking. And there is no evidence that vaping leads to smoking. The whole gateway drug is a huge mistake that is often repeated but has zero evidence.

Numerous research papers I have studied. Before I started vaping more than 10 years ago.
The base for the juice was very thoroughly studied all the way back to the 50's, and was used to prevent infectious respiratory diseases in kindergartens, and is still used in asthma inhalers, and is also used as stage "smoke". So there are numerous uses of the vaping juice that are all considered perfectly safe.
The nicotine itself is not a carcinogen, so all that remains is the food grade flavors, that are most likely about as safe as the smell of a pot of tea.

In fact, the nicotine often comes from tomatoes.

The nicotine itself is not a carcinogen

Not that cancer is the only health risk worth mentioning, but I wouldn't count on this.

The IARC monograph has not included nicotine as a carcinogen. However there are various studies which show otherwise. We undertook this review to specifically evaluate the effects of nicotine on the various organ systems. A computer aided search of the Medline and PubMed database was done using a combination of the keywords. All the animal and human studies investigating only the role of nicotine were included. Nicotine poses several health hazards. There is an increased risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal disorders. There is decreased immune response and it also poses ill impacts on the reproductive health. It affects the cell proliferation, oxidative stress, apoptosis, DNA mutation by various mechanisms which leads to cancer. It also affects the tumor proliferation and metastasis and causes resistance to chemo and radio therapeutic agents.

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4363846/

Further, I wonder how anyone could possibly know for sure that inhaling the base product is safe. You need decades to know that AND to regulate the ingredients to be sure nothing bad is in there. I don't know the specifics on today's laws around the world, but I know this has been mostly unregulated for a while. And it wouldn't surprise me slightly if people are getting known bad ingredients in products shipped in from China or elsewhere.

Vaping is probably safer than cigarettes and I think that's about as far as you can honestly go right now.

The only concern i have is the flavors. Yes, they're "Generally Regarded As Safe" for eating. There's not been sufficient study on the long term effects of inhaling them in the fashion that a vape delivers.

Yeah, this and also, whatever happened to the age old advice "inhaling anything but clean air is bad for your health"? That doesn't vanish because you're replacing something which is worse for your health.

We know that inhaling tobacco smoke is bad for you, and we have a good idea of how bad and why, because science.

That same kind of science hasn't been done on vaping. The handful of studies I'm aware of have all been horribly designed. From a data standpoint, that makes vaping an unknown.

However.

The only major incident that's even vape-adjacent was when some knobs were putting Vit E acetate into bathtub THC cart refills. I'm not saying it's impossible that there are conditions that haven't yet been linked to vaping, but the more time passes, the more people who are vaping, and still no "epidemic" level of disease in relation? I know that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but the people who holler about the dangers of vaping have never been able to demonstrate (to me) what those dangers are.

Toooommaaaaaacccoooooo!!!

the people who holler about the dangers of vaping

This is a mischaracterization of the conversations I've seen and been a part of. What people are trying to say is that no one should be assuming that because vaping seems safer that it is harmless.

You buy that vaping is safe bullshit? Science disagrees.

Where did they say it is safe? GreenBeanMachine said that one is hundreds of times worse than the other and that is true. While vaping is not safe, smoking tobacco is a lot worse.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpheart.00272.2025#T3

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/vaping-vs-smoking

According to a metastudy I found, vaping is rather a health risk reduction of 84% to 97%, not beyond 99%.

It depends on what you mean by long term. Studies that observe patients for over ten years already exist.

Your logic on comparing propyleneglycol with ethanol and it causing cancer is just jank. Also so far there are no studies that say vaping under normal conditions causes cancer. Rather if vapes that are set wrongly, heating the mixture too much that it forms chemical byproducts like formaldehyde, then a risk of cancer may be present, since for example formaldehyde is a proven carcinogen. However such overheating will also cause injury to the user such as throat and lung injury, which is highly unpleasant and will cause a user to exert more caution.

if vapes that are set wrongly, heating the mixture too much that it forms chemical byproducts like formaldehyde,

That causes dry puffs, and taste so bad that nobody would vape that. The only research papers I have seen warning about formaldehyde were fucking rigged. On paper measured the formaldehyde in a small room, and the levels they measured were consistrent with the amount of formaldehyde we exhale ourselves without vaping. Another that created dry puffs was measured by a machine doing the overheated "vaping", that no human would ever do.
Again these compounds have been found to be very safe for many decades, to a degree they have even been used in kindergartens to prevent respiratory disease, in asthma inhalers and in stage smoke machines.

