Thanks for the information Wonko. I am not a smoker and I defer to your greater knowledge! I confess my only 'knowledge' about the nicotine as a poison is from old detective stories and a quick web search. You are clearly much better informed.
The effects of all poisons are strength dependant. Nicotine is in the same range as caffeine in terms of toxicity. It's just people very rarely deal with pure caffeine, it's not a thing.
Everything can be poisonous if ingested in sufficient volume or strength. Even Dihydrogen Monoxide, a common substance which may have killed more people than every poison on the planet.
ETA - up until the last update to the Tobacco Products Directive, nicotine at 7.2% or below was not considered a poison in the UK. Technically it still isn't, but the TPD makes it illegal to sell at concentrations above 2.0%. The TPD was meant to control tobacco use, cigarettes, cigars, that sort of thing. Combustible products that cause almost all of their health issues by smoke inhalation. Both snuff and vaping have been gathered in despite a virtually non existent risk profile, compared with smoking, in fact they are typically used to reduce or stop smoking. Paid for by individuals not health care systems. The decisions regarding their inclusion in the TPD were as a result of lobbying, not health concerns. The limits were as a result of hysterical propaganda, the science, what their was that wasn't paid for by lobbyist or tobacco companies, says that 4.5% was a more reasonable limit.
This was ignored, because it wasn't being pushed by a lobby or special interest group, because the person in charge of the committee was a rabid anti tobacco lobbyist herself.
Of course the UK representative to the council, when asked by a house committee, claimed that vaping wasn't even in the TPD, that there was no reason for concern.
Meanwhile the tobacco companies are still allowed to add hundreds of chemicals to tobacco, to make them more addictive, to reduce evidence of harm to individual smokers, to keep people smoking as much as possible, for as long as possible. And governments still continue to take around 80% of the take as direct tax.
Not to mention that big tobacco now controls most of the vaping market in the UK and EU. Not always directly, but they control most of the companies that do. Before the TPD this was not the case, most, virtually all, of the market was controlled by independants, but they can't afford the fees for testing and certification of hundreds of products, so most went out of business, or by from companies that can afford it, owned by big tobacco. The TPD handed the market to them. So the actions of the anti-smoking brigade gave control, and much greater profits, a path to the future, to the very companies they claimed to be working against, squashing the little independants, the innovators, in the process.
See any similarities with our situation?
It was a travesty, and I have seen absolutely no evidence that every other decision/policy the EU makes isn't handled exactly the same way. I couldn't support such an organisation, that had corruption as part of it's very system of operation, it's not broken, that's how it's supposed to work.
) I'm pretty sure I was at the stage of fairly advanced COPD (which killed my father). I've been off the cigs totally for 9 months now thanks to vaping and no intention of restarting.
