Which Is More Harmful, E-cigarettes or Cigarettes? A Zhihu User’s Answer

This article is reprinted from a Zhihu user. Author: Zhishen

I’ve been a smoker for five years, including one year using vaping devices. I’m not going to give a detailed analysis of the specific ingredients in these two products; I’ll just briefly share my personal experience.

I first really got into tobacco in my senior year of high school. At the time, the pressure of exam prep was intense, and I heard smoking could relieve stress, so I started without thinking too much about it. Later I went to a second-tier university. There were six people in our dorm, and four of us smoked. Luckily the other two were easygoing, otherwise I don’t even know how we would have made it to graduation. That’s how I became just one ordinary member of China’s hundreds of millions of smokers. All tobacco products are harmful, so if you can avoid them, do. Men can smoke, but the key issue is addiction. Once you’re addicted, it can get extreme—two packs a day, teeth turning black. Ideally, if anything, it’s better to be someone who can smoke without becoming addicted. I used to be the lead bass in my school choir, but by junior year I couldn’t do it anymore. Smoking ruined that for me, and my lung capacity clearly declined. That was probably the biggest early downside of smoking cigarettes for me.

By senior year of college, I had more free time and started thinking about quitting proactively, so I gradually began trying e-cigarettes. Roughly speaking, I spent no less than 7,000 RMB on vaping in one year. That’s right—vaping burns through money even faster. At first I used the standard kind with replaceable atomizers. Later I felt that wasn’t satisfying enough, so I moved on to big-cloud setups. Because those require higher-performance coils, and disposable replacement costs were high, I started doing DIY myself. Just to make my own coils, I basically forced myself—a humanities student—into becoming a science student. Vaping mainly relies on atomizing e-liquid. Good e-liquid was mostly imported from the U.S., with Malaysian liquid next in line. But Malaysian liquid has a high sugar content and can gunk up the coil easily, so use it carefully. As for cheap domestic e-liquid, don’t use it—you really have no idea what’s in it. One time I tried a domestic green tea flavor and took one hard puff; it nearly knocked me out, and it took me most of the day to recover. If money is tight, you can look for e-liquid DIYed by experienced domestic vaping enthusiasts. The flavor may not be as good, but the ingredients are simpler and it’s cheaper. My vaping phase eventually came to an end after an ordinary cold—my lungs just couldn’t handle it, and I ended up on IV drips for three days. That’s right, in my personal experience, vaping did more damage to my lungs.

After graduation, I made up my mind to quit smoking, but nicotine addiction is what it is—it’s not that simple. So...

I started using IQOS, a Marlboro heated tobacco device. The difference from traditional cigarettes is that it uses more advanced technology, and what you inhale doesn’t contain tar (if you want to argue with me, take a sheet of white paper, take one puff from each, cover your mouth, and blow it out—you’ll see). But it still satisfies cravings. This thing is expensive: the device is pricey, and the tobacco sticks are pricey too. I found a 2.4P device on Xianyu, and after that the cost of tobacco sticks really added up—it was actually the biggest expense during my whole year of vaping-related use. At the time, I had a classmate in Japan buy them for me. At first I only used Marlboro tobacco sticks. Two cartons cost 900 RMB, gone just like that, and I went through them even faster than regular cigarettes. After I started using this, I had my first real “after-sex smoke” (my girlfriend absolutely hated that I smoked). If your nicotine dependence isn’t too strong, your budget allows for it, and you want to quit smoking, you can give it a try. That’s about it. I hope everyone can quit smoking soon and live a healthier life (I’m still struggling painfully myself—I'm about to get married, and my girlfriend has issued a strict ultimatum, boohoo...).