I bet that "accounts" for unknown flavoring, and flavoring being unknown means you have to add extra uncertainty factor. To get the 99% it has to be pharmaceutical grade nicotine and PG based juice and no flavor for zero uncertainty. So I admit that 99% is best case, 84 on the other hand sounds awfully high, and sounds like it includes very flawed studies like the examples I gave u/TanteRegenbogen.

I wonder how anyone could possibly know for sure that inhaling the base product is safe.

The only thing we can know for sure is our own existence. So that an impossible target to meet.
All we can say is that after investigating it thoroughly we have no evidence to the contrary.

You need decades to know that

Yes and this has been researched since the 50's. As I've mentioned multiple times in this thread. It is considered safe enough to have been used in kindergartens to prevent respiratory disease, in asthma inhalers, and in machines to create stage smoke.

Vaping is probably safer than cigarettes

No not probably, because there can be zero reasonable doubt that vaping is only a few percentage the health risk of smoking. The research is very clear on that.

That sounds weird, although tomatoes do have some nicotine, it is very little.

Not a peep on the fact that nicotine probably causes cancer, definitely causes other health problems, or the fact that there's definitely shit in this vape juice that no one even knows about.

Pick a better hill to die on.

The flavor is the biggest unknown. Especially if the particular flavor used is unknown.
I personally mixed my own juices, and all I can say with regard to flavors is that the amounts are very small for most flavors, and vaping it is not much different from smelling it if added to food or even tea as flavoring.
So if these flavorings are a significant health hazard, I think it would have been detected in the industrial processes where they are used, and in professional kitchens.
There was the infamous popcorn lung situations, where workers on a factory making artificial butter flavor were inhaling crazy high amounts of it. Like millions of times what you would inhale when vaping. It was called popcorn lungs, because the butter flavoring was used for microwave popcorn.
It caused enormous damage to the reputation of this type of flavoring, but in reality the flavor wasn't really the issue, it was the insanely bad and irresponsible conditions under which it was produced, that offered absolutely zero protection for the workers, while there also was near zero ventilation, causing the flavor to permeate the production facility in extreme concentrations.

Saying that vaping is "probably" safer than cigarettes, is decidedly misinformation, nicotine is a very well known compound, and is not considered a carcinogen. Everything is toxic in high enough doses even water.
If you drink 4 liters of water quickly, your brain will swell and you will die. That does not make water a toxic compound.

Seems to me that you are dishonest on this subject for some reason, mostly using arguments from ignorance. There are limits to the time I want to spend on that type of debate.

That's good to hear, about the amounts of flavoring. I'm also aware of the diacetyl thing, everyone stopped using that one so far as I'm aware.

You are adamant that vaping is safe. That is fucking absolutely misinformation. It is not in any way safe, not even close. You refuse to engage on facts you find inconvenient. Bye.

You read like a child, saying that vaping is only a tiny percentage the health hazard a cigarette is, is not saying it's 100% safe.
Even 1% of the hazard of one of the most damaging things you can do from a health perspective is not a blanket statement that it is safe.
But for perspective, I'd argue that vaping is less a health hazard than drinking a soft drink with sugar, and 10-100 times more flavor than is in a vape.
You seem religiously misinformed.

Your logic on comparing propyleneglycol with ethanol and it causing cancer is just jank.

Yes because Alcohol is an actual carcinogen propyleneglycol is not. I was just giving the previous commenter the benefit of the doubt, and showing the scale.

Only a moron would think nicotine is safe.

There's like 7*2 groups of people if you group by continent. The only meaningful statement is that girls smoke more than boys + eastern Europe hits differently.